6 The Lonely Road of Bill Evans

When Bill Evans died in 1980, he was not a particularly controversial figure. Most musicians and critics regarded him as not only one of the most lyrical of all jazzmen but also the most influential jazz pianist since Bud Powell. Evans influenced a range of jazz performers, not just other pianists. Virtually every musician who heard him absorbed aspects of his harmonic conception and the innovations of his best groups. Yet in the past few years, Evans has become the center of a disquieting controversy. There are some people who argue that he was not really a jazz pianist at all, that his conception was outside the “true jazz tradition.” They say that he did not “swing” and that the blues was foreign to his style. Such criticisms are really euphemisms; what the naysayers mean, of course, is that Evans was white and that his music reflects his white sensibility; and since jazz is an African American art form, only African Americans can play it with any kind of idiomatic validity.

The strangest aspect of this contention is that Evans influenced, or was admired by, as many black musicians as white ones. Herbie Hancock’s style, for example, plainly reflects the Evans influence. Pianists such as Larry Willis and Ronnie Matthews have been very clear about their debt to Evans. Moreover, jazzmen such as Miles Davis, Charles Mingus, George Russell, Cannonball Adderley, Ahmad Jamal, John Lewis, and Oliver Nelson, to name just a few, hired, played with, or simply expressed great admiration for Evans. That is a fairly imposing list of musicians, all of them African American. Miles Davis, a man who was inordinately grudging with his praise, said: “I sure learned a lot from Bill Evans.” Miles made comparably strong statements about very few other musicians. Still, one critic has disparagingly compared Evans with Wynton Kelly, the pianist who took Evans’s place in Miles Davis’s group; but Kelly himself was influenced by Evans, especially in the way he played ballads.

If anything, Evans’s success demonstrates the universal legitimacy of the jazz aesthetic. Bill Evans understood that aesthetic better than most, and he worked consistently to fulfill and honor it. He understood that on the most profound level jazz was born of the African American experience. He realized the overriding importance of individual expression, of achieving a sound that is one’s own, and of discovering freedom through improvisation.

Clearly there are problems for white jazzmen, which would be dishonest to deny. One of these problems is racism. Since racism is endemic to our society in both subtle and blatant ways, it is virtually impossible for anyone to be unaffected by it. In order to develop an authentic grasp of the nature of jazz, an aspiring musician must possess deep empathy for the African American experience. I do not use the phrase authentic grasp on the superficial level of those who criticize Evans because the blues is purportedly absent from his work (although Evans, in fact, was greatly influenced by a jazz pianist steeped in the blues—Horace Silver). Without that critical grasp of the nature of jazz, white musicians come face-to-face with their own bigotry. They must accept black jazzmen as leaders and major innovators. For most white men and women in this country, it is difficult to accept black people as their equals, let alone as their leaders. Nonetheless, if one rejects the idea that the ability to play jazz derives from an inherent racial superiority (a notion that has, strangely, begun to find currency again), I think it is obvious why there are more great African American than white jazzmen. Closer to the truth than the idea of an inborn capacity to play jazz are the realities of history, a history of closed doors. Until fairly recently, a brilliant black musician had very few options. A career as a classical performer was virtually out of the question, nor were blacks permitted to work in the studios. Jazz was the one place where their virtuosity was welcomed and rewarded and where they could establish serious careers as musicians. Certainly Art Tatum, to name just one great musician, could have had a distinguished career as a concert pianist. Indeed, he created awe among many classical pianists; unfortunately for the world of classical music, such a career was closed to him.

For Bill Evans, classical training turned out to be something of a straitjacket. Performing classical music involved principles that were instilled in him at an early age and continued to influence him through his years of study at a university conservatory. Evans realized that the technique required to play classical music was, if anything, a hindrance to playing jazz. In an interview not long after he left Miles’s band, and using a literary rather than musical analogy, he stated: “[William Blake] … was like a folk poet, but he reaches heights because of his simplicity. The simple things, the essences, are the great things, but our way of expressing them can be incredibly complex. It’s the same thing with technique in music. You try to express a simple emotion—love, excitement, sadness—and often your technique gets in the way. It becomes an end in itself when it should really be only the funnel through which your feelings and ideas are communicated. The great artist gets right to the heart of the matter. His technique is so natural it’s invisible or unhearable. I’ve always had a good [technical] facility, and that worries me. I hope it does not get in the way.”1

Evans understood a central truth about jazz: a jazzman has to develop a way of communicating that is highly personal and idiosyncratic. In order to improvise freely, Evans had to learn how to trust the richness of his intuition rather than rely solely on his store of technical knowledge. He had to discard much of the method and many of the ideas about musical expression gained from his academic exposure to Western classical music. In fact, he had to reinvent himself as a musician. His ability to achieve this transformation was not simply a personal triumph for Evans himself; it was also a triumph for jazz.

