Bill Evans Trio • Sunday at the Village Vanguard Riverside/Craft Recordings CR00609 Bill Evans Trio • Waltz for Debby Riverside/Craft Recordings CR00617
Tony Bennett & Bill Evans • The Tony Bennett/Bill Evans Album Fantasy/Craft Recordings CR00613
iven my musical and audiophile interests, there is no label producing better, more enticing reissues right now than Craft Recordings. As a subsidiary of Concord Music, which owns a vast and important catalogue, Craft has access to an amazing array of labels and music -- nearly two dozen labels in all, encompassing consequential jazz, blues, rock, soul, Latin, folk, and classical music. Craft also does its work in the correct -- the audiophile -- way: using the master tapes as source materials; hiring experienced engineers, including Kevin Gray and Bernie Grundman; pressing its records at RTI in California or QRP in Kansas; and housing its LPs in rice-paper inner sleeves and period-authentic outer sleeves. Craft also has a series of super-premium LPs -- Small Batch One Step -- that rivals the very best work done by specialists like Mobile Fidelity, Impex, and Analogue Productions. Bill Evans has been undergoing a renaissance, decades after his death, due to the regular appearance of previously unreleased performances, nearly a dozen of which have dropped on Record Store Day or Black Friday. But Waltz for Debby and Sunday at the Village Vanguard are the bedrock on which that renaissance is built. They are Bill Evans' greatest trio recordings, featuring the near-mythic rhythm section of bassist Scott LaFaro and drummer Paul Motian. The two recordings are also linked in a more direct way: both are from a recording session on June 25, 1961 at New York's Village Vanguard club. The Tony Bennett/Bill Evans Album is an oddity in the Evans canon: a collaboration between Evans and a vocalist -- a pop vocalist at that. Bill Evans, Scott LaFaro and Paul Motian are one of jazz's most-renowned lineups, and their playing together for the last time, right before LaFaro's death in a car crash, give the session from which these albums came a poignancy that is impossible to deny. Musical highlights abound, so many of the numbers relying on the light touch of all three musicians working in unison. "Waltz for Debby," which Evans composed for solo piano, seems as delicate here as fine porcelain, but the steady swing of "Milestones" and "Solar," two Miles Davis numbers, brings a different, refracted light to the proceedings. This is contemplative music, like poetry without words; its subtleties are vital to the final product, the music having a luminous voice that makes it immediately recognizable. The Tony Bennett/Bill Evans Album is in many ways a duet between two singers. Bennett always had a toe in jazz singing, and Evans' piano has always had a lyrical, nearly vocal quality. The dynamic here isn't so much singer and accompanist; each number is a duet, with the vocals and piano working with and off each other, producing a jazz-pop collaboration that is unique to both genres. A standout is "Waltz for Debby." Evans wrote the tune for his niece, and Canadian journalist Gene Lees wrote lyrics sometime after. Evans recorded it many times, and here it has a simple beauty. Some sonic trends have become apparent across the various Craft records I've heard. First and foremost, there is adherence to the spectral balance of original pressings (and probably the master tapes themselves). There is no added warmth or fullness to impart greater weight, no extra lightness or leanness meant to give the illusion of enhanced transparency. The level of musical detail is exceedingly high, with nothing masked or accentuated. Audiophile versions, both analog and digital, of Waltz for Debby and Sunday at the Village Vanguard are abundant, because the live recording sounds terrific by default. That remains true here, but these are the best-sounding versions of both that I've heard, including Japanese and earlier OJC pressings. I've not heard Mobile Fidelity's One Step version of Sunday at the Village Vanguard, but I would not be surprised if it sounded different from Craft's OJC and not any better. It's also out of print and extremely expensive, while the Craft LP is readily available -- at least for now. Original Jazz Classics launched in 1982 as a
budget-priced series, giving more music lovers access to important jazz. The new OJC LPs
are the middle part of the price spectrum, but they cost a third as much as other premium
reissues, and in that way they can still claim budget status. I am always interested in
what musical bonbons Craft Recordings will release next, given the treasure trove at its
disposal. How about One Step versions of Waltz for Debby and Sunday at the
Village Vanguard, maybe as a boxed set (hint, hint)? |
