The 20 Best Bill Evans Albums
A lot of people meet Bill Evans without knowing it. Put on Kind of Blue, the best-selling jazz album ever made, and nearly all of the piano is his. The hushed, floating sounds that give the record its famous calm are in large part Evans' creation. That's Evans as a sideman, but on his own records he did something else entirely.
With bassist Scott LaFaro and drummer Paul Motian, Evans took the piano trio apart and rebuilt it around three equal voices, the bass and drums as alive to the moment as the piano, an idea every trio since has had to reckon with. He carried the harmony of Debussy and Ravel into jazz and he played with a singing, inward touch that runs through nearly every pianist that followed, Herbie Hancock, Keith Jarrett and Brad Mehldau among them. Few pianists in jazz have been more closely studied, or more loved.
Bill Evans recorded so much, and to such a high standard, that choosing just twenty records is hard enough and ranking them is near impossible. Somewhere past the first handful I realised I was no longer ranking records so much as sorting them by mood. So this is not a flat countdown. It is twenty albums grouped into the five phases of his career, from his 1956 debut to the final studio and live recordings released after his death in 1980.
A quick word on dates, because Evans makes them a minefield. The year beside each title is the release year. A lot of his best work came out well after it was recorded, some of it posthumously, and where that gap matters the text says so.
The early sides (1957 to 1959)
New Jazz Conceptions (1957). Evans was twenty-seven and still working in Tony Scott's band when he cut his debut for Riverside with Teddy Kotick on bass and Paul Motian on drums. Although a critical success, it sold only 800 copies in its first year, and Evans, who was reluctant to record anyway, would not take up as a leader again for more than two years. Worth hearing for the first, brisk, solo-piano version of "Waltz for Debby", a tune he would spend the rest of his life rethinking.
Everybody Digs Bill Evans (1959). The title is a sales pitch, a ring of endorsements from Miles Davis, Cannonball Adderley and others printed around the cover, but the music earns it. Recorded in December 1958 with Sam Jones and Philly Joe Jones, it is where Evans first sounds fully himself. "Peace Piece" is the standout. A single improvised meditation over a repeating figure, closer to Satie than to hard bop, and unlike anything else in jazz at the time.
The first great trio, with Scott LaFaro (1960 to 1962)
This is the core of the Evans catalogue, and the reason Evans matters to anyone who loves jazz. With Scott LaFaro on bass and Paul Motian on drums, the three parts stop being piano-plus-accompaniment and start being a conversation among equals. LaFaro and Motian answering back rather than just keeping time. This first great trio lasted barely two years.
Portrait in Jazz (1960). Where it begins, recorded in December 1959. Evans plays as though he is listening harder than he is leading. Hear it on "Autumn Leaves", taken in both mono and stereo versions with different solos, and on the first trio reading of "Blue in Green".
Explorations (1961). A more inward record than its predecessor and heavier on ballads, recorded in February 1961. The interplay is even finer. Listen to how LaFaro and Evans trade the lead on "Israel" and "Nardis" without either seeming to steer.
Sunday at the Village Vanguard (1961). On 25 June 1961 the trio recorded an afternoon and evening of sets at the Village Vanguard. Ten days later LaFaro was dead at twenty-five, killed in a car accident, and these tapes became the group's epitaph. Producer Orrin Keepnews split the best of the day across two albums. Sunday leads with the LaFaro features, including two takes of his "Gloria's Step" and his showcase on "Jade Visions", which is why it carries the heavier reputation of the pair.
Waltz for Debby (1962). The companion volume from the same afternoon, released early in 1962, and arguably the more loved of the two. There is a warmth that radiates from its tunes, like "My Foolish Heart" and "My Romance", that is absent on the other album. If Sunday at the Village Vanguard is the monument, Waltz for Debby is the one you actually want to put on.
Between LaFaro and Gómez (1962 to 1966)
After LaFaro died, Evans went quiet for the better part of a year. When he came back he rebuilt the trio around Chuck Israels, then kept restlessly changing the setting: duos with the guitarist Jim Hall, solo albums, a one-off quintet. The most varied stretch of his career, and an underrated one.
Moon Beams (1962). His first studio session after LaFaro's death, with Israels taking the bass chair and Motian still on drums. An all-ballads album by design, and quietly brave. Evans answering loss with tenderness rather than fireworks. It also gives us "Re: Person I Knew", whose title is an anagram of Orrin Keepnews.
Undercurrent (1962). The first of two duo albums with Jim Hall, released in 1962 on United Artists, nearly as famous for its sleeve as for its music. The reading of "My Funny Valentine" taken at a near-run is the one everyone cites, and rightly so.
Interplay (1963). The odd one out. A quintet, recorded in July 1962 and released in 1963, with Freddie Hubbard on trumpet, Jim Hall on guitar, Percy Heath on bass and Philly Joe Jones on drums. Evans rarely led a group this size, and the bluesier, harder-swinging room shows a side of him the trios kept hidden.
Conversations with Myself (1963). Evans overdubbed himself on three pianos, each time improvising with what he heard. It annoyed the purists but won him his first Grammy. Gimmick or not, it holds up, most of all on "'Round Midnight". Released on Verve, his new label.
Trio '64 (1964). Recorded in December 1963 with a new rhythm section, Gary Peacock on bass and Motian back on drums, and released in 1964. Peacock pushes harder than Israels did, and the seasonal "Santa Claus Is Coming to Town" is far better than it has any right to be.
How My Heart Sings! (1964). Cut at the same 1962 sessions as Moon Beams but held back until 1964, this is the up-tempo counterpart Keepnews wanted, the same Israels and Motian trio stretching out. It lives in Moon Beams' shadow and does not deserve to.