Bill Evans might have pursued any career he desired. His teachers believed he could have become a leading classical pianist, but Evans chose jazz and proceeded to adapt himself—both physically and mentally—to becoming a jazzman deeply immersed in that tradition. He was knowledgeable enough about the jazz life to understand that a career as a jazzman would be far more difficult than pursuing classical music. He nevertheless made his choice and then committed every fiber of his being to realizing it. Other musicians have emerged from the classical tradition and attempted to play jazz, but most of them lacked even a superficial understanding of the jazz idiom and played a jazz-classical pastiche that was not satisfactory for either tradition. Evans, with his deep understanding of the nature of jazz expression, was able to take only what was helpful from his study of classical music and apply it to his chosen work. He brought fresh vistas to jazz that would change the music in a number of significant ways; and just as important, he created some of the most stunningly beautiful, and moving, music of the past fifty years.

According to Evans, his discovery of the concept of improvisation was serendipitous. He was playing with his high-school band when, by accident, he added a couple of notes to one of the arrangements. Immediately, the idea of creating spontaneous musical ideas became a new and exciting possibility.

When he was seventeen, Evans attended college at Southern Louisiana University in Hammond, a small town near New Orleans. Years later he would tell an interviewer that his time in New Orleans was the happiest of his life. “[It was] the first time I was on my own. Louisiana impressed me big. Maybe it’s the way the people live … there was a kind of freedom, different from anything in the North. The intercourse between Negro and white [musicians] was friendly, even intimate. There was no hypocrisy, and that’s important to me. I told this to Miles … and asked him if he understood what I meant. He said he did.”2

While studying classical music at SLU, Evans was part of a small dance band that traveled around the area performing for anyone who would hire them. While learning the European canon, then, he was also developing as a jazz musician. Several pianists influenced the young Evans, including Earl Hines, Lennie Tristano, and Nat “King” Cole, a particular favorite. As a jazz pianist, however, Bud Powell was by far the most critical influence. Powell’s impact can be heard throughout Evans’s career. Powell adapted the complex musical language of bebop, in particular that of Charlie Parker, for the piano. With his right hand Powell played his melodic ideas while with the left he played chords. With a few exceptions, virtually every jazz pianist since Powell has been directly influenced by his style—the early boppers Al Haig and George Wallington, the pianists who emerged in the 1950s such as Tommy Flanagan, Cedar Walton, Barry Harris, even Oscar Peterson. Leading pianists of the past thirty years, such as Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea, and Marcus Roberts, clearly exhibit the influence of Powell (although for Hancock and Corea the relationship to Powell is probably more indirect, since Evans himself informs their styles to a large degree). Even Cecil Taylor has been influenced by Bud Powell, albeit mainly through the emotional intensity that he brings to the keyboard.

It was not simply Powell’s harmonic and rhythmic sophistication that impressed Evans; the bop player’s work was suffused with a melancholy lyricism that was all his own. One sometimes has to wonder whether a jazz improviser such as Powell (or Evans, for that matter) ever realizes how naked his inner world appears to sensitive listeners. Whatever emotional release Powell found in playing was not enough, for he had severe psychological problems throughout his life, spending lengthy periods of time in psychiatric hospitals. Perhaps it should come as no surprise that such emotionally vulnerable men, who make a living by publicly laying out their deepest feelings, wind up seeking a wide array of ministrations, many of them far from beneficial in the long run. Evans’s own attempts to deal with the emotional pressure of playing this music would eventually turn out to be tragic.

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After graduating from SLU, Evans joined the army. The armed forces have often proved an uncomfortable place for jazz musicians. Lester Young’s ordeal provides the most famous example. Some people insist that the postwar changes in his playing were the result of his terrible experiences in the army, where he was sent to the guardhouse for possession of marijuana and beaten because his wife was white. Evans also had a difficult time as a soldier. Although his duty was mainly to play in the military band, Evans, who apparently had issues of low self-esteem throughout his life, left the service confused and disillusioned. Many of his problems in the army, however, were an outgrowth of the criticism directed at his playing, which seemed unorthodox and needlessly idiosyncratic for the narrow demands of military music. Evans left the army feeling far less sure of himself as a musician than he had during his years in college.

