The Village Vanguard sessions - (1961)

1961 CD DISC 1:
1. Spoken Introduction
2. Gloria's Step - (take 1, interrupted)
3. Alice in Wonderland - (take 1)
4. My Foolish Heart
5. All of You - (take 1)
6. Announcement and Intermission
7. My Romance - (take 1)
8. Some Other Time
9. Solar

1961 Songs DISC 2:
1. Gloria's Step - (take 2)
2. My Man's Gone Now
3. All of You - (take 2)
4. Detour Ahead - (take 1)
5. Discussing Repertoire
6. Waltz For Derby - (take 1)
7. Alice in Wonderland - (take 2)
8. Porgy (I Loves You, Porgy)
9. My Romance - (take 2)
10. Milestones

1961 Album DISC 3:
1. Detour Ahead - (take 2)
2. Gloria's Step - (take 3)
3. Waltz For Derby - (take 2)
4. All of You - (take 3)
5. Jade Visions - (take 1)
6. Jade Visions - (take 2)
7. ... A Few Final Bars

Bill Evans - piano
Scott LaFaro - bass
Paul Motian - drums

Bill Evans Trio

Bill Evans (p) Scott LaFaro (b) Paul Motian (d)

"Village Vanguard", NYC, matinee 1, June 25, 1961

	Gloria's Step (take 1)	Riverside (J) VICJ 60951/3
	Alice In Wonderland (take 1)	Milestone M 9125; Fantasy OJCCD 140-2
	My Foolish Heart	Riverside RLP 399
	All Of You (take 1)	Milestone M 9125, MCD 9235-2

* Bill Evans - More From The Vanguard (Milestone M 9125)
= Bill Evans - The Complete Live At The Village Vanguard 1961 (Riverside (J) VICJ 60951/3)
* Bill Evans - Waltz For Debby (Riverside RLP 399; Fantasy OJC 210, OJCCD 210-2)
= Bill Evans - The Village Vanguard Sessions (Milestone M 47002)
= Bill Evans - The Complete Live At The Village Vanguard 1961 (Riverside (J) VICJ 60951/3)
* Bill Evans - Sunday At The Village Vanguard (Fantasy OJCCD 140-2)
* Bill Evans - On Green Dolphin Street (Milestone MCD 9235-2)

Bill Evans Trio

Bill Evans (p) Scott LaFaro (b) Paul Motian (d): same personnel

"Village Vanguard", NYC, matinee 2, June 25, 1961

	My Romance (take 1)	Riverside RLP 399
	Some Other Time	-
	Solar	Riverside RLP 376

* Bill Evans - Waltz For Debby (Riverside RLP 399; Fantasy OJC 210, OJCCD 210-2)
= Bill Evans - The Village Vanguard Sessions (Milestone M 47002)
= Bill Evans - The Complete Live At The Village Vanguard 1961 (Riverside (J) VICJ 60951/3)
* Bill Evans - Sunday At The Village Vanguard (Riverside RLP 376; Fantasy OJC 140, OJCCD 140-2)
= Bill Evans Live At The Village Vanguard (Riverside RS 3006)
= Bill Evans - The Village Vanguard Sessions (Milestone M 47002)
= Bill Evans - The Complete Live At The Village Vanguard 1961 (Riverside (J) VICJ 60951/3)

Bill Evans Trio

Bill Evans (p) Scott LaFaro (b) Paul Motian (d): same personnel

"Village Vanguard", NYC, soiree 1, June 25, 1961

	Gloria's Step (take 2)	Riverside RLP 376
	My Man's Gone Now	-
	All Of You (take 2)	-
	Detour Ahead (take 1)	Milestone M 9125; Fantasy OJCCD 210-2

* Bill Evans - Sunday At The Village Vanguard (Riverside RLP 376; Fantasy OJC 140, OJCCD 140-2)
= Bill Evans Live At The Village Vanguard (Riverside RS 3006)
= Bill Evans - The Village Vanguard Sessions (Milestone M 47002)
= Bill Evans - The Complete Live At The Village Vanguard 1961 (Riverside (J) VICJ 60951/3)
* Bill Evans - More From The Vanguard (Milestone M 9125)
= Bill Evans - The Complete Live At The Village Vanguard 1961 (Riverside (J) VICJ 60951/3)
* Bill Evans - Waltz For Debby (Fantasy OJCCD 210-2)

