Piano | 1921-1977

Erroll Garner never learned to read music. He taught himself piano by following his older brother Linton, starting at three, and spent his entire career playing entirely by ear, never announcing what he was going to play or what key he'd start in. He grew up in Pittsburgh's Hill District, was on local radio at seven, on the Allegheny riverboats at eleven, and in New York by 1944. His style, which he developed in the clubs of Harlem and 52nd Street, was immediately recognisable: a rhythmically independent approach in which the left hand strummed guitar-like chords slightly behind the beat while the right hand carried melodies that lagged further still, creating a rolling swing that communicated to audiences who had no language for what he was doing. He played with Charlie Parker in 1947 and briefly deputised for Art Tatum, but his own recordings carried none of the bebop idiom: he was, as one contemporary noted, the most popular pianist in jazz without belonging to any of its schools. He composed "Misty" in 1954, performed at Carmel-by-the-Sea in 1955 in the session that became "Concert by the Sea" (Columbia), one of the best-selling jazz albums in history, and recorded across more than forty labels throughout his career. ASCAP placed "Misty" among the twenty most performed songs of the entire twentieth century. Garner died on 2 January 1977 in Los Angeles, aged 55.