Instead of beginning a career after leaving the army, Evans moved into his parents’ home, bought a grand piano, and spent every day working on his playing. He was determined to become a jazzman despite the hardships he faced. “It did not come easy,” explained Evans years later. “I did not have the natural fluidity, and I was not the type of person who just looks at the scene and, through some intuitive process, immediately produces a finished product. I had to build my music very consciously.”3

Evans was, in fact, encountering one of the chief paradoxes of jazz improvisation: during the act of improvising, the musician has to have absorbed and digested the necessary technical knowledge so that he can improvise without depending consciously on all that he has learned. In other words, one must first work at achieving a personal conception and then be able to act on it without deliberate thought. Sonny Rollins put it this way: “[In an interview] Coltrane was saying that he studies and practices up to a point. But, he said, after that point it is you … it is something else. I mean, you first do your preliminary stuff when you are actually performing, but then you forget it. That is how I would describe it. When I am on stage, I don’t have to concentrate. I don’t have to think about which chord goes here and how this chord is run and all this kind of stuff. Then the music gets to the point where it plays itself.”4

This form of creativity is perhaps even more difficult for someone who has been involved mainly in the classical music tradition. When a classical pianist approaches a piece of music, he must work hard to think through how to play it, exploring it repeatedly and making a variety of decisions. But the jazz musician in live performances is unable to do this detailed advance planning because he is creating the music at the same time he is playing it. Everything—the harmony, the use of pedals, the rhythmic thrust, all of it—is invented in the moment; and once it’s played, it is too late to change it. When Evans was originally told that he could have a fine career as a concert pianist, he was apparently tempted. Eventually, though, he chose the music he had fallen in love with: jazz In his biography of Evans, Bill Evans: How My Heart Sings, Peter Pettinger says that for Evans, jazz was the easier course. From a superficial perspective, that may have been true, but in the long run jazz was a far more difficult road for a musician of Evans’s temperament. He was not comfortable with show business and, more than that, was compelled to turn his musical thinking in a totally different direction from what he had been trained to follow in the conservatory.

Evans is not the only conservatory-trained musician who had to make this transition from classical music to jazz. Cecil Taylor and John Lewis, to name just two (black) jazz pianists, also studied classical music in programs similar to Evans’s course at SLU. John Coltrane studied at a conservatory in Philadelphia; and Miles Davis, though he spent most of his time hanging out on Fifty-second Street, took some classes at Juilliard.

Interestingly, the same critics who attack Evans also dismiss Taylor because they believe that his playing is too heavily influenced by modern classical music. One can undoubtedly hear elements of composers such as Varèse and Bartók in Taylor’s work, but, as Miles famously said, “So what?”

The notion that jazz is a pristine art form destroyed by introducing “outside” elements is absurd. Jazz was born of a merging of African American folk music and the Western musical tradition. It was never “pure.” And unlike the blues, it is not a folk art, at least not anymore. It is a fine art; therefore, each artist brings to it his own sensibility and experience as well as concepts from the entire constellation of world music—just about anything goes. If freedom is one of the salient characteristics of jazz, and I believe it is, then an artist must be at liberty to tell his own story, sing his own song.

The fact that Evans’s playing is not informed by the blues (except when he plays blues) should be irrelevant. Why should all jazzmen sound the same? What is wrong with an art form that allows for the sensibilities of diverse people, not confined to a single strand of humanity? By way of analogy, who would suggest that all novels must exhibit the same sensibility as the first British novels—which would mean that the novels of all other peoples are not the “real thing” and probably worthless? The triumph of Bill Evans is his ability to create music that reverberates as deeply within us as that of any other jazzman, which is all that matters.

Classical music requires the performer to fuse his own emotions and sensibility with that of the composer. Yes, one’s own responsiveness and insight come into play when interpreting the compositions of others, but with jazz there is only the individual performer’s sensibility. In his autobiography the composer and onetime jazz pianist Hoagy Carmichael wrote: “To me, jazz in its purest form is simply the mind in contact with itself—to steal Aristotle’s definition of intuition.”5 Evans worked hard to achieve this kind of expression, but he actually went beyond that to demonstrate an entirely different set of artistic assumptions—assumptions that were alien to Western culture itself.

Evans was something of an intellectual. He had studied philosophy and was knowledgeable about literature. It is clear from some of his published letters that he had the makings of a fine and insightful writer. Yet he understood that jazz improvisation is based as much on the depths of the heart as the perceptions of the intellect. The jazz musician has to be able to subordinate his conscious mind and let intuition take control of his music-making. (It should be noted that Evans was not the only well-read jazzman: Sonny Rollins is an avid reader, as was John Coltrane. Charlie Parker was extremely knowledgeable in a number of areas other than music, as are many other jazzmen. But Bill Evans had more difficulty than they did in allowing his intuition to take over when he played. Undoubtedly this was partly the result of his background and training in the Western musical tradition.)

The jazz sensibility—the entire basis of the music—has arisen from two main sources: the assertion of one’s individuality and the search for freedom. Needless to say, these concerns are central to the African-American experience. No matter how oppressive his life in American society, the jazz musician on the bandstand can express his true person, and he has the freedom to take his music in any direction he feels like. It is out of the exigencies of living that a jazzman develops the intuition necessary to improvise. The urgency of these concerns is not central to the experience of most white people in America.