Intermodulation (1966). The second Jim Hall duo, from 1966, quieter and more abstract than Undercurrent. The two of them on Evans' own "Turn Out the Stars" is a lesson in saying a lot with very little.
The Gómez years (1968 to 1974)
In 1966 the young bassist Eddie Gómez joined, and stayed eleven years, the longest partnership of Evans' life. The records from here can be patchy, and the drug problems that shadowed him were worsening, but the peaks are high and he never stopped trying out new rooms: live, solo, and orchestral.
At the Montreux Jazz Festival (1968). Recorded in June 1968 with Gómez and, briefly, Jack DeJohnette on drums, this won the Grammy and stands as the most exciting live Evans after the LaFaro tapes. DeJohnette lights a fire under the trio that Evans plainly enjoys.
Alone (1970). Recorded in 1968 but not issued until 1970, his first true solo album and another Grammy winner. The fourteen-minute "Never Let Me Go" is at the centre of it. Evans alone with a standard, taking it apart and rebuilding it with no one to answer to.
The Bill Evans Album (1971). A 1971 trio date with Gómez and Marty Morell that won two Grammys, helped by its novelty: Evans playing electric piano alongside acoustic, across a programme of his own compositions. It has aged more gracefully than you might fear.
Symbiosis (1974). A 1974 album-length work composed and conducted by Claus Ogerman, with Evans and the Gómez and Morell trio set against strings and brass. Closer to a modern concerto than a jazz record, lovely and strange, and unlike anything else he made.
The final years and after (1980 to 1983)
The late 1970s brought him two fine trios in quick succession, the group with Gómez and Eliot Zigmund and then the last one with Marc Johnson and Joe LaBarbera, and a run of recordings that mostly reached shops after he died in September 1980.
We Will Meet Again (1980). His last studio album, recorded in August 1979 and released in 1980, and a rarity: a quintet, with Tom Harrell on trumpet and Larry Schneider on saxophones over the core of his final trio, Johnson and LaBarbera. Dedicated to his brother Harry, who had died earlier that year, it is warmer and more outgoing than you might expect.
You Must Believe in Spring (1981). Recorded in August 1977 with the Gómez and Zigmund trio but held back and released in 1981, after Evans died. Often called his best-sounding studio album, and among his most affecting. Highlights include "B Minor Waltz (For Ellaine)" written for a former partner, and "We Will Meet Again (For Harry)". The grief is never spelled out, but sits beautifully in the harmony.
The Paris Concert, Edition One (1983). The final trio, Johnson and LaBarbera, live in Paris in November 1979 and released in 1983. By now Evans was visibly unwell, and the playing swings between ferocious and tender. Edition One gathers the standards from that night, "I Loves You Porgy", "My Romance"; the originals went onto Edition Two.
Three that nearly made it
The Tony Bennett/Bill Evans Album (1975). Featuring voice and piano and no rhythm section, the restraint is the whole point. A second duo album with Bennett followed two years later. Bennett said of the album later, "That's the most prestigious thing I ever did."
I Will Say Goodbye (1980). The Gómez and Zigmund trio again, recorded in 1977 and released in 1980, and the record that won a Grammy the year after Evans died. A near-twin to You Must Believe in Spring, and almost as good.
Turn Out the Stars (1996). Not to be confused with a different, earlier album of the same name. This is the six-CD Warner set of the final trio's last stand at the Village Vanguard in June 1980, released in 1996. Completists only, but for them it is essential. Evans three months from the end, playing like a man with everything still to say.
Evans the sideman
Evans as a guest is almost a second discography. Five records where his presence changes the music, plus the obvious one.
Kind of Blue, Miles Davis (1959). The record everyone owns, deservedly. Evans is on every track but "Freddie Freeloader", where Wynton Kelly takes the chair, and the calm, modal character of the album is as much his as Davis'. "Blue in Green" and "Flamenco Sketches" carry his compositional fingerprints, though the credits went to Davis.
Modern Jazz Concert (1958). A 1958 Columbia album of Third Stream commissions from the 1957 Brandeis festival, conducted by Gunther Schuller and George Russell. Evans' solo on Russell's "All About Rosie" is amazing, and it was the performance that first brought him to serious attention.
The Jazz Workshop, George Russell (1957). Russell's debut for RCA Victor, and an earlier Evans showcase still. "Concerto for Billy the Kid" was written to feature him, and his whirling cadenza sounds nothing like the reflective player he later became.
The Blues and the Abstract Truth, Oliver Nelson (1961). Nelson's 1961 Impulse date, an all-star group with Eric Dolphy, Freddie Hubbard, Paul Chambers and Roy Haynes. The home of "Stolen Moments", and proof that Evans could sit inside a hard, blues-based band without losing himself.
Know What I Mean?, Cannonball Adderley (1962). Adderley and Evans back together after Kind of Blue, with Percy Heath and Connie Kay from the Modern Jazz Quartet. Recorded in 1961 and released in 1962, it is lighter and more lyrical than Cannonball's usual soul-jazz, and all the better for Evans' quieter touch.
East Coasting, Charles Mingus (1957). A 1957 Bethlehem session and the only time Evans and Charles Mingus recorded together. An unlikely pairing, Mingus' turbulence against Evans' cool, and it works because of that friction rather than in spite of it.
Where to start
It comes down to temperament. For the first great trio, the Riverside albums are the obvious way in, and Portrait in Jazz, Explorations and Sunday at the Village Vanguard are all in the shop now on vintage Japanese pressings. If you would rather hear Evans reshape himself, Conversations with Myself is there too. And Kind of Blue, the way in for most of us, never stops being a great record.
