Formed 1976

The Great Jazz Trio grew out of Hank Jones's regular Monday nights at the Village Vanguard with bassist Ron Carter and drummer Tony Williams, a residency that East Wind Records documented with an intensity and consistency that the American market never matched. The label's A&R men named the trio in 1976, produced the first recording session with Buster Williams rather than Carter on bass, then established the definitive Jones-Carter-Williams lineup across seven subsequent sessions, including live sets at the Vanguard in 1977 and studio dates at Warner Brothers Recording Studios in Los Angeles and Sound Ideas Studios in New York. The three musicians brought directly complementary histories: Jones's decades as a Savoy house pianist and Ella Fitzgerald's accompanist, Carter and Williams's years together as the rhythm section of Miles Davis's second great quintet. East Wind had audiophile aspirations and made some direct-to-disc recordings; the covers of the East Wind LPs famously featured American Major League Baseball players in action, with Boston Red Sox pitcher Roger Moret appearing on "At the Village Vanguard" because Williams, alone of the three, was Boston-born rather than from Detroit. Guest soloists brought into the trio's orbit included Jackie McLean and Sadao Watanabe. After Williams's death in 1997, Jones continued leading iterations of the Great Jazz Trio with changing personnel into the 2000s.