Somewhere along the way, Evans discovered Zen Buddhism. Zen would become something of a fad in the late 1950s, thanks to the Beat generation. Kerouac and Ginsberg were fascinated by Zen, and their admirers embraced Zen—though most of them probably had no genuine understanding of what it meant. Evans discovered Zen long before the emergence of the fad, and his attraction to it was, I think, obvious. The idea of disengaging the mind and allowing the deepest aspects of our being to guide us toward an ultimate reality is a central tenet of Zen.

In his famous liner notes for Kind of Blue, Evans compared the making of the album to a Japanese Zen method of painting:

There is a Japanese visual art in which the artist is forced to be spontaneous. He must paint on a thin stretched parchment with a special brush and black water paint in such a way that an unnatural or interrupted stroke will destroy the line or break through the parchment. Erasures or changes are impossible. These artists must practice a particular discipline, that of allowing the idea to express itself in communication with their hands in such a direct way that deliberation cannot interfere.

The resulting pictures lack the complex composition and textures of ordinary painting, but it is said that those who see will find something captured that escapes explanation.

This conviction that direct deed is the most meaningful reflection, I believe, has prompted the evolution of the extremely severe and unique disciplines of the jazz or improvising musician.

For Evans, Zen must have seemed like a miraculous insight into the nature of his dilemma—that is, the intrusion of intellect into the province of intuition. A “thoughtful,” deliberative solo may be musically elegant, but it will lack the emotional and spiritual depth, as well as the spontaneity, that give the best jazz its beauty and power. Zen offered Evans a method of disciplining the mind to grow quiet and to let the spirit reign in the improvisational moment.

Evans eventually moved to New York City and began to pursue in earnest a career in jazz. Since he was not an outgoing man, this move must not have been easy. He played whatever gigs he could find, and eventually he was given a semiregular job playing with the clarinetist Tony Scott. Modern jazz clarinetists are something of a rarity; besides Scott, Buddy DeFranco, and Jimmy Guiffre, most post-bop jazzmen ignored the “licorice stick,” probably because it was so difficult to play boppish runs on the horn. Scott had a rather eccentric career, but in the mid-1950s he acquired enough gigs for Evans to be able to play on a more or less steady basis. (Interestingly, several years later Scott would enjoy great success with an album titled Music for Zen Meditation; it was one of the first New Age albums.)

Besides his work with Scott, Evans played as often as he could in a wide variety of contexts. He became an important player on the New York scene because he was able to read music and play from charts superbly; and, of course, he was also a brilliant improviser. Orrin Keepnews, who had created his own record company, Riverside, heard Evans and was impressed enough to give the pianist his first record date as a leader, which would be titled New Jazz Conceptions. The album was a bomb, hardly selling at all. At the time, Evans was a completely obscure figure except to a handful of musicians who had played with him. On this album he sounds like a fine but not especially original discipline of Bud Powell. In retrospect, we can perceive the aspects of the style that would eventually make him one of the great stylists in all of jazz. At this point, however, his playing was in an embryonic state; he had not fully allowed his intuition to take over when he played.

When Evans first met George Russell, it was one of the most fateful moments of his life because its ultimate outcome would be his tenure with Miles Davis and the launch of his own career as a leader. By 1965, when Evans first recorded with George Russell on the classic Jazz Workshop album, he had become one of the select performers in the jazz scene who had the ability to play some of the most challenging music of the time.

I find it of interest that Evans’s playing during this early part of his career was far more muscular than when he became a leader a few years later. One of the most astounding displays of this muscularity is on the Jazz Workshop album. One of the pieces, titled “Concerto for Billy the Kid,” was written expressly for Evans. Playing at a furious tempo, Evans takes a soaring solo that should once and for all destroy the commonly held belief that he was nothing but an introspective, romantic artist. On the CD edition of the album, there is an alternate version of the piece. This Evans solo is totally different, but both versions are equally astonishing. Here is an appropriate place to examine Evans’s rhythmic conception. Some critics have accused him of “not swinging,” but such criticism ignores his unique rhythmic conception. In many ways, his approach to rhythm reminds me of Coltrane; neither man “swings” in the traditional sense. But as Russell has pointed out, Evans’s rhythm is implacable; he never rushes or strays behind the beat. Even when he is performing solo, he stays glued to a steady tempo.