Bill Evans Trio

Bill Evans (p) Scott LaFaro (b) Paul Motian (d): same personnel

"Village Vanguard", NYC, soiree 2, June 25, 1961

	Waltz For Debby (take 1)	Milestone M 9125; Fantasy OJCCD 210-2
	Alice In Wonderland (take 2)	Riverside RLP 376
	(I Loves You,) Porgy	Milestone M 47002; Fantasy OJCCD 210-2; Riverside (J) VICJ 60951/3
	My Romance (take 2)	Milestone M 9125; Fantasy OJCCD 210-2
	Milestones	Riverside RLP 399

* Bill Evans - More From The Vanguard (Milestone M 9125)
= Bill Evans - The Complete Live At The Village Vanguard 1961 (Riverside (J) VICJ 60951/3)
* Bill Evans - Sunday At The Village Vanguard (Riverside RLP 376; Fantasy OJC 140, OJCCD 140-2)
= Bill Evans Live At The Village Vanguard (Riverside RS 3006)
= Bill Evans - The Village Vanguard Sessions (Milestone M 47002)
= Bill Evans - The Complete Live At The Village Vanguard 1961 (Riverside (J) VICJ 60951/3)
* Bill Evans - Waltz For Debby (Riverside RLP 399; Fantasy OJC 210, OJCCD 210-2)
= Bill Evans - The Village Vanguard Sessions (Milestone M 47002)
= Bill Evans - The Complete Live At The Village Vanguard 1961 (Riverside (J) VICJ 60951/3)

Bill Evans Trio

Bill Evans (p) Scott LaFaro (b) Paul Motian (d): same personnel

"Village Vanguard", NYC, soiree 3, June 25, 1961

	Detour Ahead (take 2)	Riverside RLP 399
	Gloria's Step (take 3)	Milestone M 9125; Fantasy OJCCD 140-2
	Waltz For Debby (take 2)	Riverside RLP 399
	All Of You (take 3)	Milestone M 9125; Fantasy OJCCD 140-2
	Jade Visions (take 1)	-
	Jade Visions (take 2)	Riverside RLP 376
	(...a few final bars)	Riverside (J) VICJ 60951/3

* Bill Evans - Waltz For Debby (Riverside RLP 399; Fantasy OJC 210, OJCCD 210-2)
= Bill Evans - The Village Vanguard Sessions (Milestone M 47002)
= Bill Evans - The Complete Live At The Village Vanguard 1961 (Riverside (J) VICJ 60951/3)
* Bill Evans - More From The Vanguard (Milestone M 9125)
= Bill Evans - The Complete Live At The Village Vanguard 1961 (Riverside (J) VICJ 60951/3)
* Bill Evans - Sunday At The Village Vanguard (Riverside RLP 376; Fantasy OJC 140, OJCCD 140-2)
= Bill Evans Live At The Village Vanguard (Riverside RS 3006)
= Bill Evans - The Village Vanguard Sessions (Milestone M 47002)
= Bill Evans - The Complete Live At The Village Vanguard 1961 (Riverside (J) VICJ 60951/3)

SEE...


“Regarding the interpersonal and artistic relationship between Evans and LaFaro at the time, the pianist appeared even a bit irritated by the bass player's fiery nature. His desire to stay 'clean', and not mess around with dangerous experiments in drugs seemed almost to make Evans jealous: “Scott was in life right up to the hilt, he was intense in experiencing anything but bullshit, not wanting to waste time. He was discriminating about where quality might lie.” Concerning LaFaro's relationship with music, however, Evans added: “He didn't overlook traditional playing, realizing it could contribute a great deal to his ultimate product.”

Paul Motian recalled that the bass player “was practicing and playing all the time. ( ... ) His rate of improvement was so fast.” The great avant-garde pianist Paul Bley was later to observe that -"he was the only bassist in the world at that time who could play the melody to the complex charts.”

Evans himself found it amazing that LaFaro was so capable of intuiting where he was going, where his next thought was going to be. He wondered, “How did he know that I was going there.” LaFaro's explosive combination of talent, health and exuberant, almost defiant, vitality threw Evans off, putting him face to face with his own personal tragedy - his own human failure.

