Earl “Bud” Powell was one of the most important pianists in the early bebop style. His highly individual approach to harmony and melody, together with his innovative ways of coupling the hands, helped transform the art of jazz piano playing in the 1940s and 1950s. At his peak Powell was a virtuoso of the highest order, but unfortunately mental illness forced him into early retirement.
Powell was born on September 27, 1924, in New York City. He began piano studies at age six, and by age 15 he was taking part in informal jam sessions at New York nightclubs such as Minton’s Playhouse. Here he came into contact with Thelonious MONK and the emerging bebop jazz style. From 1942 to 1944, while playing in the band of his guardian, “Cootie” Williams, Powell refined his remarkable virtuosity. He soon created a unique piano style of long, dazzling melodic runs that were interrupted by irregularly timed chords.
A violent racist incident in 1945 left Powell with a head injury that brought on the first of many nervous breakdowns. Plagued after the brutal event by mental illness, he spent much of his adult life in mental hospitals. During the late 1940s and early 1950s, Powell appeared intermittently in various New York nightclubs, headlining with other leading bop soloists such as Charlie PARKER, DIZZY GILLESPIE, Sonny Stitt, and Fats Navarro. Around this time he also composed a number of memorable jazz pieces, including “Dance of the Infidels,” “Tempus Fugue-It,” and “Bouncing with Bud” (all 1949); and “Hallucinations” (1950), later recorded by Miles Davis as “Budo.” His most famous piece, “The Glass Enclosure” (1953), is a remarkable musical impression of his experiences in mental institutions.
Ill-health and mental problems forced Powell to restrict his public appearances by the mid-1950s. In 1959 he moved to Paris, where he led a trio with Kenny Clarke and enjoyed country-wide celebrity status, substituting an economical primitivism reminiscent of Monk for his own lost virtuoso powers. Powell returned to the U.S. in 1964 and made an ill-advised appearance at Carnegie Hall a year later. An eagerly anticipated musical event, it turned out to be a public calamity. Powell bickered with other musicians during the performance, disappointing an audience primed by the recordings made in his heyday, and finally walked off the stage. Forced to retire ignominiously, Powell sank into obscurity and died in New York on August 1, 1966.
At the height of Powell’s powers, his playing shone with technical brilliance. His style was never fastidious, however, linked as it was to an explosive intensity and a freewheeling originality. His unpredictable phrases ranged from percussive, horn-like riffs to cascading lines that displaced 4/4 bar lines. His harmonic conception, meanwhile, was based not on conventional triads, but on seconds and sevenths. This gave an exotic flavour to his interpretations of tunes such as “Night in Tunisia” and “Un Poco Loco.”
The incongruity of Powell’s precipitous melodic lines in the right hand, punctuated by unevenly spaced, sometimes dissonant chords in the left, represented a break from the styles of his idols, the swing pianists Art Tatum and Teddy Wilson. Because he devised new melodic ideas, harmonies, and ways of interrelating the hands, Powell remains one of jazz music’s true originals. Pianists may admire his genius and imitate his style, but none can match his rich melodic invention.
Hao Huang
SEE ALSO:
BEBOP; CHRISTIAN, CHARLIE; COOL JAZZ; FREE JAZZ; SWING.
FURTHER READING
DeVeaux, Scott. The Birth of Bebop: A Social and Musical History (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1997);
Owens, Thomas. Bebop: The Music and Its Players (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995).
SUGGESTED LISTENING
The Best of Bud Powell; Bud Powell Piano Solos; The Complete Bud Powell Blue Note Recordings; The Genius of Bud Powell; Inner Fires.