Perhaps some of Evans’s muscularity reflects the influence of Horace Silver. Silver’s style, like that of Evans, derived from Bud Powell. But Silver’s style was more percussive, perhaps because of the influence of Thelonious Monk, whose playing has a strong percussive quality. Silver’s playing was also drenched in the blues, another stylistic earmark. Silver was one of the godfathers of the “soul jazz” movement, although his best music is more complex than the simple funk of soul jazz. Silver was a particularly strong influence on Jimmy Smith, who, in turn, spawned an entire generation of funky organists.

It is of some significance that Evans had, according to his own statements, listened to and learned from Silver. As previously noted, Evans has been assailed for the “lack of blues” in his work; yet the influence of Silver, whose music is well known for its grounding in the blues, is unmistakable—at least in Evans’s early playing.

Although it is true that Evans’s performances rarely exhibited zany, overt reference to the blues, at the rare times when he did play blues, he was able to find a personal way of working within that form. In the early 1960s Evans played on a classical session led by the saxophonist-composer-arranger Oliver Nelson that would be titled The Blues and the Abstract Truth, an album that has often been compared with Kind of Blue. In the primarily blues program on the Nelson album, Evans is wonderful, playing his own idiosyncratic blues. At times, however, he seems to be trying a little too hard to make his performance appropriately “funky,” almost as if he were trying to prove his blues credentials to the other (black) musicians in the band.

In certain contexts, Evans could play blues superbly. His famous solo on the original version of “All About Rosie” greatly helped establish him as an important up-and-coming player. Rather than attempting to “get funky,” he played the blues in his own distinctive voice, which is why it is so effective. Evans was gradually learning to trust his own instincts and not to try consciously to emulate anyone else. Perhaps because of the influence of Zen, or just from paying his dues, he was learning, in his own words, “the severe and unique disciplines of the jazz or improvising musician.”

Evans was on the shortlist of musicians who could play music that was considered avant-garde at the time. For one brief period, he even played with the always volatile Charles Mingus and recorded a classic album with the bassist titled East Coasting. Mingus had often complained about his need for musicians who could play his music as he wanted it to be played and yet still be creative improvisers. This combination of traits was, of course, one of Evans’s strengths. Like Miles, Mingus was often accused of being “Crow Jim,” i.e., antiwhite. But Mingus hired white jazzmen throughout his career and often expressed admiration for the best of them. He was a hard taskmaster; anyone who ever heard him during his heyday in the late 1950s or 1960s knew that he was capable of firing a sideman while still on the bandstand—sometimes in the middle of a set! Evans did not play with Mingus for a lengthy period of time, which given Evans’s quiet, introspective personality, is not surprising. But he did have the ability to work with an amazing diversity of groups, yet always seemed to make apt and inventive musical statements no matter what the context.

George Russell vividly remembers the circumstances under which he recommended Evans to Miles Davis. Miles needed a new pianist because he had decided to fire Red Garland, whose abuse problems had increasingly annoyed the trumpeter. Russell told Miles that he knew of a fine pianist. Miles asked, “Is he white?” Russell said that he was. “Does he wear glasses?” Miles asked. Russell told him that, too, was true. “I know that motherfucker,” Miles said. “I saw him playing at Birdland, and you’re right. He can play his ass off!”

Miles asked Russell to bring Evans to the club in Brooklyn where the trumpeter was performing. As Russell remembers it: “He had Bill sit in for one set, and after it was over, Miles went up to him and told him he was going to Philadelphia the next week. And that is how Bill learned that he was in the band.”

Being in Miles Davis’s group was the ultimate gig for a young jazz musician at the time. And this group was spectacular, arguably the greatest jazz group of modern times. Besides the legendary Miles, the band consisted of John Coltrane, then reaching his first peak; Cannonball Adderley, the latest hot alto saxophonist on the scene; Paul Chambers on bass; and Philly Joe Jones on drums. Evans rightly felt that he was surrounded by giants. He was also, of course, the only white musician in the band. On the one hand, this may have been flattering to Evans, but it presented difficulties, too. There was a degree of resentment toward white jazzmen among certain musicians and part of the black community. When Sonny Rollins hired the great white guitarist Jim Hall, he received more than his share of flak from these quarters—though, to Sonny’s credit, he ignored it.

