Erroll Garner brings us away from the Boston jazz scene to the Pittsburgh jazz incubator. Where Garner attended George Westinghouse High School so, eventually, did fellow pianist Ahmad Jamal. Ahmad Jamal started his recording career as one of "Three Strings" setting singles for OKeh Records. He then, still as one of a trio, released his debut album Ahmad Jamal Plays in 1955 on Parrot Records.
Here is the discography surrounding Ahmad Jamal's debut album:
A Gal in Calico (1952 single as Ahmad Jamal's Three Strings)
Perfidia (1952 single as Ahmad Jamal's Three Strings)
The Surrey with the Fringe on Top (1952 single as Ahmad Jamal's Three Strings)
Will You Still Be Mine (1953 single as Ahmad Jamal's Three Strings)
Ahmad Jamal's Three Strings (1953 EP as Ahmad Jamal's Three Strings)
Seleritus (1954 single)
Excerpts from the Blues (1955 single)
Ahmad Jamal Plays
Chamber Music of the New Jazz (1956 album re-release)
"I Get a Kick Out of You" by Ahmad Jamal
"The Surrey with the Fringe on Top" by Ahmad Jamal's Three Strings
Jaki Byard's debut featured the song "Garnerin' a Bit," his own homage to jazz pianist Erroll Garner. Erroll Garner cut his first recordings at the apartment of Danish jazz promoter Timme Rosenkrantz. The Chronological Classics: Erroll Garner 1944 collects this first batch of recordings.
Here is the discography surrounding Erroll Garner's debut recordings:
It's still a Boston affair as we highlight Worcester native Jaki Byard who played piano in Charlie Mariano's Jazz Group and with Herb Pomeroy. After over a decade of playing around Boston, he moved to New York City. There, he played with and arranged for some of the most advanced jazz groups of the era and got the chance to lead his own sessions. His first LP Here's Jaki, which highlights his versatility and an approachable experimentation, released in 1961 on the New Jazz division of Prestige Records.
Here is the discography surrounding Jaki Byard's debut album:
Here's Jaki
"Bess You Is My Woman/It Ain't Necessarily So" by Jaki Byard
To find success in jazz, Herb Pomeroy never had to go far from his hometown of Gloucester. After giving up on studying dentistry at Harvard, he studied music at Schillinger House (future: Berklee,) played a short stint with Charlie Parker and set his horn to wax for the first time playing with fellow Schillinger schtudent Charlie Mariano (not in that order.) The album was also Mariano's first: Charlie Mariano with His Jazz Group released in 1950 on Imperial Records.
Here is the discography surrounding Charlie Mariano's debut album:
When it came time to record their album, Ill Wind caught the attention of Tom Wilson who had a lot of experience with the genres they were mixing (folk, jazz, rock) but lacked the strong hand they were looking to guide them through their studio inexperience.
Tom Wilson jumped into music production and publishing right out of college when he turned a loan into Transition Records, a record label dedicated to recording the players of the most "advanced jazz" of the day. (So in the mid-50s, that'd be bebop, hard bop and the beginnings of free jazz.) TRLP-1 went to Herb Pomeroy's Jazz in a Stable released in 1955.
Here is the discography surrounding Herb Pomeroy's debut album:
Ken Frankel was a veteran musician by the time he decided to attend MIT as a biophysics graduate student. He played rock and roll in high school then folk music with the likes of Jerry Garcia in Hart Valley Drifters. At MIT, he returned to rock music forming a band with fellow graduate student Carey Mann.
Over the course of the band's early life, they settled on a name and a style that echoed the mix of folk, jazz, garage rock and psychedelia brewed in San Francisco. Like the Bay bands, Ill Wind were skilled musicians and brought a different kind of psychedelia with their unique and dreamy amplifications. But their version of the San Francisco Sound lacked grit or much complexity, smoothed down to be shapeless and inoffensive and, as a result, forgettable. They released their only album Flashes in 1968 on ABC Records before departures led to Ill Wind's eventual abatement.
"...all sorts of people were in and out of there all the time, because they had heard about it, like the local beats—that term was still used—a bunch of kids from a pad called the Chateau, a wild-haired kid named Jerry Garcia and the Cadaverous Cowboy, Page Browning." — excerpt from Tom Wolfe's The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test
Despite attracting a number of curious cats while at Perry Lane, Ken Kesey and his early entourage turned away a number of seekers that didn't mesh including the likes of Jerry Garcia. Jerry and his future band would, ironically, go on to become the electric sound of the Acid Tests, Haight-Ashbury, San Francisco and the hippie movement but before The Beatles touched down in America, Jerry Garcia was a banjo-playing folkie.
In the early sixties, Jerry Garcia was ever-present on the Bay Area's radio stations playing live folk music—seemingly, every time with new accompaniment and a new band name. From the start, Jerry is personable with his bandmates and the audience with a knack for bringing everyone in the room together. He is also largely irreverent towards the folk music he plays. He respects the songs but warmly mocks the history and songwriters from which he learned them and, in doing so, pleasantly mocks himself. Folk is nothing to take too seriously because, to Jerry Garcia at least, they are more of a vehicle for his pursuit of chops. Jerry never recorded an album with these early folk groups but many transcriptions of his radio performances do survive. The album Folk Time consisting of a 1962 performance with the Hart Valley Drifters is our anchoring tour stop today. It is warm, off-the-cuff, mistake-riddled and filled with some mighty fine playing... an experience that Jerry Garcia would eventually master.
Note: Again, 1962 is not the year the album was released but the year the session was recorded.
Here is the Hart Valley Drifters discography:
Folk Time
Before the Dead (compilation album by Jerry Garcia and friends)
"Salt Creek" by Black Mountain Boys
"Deep Elem Blues" by Jerry Garcia and Sara Garcia
"Legend of the Johnson Boys" by Sleepy Hollow Hog Stompers
