New Release of Evans with DeJohnette and Gómez

Jack DeJohnette (photograph by Francois Jacquenod, courtesy of Braithwaite & Katz Communications)

Jazz drummer Jack DeJohnette spent only six months as a member of the trio led by Bill Evans, which also included Eddie Gómez in bass. The only recording to result from that brief partnership was Bill Evans at the Montreux Jazz Festival, which is included in the anthology of Evans’ Verve recordings. More recently, however, Resonance Records released two additional concert albums of the trio’s performances: Some Other Time: The Lost Session from The Black Forest and Another Time: The Hilversum Concert. This past November Resonance released a third album, Bill Evans Live at Ronnie Scott’s. Taken as a whole, that amounts to a generous number of tracks for a trio that lasted for six months.

The new album consists of two CDs, each of which has ten tracks. Only three of them are Evans originals: “Turn Out the Stars,” “Very Early,” and “Waltz for Debby.” All of them can be found on other albums, which is also true of the standards found on the remaining seventeen tracks. What is important, however, is that Evans never dominates over this trio. Indeed, anyone interested in jazz bass technique may find more of interest in the many solos that Gómez takes, rather than attending to Evans’ imaginative harmonic progressions and his often adventurous rhythms. DeJohnette may not have taken over as much of the time that Gómez dominated; but throughout his career, he has demonstrated a rich portfolio of what amount to “punctuation marks” in the tunes he is backing.

What makes this collection particularly interesting is that all of the tracks were drawn from DeJohnette’s personal archives; and DeJohnette co-produced the album with Zev Feldman. From a personal point of view, I think that DeJohnette was the first drummer I encountered when I first started to frequent the Village Vanguard. Unless I am mistaken, he was playing drums for Thelonious Monk on that occasion; and it did not take long for me to get drawn into the solo riffs he came up with when Monk would take a break and wander around the stage.

Another observation that may (or may not) be relevant is that DeJohnette succeeded Philly Joe Jones as Evans’ drummer. On their many Verve tracks, Evans could be more than generous in allowing Jones to go his own way. It is therefore likely that he expected the same amount of prodigious invention to come from DeJohnette, and DeJohnette definitely did not disappoint.

One last historical tidbit: Apparently, Miles Davis first become aware of DeJohnette during that trio date at Ronnie Scott’s. As a result, DeJohnette departed from Evans because Davis asked him to replace Tony Williams in his band! One of the more memorable results of that transition was that DeJohnette was the primary drummer on Bitches Brew!