For Evans, the worst part of being the only white in this band was exacerbated by Miles himself. Yet Miles was anything but a bigot; after all, his closest friend and favorite musical collaborator was Gil Evans. When I once discussed this with Miles, he told me, “How can they say I hate white people when my first band was almost all white motherfuckers?” He was referring of course, to the Birth of the Cool nonet, which did consist primarily of white musicians. But as has already been noted, Miles loved to prod and test those around him. For example, he constantly hurled ludicrous anti-Semitic comments toward me, once telling me that he was having a party and the honored guest was Yasir Arafat. His nickname for me (well, one of them) was “Jewish bastard.” I knew that Miles was not an anti-Semite; he once told me that the one country he hated to tour was Germany “because of what they did—all of them.” If I had become angry or upset over Miles’s jabs, it would have shown him that I did not have the perceptiveness to understand where he was coming from, and he would have wanted nothing to do with me. It was Miles’s personal radar; it was how he kept at arms’ length those he did not want to associate with. There was another reason, of course, why Miles used these barbs: he simply got a kind of sadistic enjoyment out of making others uncomfortable. There was an undeniably cruel streak in his nature, particularly toward women, that sat cheek by jowl with the sensitive, vulnerable aspect of his personality. There are some who believe that cruelty is often the mark of the greatest artists. If that is so, Miles was definitely not lacking in that quality. (I think, incidentally, that there is a decidedly cruel streak in his music.)

Miles constantly aimed derisive comments at Evans. According to Jimmy Cobb, when the band was traveling somewhere and Evans tried to give them advice about the right direction for their destination, Miles would say, “We don’t need your white opinions.” As thin-skinned as Evans was, these sneers must have reached their mark, especially when he already felt the pressure of playing with this brilliant group. For Miles, the insults were probably a way of testing Evans’s mettle, of making him strong enough to handle the pressure. Miles was a genius at knowing the right buttons to push. In addition to Miles himself, Evans had to deal with hostile audiences, especially when the crowd was mainly black. At those gigs, many refused to applaud Evans’s solos, although the other members of the band received a hearty response.

The subject of white jazzmen is complex and beyond the scope of this book. However, I think at least this should be said: a white jazzman, like a black jazzman, has only the truth of his own life to use as grist for his music. If he is a genuine artist, he will be able to use his own experience in the act of artistic creation regardless of the nature of that experience. As already noted, great jazz improvisers must ultimately be able to use fully their intuition, a subtle mental process that goes beyond, and is fundamentally different from, mere cognition. Although jazz itself is the fruit of blended musical traditions, the centrality of the African American experience to this music is undeniable. In order to develop the special intuitive depth required in the act of jazz improvisation, the performer must understand the two key issues that arise from that experience: the desire for authentic personal identity and expression, and the search for freedom. The reason these issues are so vital to blacks in this country is obvious. As a member of a stereotyped minority, an African American must answer the need to express one’s selfhood; the need for freedom is equally obvious.

For a white jazzman, as for most white Americans, these issues are not nearly as critical—at least on the surface. A white jazzman must eventually deepen his ideas, thoughts, and feelings about the notion of selfhood and freedom. If he does, he comes to realize that his presumed individuality in this conformist society is an illusion. By the time most Americans are adults, the socialization process has robbed us of self-knowledge, of understanding who we really are. Just as illusory, in a spiritual sense, is our supposed freedom. Many people in our society believe, at bottom, that they really do not have choices at all, that their lives are predetermined. They are the round pegs forced to fit into the square holes that have already been prepared for them. So the white jazzman, like a handful of other white Americans, must come to realize that the African American struggle is, spiritually, his own struggle, too. Out of that realization comes the sensibility on which jazz improvisation rests. Bill Evans undoubtedly made certain choices in his life out of a desire to achieve that sensibility, including his unwitting path to self-destruction. He was certainly not the first artist (and in particular, not the first jazzman) to believe there was some connection between that path and creativity.

For Bill Evans, the path to self-destruction, like that of many other jazz musicians, was drugs. During his tenure with Miles, Evans became a heroin addict. No one is quite certain who in the band introduced him to the drug, but it was almost certainly Philly Joe Jones. This must have seemed ironic to Miles: he had fired Red Garland and, eventually, Jones because of their habits. Jones was to heroin, in a manner of speaking, what Timothy Leary was to LSD; he had no compunction about sharing his habit with others. (Evans and Jones did become close friends and played together at various points throughout Evans’s career. His classic second album for Riverside, Everybody Digs Bill Evans, was a trio with Philly Joe and the bassist Sam Jones.)

Evans’s addiction, however, is not easily attributable to any single person or set of events. The pressures involved in the racial climate were certainly a factor, since he was more sensitive about his race than most other white jazzmen. Perhaps he even believed that in some way his addiction would legitimize his status within the jazz community, that he would be treated as “one of the guys” rather than as an aloof, introspective intellectual. Moreover, Evans’s addiction was likely a form of rebellion against his middle-class upbringing, a deliberate act, perhaps, that would pull him deeper into the jazz culture. In one interview Evans said he liked using heroin because every day when he first took the drug, it was like being born again. Needless to say, this was unfortunate, and eventually it would lead to his premature death—albeit from a different drug: cocaine. Yet as tragic as this choice was, it is further evidence of Evans’s desperation to connect with the jazz culture.

