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Top Albums by Bud Powell
Powell's grandfather was a flamenco guitarist, and his father was a stride pianist. The family lived in New York City.Powell learned classical piano from an early age, but by the age of eight was interested in jazz, playing his own transcriptions of pianists Art Tatum and Fats Waller. His older brother William played the trumpet, and by the age of fifteen Powell was playing in his brother's band. His younger brother Richie and school friend Elmo Hope were also accomplished pianists who had significant careers. Thelonious Monk was an important early teacher and mentor, and a close friend throughout Powell's life, dedicating the composition "In Walked Bud" to him.
In the early forties Powell played in a number of bands, including that of Cootie Williams, who had to become Powell's guardian because of his youth, and his first recording date was with Williams's band in 1944. This session included the first ever recording of Monk's "'Round Midnight". Monk also introduced Powell to the circle of bebop musicians starting to form at Minton's Playhouse, and other early recordings included sessions with Frank Socolow, Dexter Gordon, J. J. Johnson, Sonny Stitt, Fats Navarro and Kenny Clarke.
Powell soon became renowned for his ability to play accurately at fast tempos, his inspired bebop soloing, and his comprehension of the ideas that Charlie Parker had found from the chords of "Cherokee" and other song-forms. His solos, conceived in emulation of and rivalry with Parker, are instantly recognizable, with frequent arpeggios punctuated by chromaticism. They are none the less progressive-sounding, exploring the harmonic series in unexpected ways. He often formed carefully phrased statements, singing along with his playing. Powell's generally rough-edged execution contrasted with his very daring and virtuosic passages at higher tempos. Many later pianists copied his melodic ideas.
Powell adhered to a simplified left-hand "comping" recalling stride and pianist Teddy Wilson. The comping often consisted of single bass notes outlining the root and fifth. He also used a tenth, which he was able to reach easily due to his very large hands, with the minor seventh included.
He freed the right hand for continuous linear exploration, and facilitated in the left a statement of the harmonies typical of bebop. When Art Tatum questioned his neglect of the left hand, the younger player responded audaciously in a subsequent tune by soloing with his left hand. His favoring the treble was not to avoid integrating the hands, which is essential to both a solo and accompanying technique. These formed the basic small ensembles that have dominated jazz since the bebop era (after swing). Before Powell, Art Tatum and Earl Hines had also somewhat explored independent homophony closely resembling later piano playing.
Powell's first session as a leader was in a trio with Curly Russell and Max Roach, recorded in 1947 for the short-lived Deluxe label, but released by Roost two years later. He also recorded on a Charlie Parker date with Miles Davis, Tommy Potter and Roach in May 1947, demonstrating his mature style in a few short solos.
In November 1947, Powell was admitted to Creedmoor Psychiatric Center, where he stayed for more than a year, receiving electroconvulsive therapy which caused severe memory loss. The young Jackie McLean and Sonny Rollins became friendly with Powell on his release from the hospital, and Powell recommended McLean to Miles Davis. Powell suffered from mental illness throughout his later life, possibly triggered by a beating by the police in 1945. (Although he had a prior reputation for strange behaviour, the beating certainly exacerbated his problems.) He was also an alcoholic, and even small quantities of alcohol had a profound effect on his character, making him aggressive. Powell's continued rivalry with Charlie Parker, while essential to the production of brilliant music, was also the subject of disruptive feuding and bitterness on the bandstand, as a result of Powell's troubled mental and physical condition. Jazz pianist Bill Cunliffe, whose music was influenced by Bud Powell, said in an interview with All About Jazz:
Bud Powell is the most important pianist in jazz and one of the most underrated because he spent over a third of his life in mental and medical hospitals. He was beaten by the police when he was twenty and he never fully recovered from that beating and as a result, he suffered pain and had to take drugs to alleviate the pain. ... In spite of that, he created a whole lot of wonderful music. He was really the first guy. Before Bud Powell, pianists were playing boom, chuck in the left hand and a lot of melodic figures in the right hand that tended to be arpeggios ... Bud Powell was imitating Charlie Parker. So Bud was the first pianist to take Charlie Parker's language and adapt it successfully to the piano. That's why he is the most important pianist in music today because everybody plays like that now. -- Bill Cunliffe
It is generally agreed that his best recordings are those made prior to 1954, both for Blue Note Records and for Norman Granz (at Mercury Records, Norgran Records, Clef Recordsand later on Verve Records). The first Blue Note session, in August 1949, features Fats Navarro, Sonny Rollins, Powell, Tommy Potter and Roy Haynes, and the compositions "Bouncing with Bud" and "Dance of the Infidels". The second Blue Note session in 1951 was a trio with Russell and Roach, and includes "Parisian Thoroughfare" and "Un Poco Loco", the latter selected by literary critic Harold Bloom for inclusion on his short list of the greatest works of twentieth-century American art. Sessions for Granz (more than a dozen) were all solo or trios, with a variety of bassists and drummers including Russell, Roach, Buddy Rich, Ray Brown, Percy Heath, George Duvivier, Art Taylor, Lloyd Trotman, Osie Johnson, Art Blakey and Kenny Clarke.
Powell recorded for both Blue Note and Granz throughout the fifties, interrupted by another long stay in a mental hospital from late 1951 to early 1953, following arrest for possession of marijuana. He was released into the guardianship of Oscar Goodstein, the owner of the Birdland nightclub. A 1953 trio session for Blue Note (with Duvivier and Taylor) included Powell's composition "Glass Enclosure", inspired by his near-imprisonment in Goodstein's apartment. His playing after his release from hospital began to be seriously affected byLargactil, taken for the treatment of schizophrenia, and by the late fifties his talent was clearly in eclipse. In 1956 his brother Richie was killed in a car crash alongside Clifford Brown. Three albums for Blue Note in the late fifties showcased Powell's ability as a composer, but his playing was far removed from the standard set by his earlier recordings for the label.
After several further spells in hospital, Powell moved to Paris in 1959, in the company of Altevia "Buttercup" Edwards, a childhood friend. In Paris, Powell worked in a trio with Pierre Michelot and Kenny Clarke. Buttercup, though, did not have Powell's best interests in mind. She kept control of his finances and overdosed him with Largactil, but Powell continued to perform and record. The 1960 live recording of the Essen jazz festival performance (with Clarke, Oscar Pettiford and on some numbers Coleman Hawkins) is particularly notable. In December 1961 he recorded two albums for Columbia Records under the aegis of Cannonball Adderley: A Portrait of Thelonious (with Michelot and Clarke), and A Tribute to Cannonball (with the addition of Don Byas and Idrees Sulieman—despite the title, Adderley only plays on one alternate take). The first album (with overdubbed audience noise) was released shortly after Powell's death, and the second was released in the late 1970s. Eventually Powell was befriended by Francis Paudras, a commercial artist and amateur pianist, and Powell moved into Paudras's home in 1962. There was a brief return to Blue Note in 1963, when Dexter Gordon recorded Our Man in Paris for the label. Powell was a last-minute substitute for Kenny Drew, and the album of standards—Powell could not by then learn new material—showed him to be still capable of playing with some proficiency. In 1963 Powell contracted tuberculosis, and the following year returned to New York with Paudras for a return engagement at Birdland. The original agreement had been for the two men to go back to Paris, but Paudras returned alone (although Powell did record in Paris, with Pettiford and Clarke, in July 1964). In 1965 Powell played only two concerts: one a disastrous performance at Carnegie Hall, the other a tribute to Charlie Parker on May 1 with other performers on the bill, including Albert Ayler. Little else was seen of him in public.