Evans admired the young man but, perhaps, envied a bit that self-confident unhesitating, doubt-free energy that LaFaro expressed both in his life-style and in his music.
The Village Vanguard Sessions well-illustrates the contrast between the iconoclast LaFaro and the introverted, subtly conservative Evans. The young bass player who lived life to the fullest “and tasted it down to the last drop wanted more than anything to take risks” (“I don’t like to look back because the whole point in jazz is doing it now.”) This he does with extraordinary results in All Of You, lingering a long time on a very dissonant minor second, that he "walks" confidently along the piece, refusing to stay consonant with the chord flow; or in Milestones, where LaFaro even succeeds in dragging Evans along on a couple of very daring excursions, from which the pianist withdraws immediately to go back to chiseling out his bewitching neo-Impressionistic harmonies. Also in this piece, the bass player seems deliberately to refuse to "walk" in 4/4 in the footsteps of Motian’s orthodox comping, preferring to depart with a solo line of his own that counterpoints what Evans' is doing with his piano. At the end of the tune, LaFaro fools around rather provocatively with some notes, to the laughter of the crowd, while Evans stays locked himself inside his dark, doubt-filled world.

“I never listen to the words of songs, I am rarely aware of them,” he told Len Lyons in a 1976 interview. Yet it seems somewhat more than a coincidence that the text of Detour Ahead contains expressions like “You fool, you've set off in the wrong direction,” “turn back while there's still time,” and “don’t you see the danger signs.” Detour Ahead, along with My Foolish Heart, My Man’s Gone Now and Porgy, is one of the ballads that Evans chose to play that evening. It is hard to imagine that this was a purely arbitrary choice. In fact, his interpretation of the song is a truly touching interaction with a tune which he had surely heard Billie Holiday sing, lyrics not excluded.
Other roads, with their hidden perils, were waiting to seal Scott LaFaro's tragic fate. At the end of those historic sets, as the three were leaving the Village Vanguard, he had spontaneously expressed with great joy to Motian and Evans, “these two weeks have been exceptional, I've finally made an album I'm happy with!” On the night of July 5 1961, ten days after that magical evening, while going home after a visit to a friend, and having ignored the urgings of pianist-composer Gap Mangione to stay over and leave the next day, he lost control of his Chrysler and went off the road into a tree. Both he and the friend riding with him were killed instantly.

This very gifted and unfortunate musician had, in a very short time, caused a complete revolution in conceptual/technical approach to bass playing. He blazed a new trail for the role of his instrument in small groups, expanding its solo possibilities through the exploitation of its upper register, the production of harmonics, the use of double and triple stops, and so on. Scott LaFaro's tragic death was a shock for Evans. A gray veil of sadness shrouded his already over-complicated existence, that “for several months went in a direction not at all constructive... musically everything seemed to stop. I didn't even play at home.”

Many years later, in 1984, the ever-zealous and thoughtful Orrin Keepnews published other takes from those extraordinary evenings. We find in these the same extremely high artistic level as those performances which even the exacting Evans had considered worthy of publication. These seven rediscovered performances are interesting for several aspects such as, in particular, a greater self-confidence as compared with those on the classic albums originally published from this concert. Perhaps this quality is related to the fact that Detour Ahead, Waltz For Debby, Jade Visions and Alice In Wonderland were revived in their first takes, all of them providing fresher interpretations than the previously published versions. It is as if, in approaching them, the three had experienced that higher intensity of emotion and concentration that almost always happens when you meet up with something that you have not handled for a long time finding it, therefore, somehow "new".

In other cases the opposite happens - as in All Of You, for example. The third take of this tune works better, more vigorous and appealing than the "classic" one, which was the second take played on that day. Here LaFaro's playing is more imaginative, provocative and audacious than ever, and Evans sounds more determined and energetic than usual. While the above-mentioned pieces betray a vague sense of boredom after all, repeating a piece after a very short time can, understandably, create a sense of deja vu causing a lowering of interest and a proportional increase in routine - surprisingly, in All Of You the reverse is true.

A key element in explaining this may be the presence in the audience of some fellow-musicians at the evening concert, who tacitly stimulated the three to perform at their best. In any case, these seven rediscovered pieces take nothing away and, if anything, only add to the magic of that special evening, highlighting, among other things, the enormous amount of propulsive energy that Motian was able to produce. He swings hard, chancing a more articulated multi-rhythmic approach than in the thirteen "classic" pieces. We feel, almost palpably, how that trio was a living organism: “a three-person voice as one voice,” Motian would say.

But now LaFaro was no longer there. That widening of musical horizons that the three had believed they could carry out together those concerts representing a first important leg of the journey - had been rudely interrupted."
(Bill Evans: Ritratto d’artista con pianoforte/Bill Evans: The Pianist as an Artist.Enrico Pieranunzi, Rome 1999, Stampa Alternativa)(thanks http://jazzprofiles.blogspot.com !!!)