After Philly Joe was replaced by Jimmy Cobb, the great sextet that would record Kind of Blue was in place. For Evans, this must have been similar to Miles’s experience with Charlie Parker—a nightly trial by fire. The difference between the two situations, however, was that Evans was far better technically equipped than Miles had been. Still, Evans was challenged in every way. Miles liked to play some tunes at a supersonically fast tempo. In some of the live recordings of this group, we can hear Evans’s performance resembling those on the Russell recordings: muscular bop. Although in his later career Evans rarely played at fast tempos, he had no problem performing such tunes with Miles. One of the chief differences between Evans and Garland, at least in terms of the ensemble, is that Evans’s comping seems to retard the tempos somewhat. This was best for Miles, whose playing was more lyrical and reflective. But Cannonball and Coltrane rolled over the beat, seemingly ignoring Evans’s comping.

The greatest challenge for Evans must have been trying to find his own voice. He was surrounded in this group with three horn players who had all established their own sound, which must have been a spur to Evans’s own development. In previous books I discuss the primacy of “sound” for jazz players. It is not just one’s tone; it is the entire conception, the totality of how one plays the instrument and works with the music. All of these factors produce that personal sound. Miles, Coltrane, and Sonny Rollins, to name three great jazzmen, have all testified to the idea that creating a truly individual sound is essential to jazz expression. Miles Davis put it this way: “Getting a sound is what is the most important thing about playing. [Melodic] ideas are a dime a dozen.” The sound that one achieves is almost a living thing; it is the ultimate reflection of the jazzman’s soul.

Playing in Miles’s band has often led good players to become great, partly because Miles worked so steadily. But their development also reflected Miles’s understanding of how to bring the best out of his musicians. He put them in musical situations in which they had to play above themselves. In his autobiography he describes this process of forcing each member of the group upward. In addition, Miles rarely gave his musicians specific directions. Playing week after week, several sets a night, a jazzman was given the freedom to develop his own voice.

The first time we hear the “classic” Bill Evans style is also the first time the sextet recorded in the studio. About a month after Evans joined the group, Miles brought them to the Columbia studios. He needed tracks for half an album. The first side of the eventual LP was the beautiful score Miles had composed and improvised for the French film Elevator to the Gallows. Miles chose three standards—“On Green Dolphin Street,” “Stella by Starlight,” “Love for Sale”—and the old children’s tune “Put Your Little Foot Out,” which he retitled “Fran Dance.” The group’s version of “Love for Sale” was not released until the late 1970s. As Miles said about Evans, he did not play chords; rather, he played sounds. For Miles, that was about the highest praise he could offer any musician. In this session, after years of unceasing effort, Evans finally established his own sound and conception. His introduction to “On Green Dolphin Street” launched a sound never really heard before: lush, shimmering chords that in themselves speak profoundly to our emotions. Biographer Peter Pettinger describes this moment in Evans’s career: “These … tracks marked the first great milestone in the pianist’s lyrical development and in turn set the tone for the more famous album, Kind of Blue, to be made by the same musicians ten months later.”6

These tracks proved that Evans did, indeed, complement Miles’s own vision for his group. Evans gives the music a more sophisticated harmonic conception—a quality that was missing when Red Garland was at the piano. This is not to deny Garland’s contributions to Miles’s first great quintet, for his presence was considerable and his work at the piano always had an undeniably straightforward charm. Both Miles and Coltrane, however, were exploring new harmonic frontiers, and it was necessary that the group have a pianist who appreciated their direction and could keep pace with them.

It is notable that all the tunes recorded at that Columbia session had medium or slow tempos. “Love for Sale” has a faster tempo than the other tunes, but even here the tempo is only medium fast. Evans felt most comfortable at these medium tempos and when he became a leader rarely recorded tunes with an up tempo. But Miles loved to play fast tunes and so did the other members of the band. Listening to Evans on the live recordings of the band is almost like hearing a different musician from the one who emerged on the “Green Dolphin” date. He can play, and play very well, at these fast tempos; his solo on the tune George Russell wrote for him, “Concerto for Billy the Kid,” is breathtaking. But Evans at this time was concerned with developing his own voice, and his conception did not fit well into tunes with fast tempos. Luminous lyricism was at the heart of Evans’s style, and for him that was best served by ballads and medium swingers. Thus, it was not because Evans could not play at swift tempos—he could play brilliantly at any tempo—but as he more closely approached his own soul as an artist, he increasingly wanted to play music that helped him express his deepest emotions and ideas.

Miles Davis had similar choices in the 1940s. Although he could play, when he wanted to, like the virtuosic Fats Navarro, he made a series of choices and created a conception that most truly reflected his own being. All great jazz musicians go through the same grueling process. Evans’s style was “busy being born,” and at this point in his career, tending the birth was his chief concern. As he developed, Evans grew away from others’ conceptions. The same thing was happening to Coltrane and Cannonball; they also were developing strong individual ideas and would soon become among the foremost leaders of jazz groups in the 1960s.

