Collection: Erroll Garner

Erroll Garner learned to play piano by following his older brother Linton, starting at three, and never took a formal lesson in his life, never learned to read music, and composed one of the most performed songs of the twentieth century in a style that was entirely, unmistakably his own. He grew up in Pittsburgh's Hill District alongside Billy Strayhorn and Ahmad Jamal at George Westinghouse High School, was playing on local radio at seven with a group called the Candy Kids, on the Allegheny riverboats at eleven, and in New York by 1944. He worked briefly with bassist Slam Stewart, sat in for Art Tatum on occasion, and played on Charlie Parker's "Cool Blues" session at Radio Recorders in Los Angeles in 1947. What emerged from that New York apprenticeship was a style that sounded like no one else in jazz: the left hand strumming behind the beat like a rhythm guitar while the right hand played melodies lagging just behind it, creating a rolling, irresistibly swinging tension. He composed "Misty" in 1954 and "Concert by the Sea", recorded live in Carmel-by-the-Sea that September and released on Columbia the following year, became one of the best-selling jazz albums ever made, selling over 225,000 copies in its first year. ASCAP later listed "Misty" among the twenty most performed songs of the entire twentieth century. Garner recorded prolifically across Mercury, Columbia, Verve, Savoy and dozens of other labels, appeared on the Ed Sullivan, Dick Cavett and Johnny Carson shows, and performed for Sol Hurok, the only jazz musician the classical impresario ever presented. He died on 2 January 1977 in Los Angeles, aged 55.