Evans’s need to address the nature of his own voice is one reason for his leaving the band after only eight months. Playing with Miles would always be one of the greatest experiences of his life, but he felt that he had to leave. In addition to his growing individuality as an artist, he was also tired of the incessant touring. Undoubtedly, putting up with Miles’s constant “testing” and jazz fans who resented him also took their toll. Finally, his addiction to heroin probably had something to do with his leaving the band. Evans was now, ironically, the only member of the band who still had a habit.

After he left Miles’s band, Evans went to Florida to stay with his parents and renew his energy and commitment to music. In December of 1958 Evans recorded his second album, Everybody Digs Bill Evans. On the cover of the album are enthusiastic endorsements of Evans by some of the leading musicians of the day, including Ahmad Jamal, Cannonball Adderley, George Shearing, and Miles, who states, “[Bill Evans] plays the piano the way it should be played.” On this album Evans’s work is equal to the extravagant praise; it is his first great work as a leader. One of the tunes has garnered special attention, “Peace Piece.” Based on a two-chord vamp, Evans improvises with a crystalline melodicism that turns unexpected corners. In some ways it is a precursor of the works of New Age pianists such as George Winston, but it has an emotional depth lacking in their music.

The rest of the Everybody Digs album is almost as good. At times Evans displays the muscular bopper of his earliest recordings, but he was evolving in quite a different direction. He would form a trio with two other innovators, the bassist Scott LaFaro and the drummer Paul Motian, who, along with the Ornette Coleman group of that period, would forever change the dynamics and methods of the jazz combo. No longer would a jazz group simply present a series of soloists accompanied by a rhythm section. With the innovations of these musicians, the group would improvise as an ensemble, in an attempt to both connect with the earliest jazz, in which there was constant ensemble improvisation, and advance the techniques of the jazz combo into the future. Interestingly, Miles led a group in the mid-1960s that was created around these innovations. Miles obviously continued to learn from his former sideman, and of course, Evans learned a great deal from Miles. In almost every album he recorded in the first few years after he left the sextet, Evans included a tune either written by or associated with Miles.

As a leader, Evans sometimes seemed to hide inside himself; he would sit at the piano, hunched over, his nose inches from the keyboard, almost as if he wanted to crawl inside the instrument and literally become the music. Some critics wondered whether Evans was really interested in communicating with his audience at that point or whether he was using the music to dig deeply into his own psyche.

Sound familiar? As different on the surface as their music seems to be, this is also the charge that was leveled at Coltrane after he became a leader. I do not think this similarity between the pianist and the saxophonist is a coincidence. Musicians influence one another in myriad ways, and the presumed differences between Evans’s music and Coltrane’s seem less and less real the closer you examine the work of these two geniuses. The real teacher here was Miles, who showed both Coltrane and Evans that playing jazz is based on looking deep within yourself and creating music based on what you find. There is little doubt that Evans studied Zen Buddhism for this reason: to manipulate his consciousness, to create music out of “no-mind,” “the mind in contact with itself.” Eventually he succeeded in overcoming the psychic barriers that faced him, and he became a genuinely great jazzman whose music came directly from his heart and soul. Indeed, some of his music is so nakedly emotional that I have found listening to it almost too wrenching. Black and white jazzmen may follow different routes, but the best of them eventually arrive at a place where they can put their lives on the line every time they play. This is certainly true of Bill Evans at his best.

Although Evans had moved on to become a leader, Miles was not finished with him. After Evans left the band, Miles briefly rehired Red Garland and then brought in Wynton Kelly, an inspired choice. But Miles conceived Kind of Blue with Bill Evans in mind; he wanted to use Kelly for only a single track. One reason Miles hired Evans was undoubtedly the pianist’s experience playing with George Russell and his understanding of Russell’s modal concept. But his reasons went even deeper.

Kind of Blue was, for Miles, an intensely personal album, one that reflects dark-hued memories and attempts to conjure spirits from his youth—one reason the album has such a ghostly ambience. Miles understood that Evans would grasp the emotional atmosphere he wanted to create. Yes, it was helpful that Evans was comfortable with modal composition and improvisation. To Miles, however, far more important than technical command was emotional empathy. It is impossible to conceive of Kind of Blue without Bill Evans. Thus, the black trumpetist who grew up in a black neighborhood in East St. Louis chose the white pianist from a middle-class home in Plainfield, New Jersey, to create this music that was so close to his soul. Instinctively Miles knew that Evans would be able to reach back and awaken his own apparitions, perhaps different in shape but no less haunting.