From Everybody Digs Bill Evans
Blues Walk – Ritchie Powell
From the alternate take on the album Clifford Brown and Max Roach, recorded in February 1955. I transcribed this to study some sort-of generic blues vocabulary.
Jeannine – Barry Harris
From Cannonball Adderley’s album Them Dirty Blues. I originally thought it was Bobby Timmons, but a check of the Jazz Discography Project (great resource, btw) confirms that the album was done in two sessions, and Barry Harris played on this one. Great bebop vocabulary.
Satin Doll – McCoy Tyner
From the album McCoy Tyner plays Ellington, recorded in December 1964 for Prestige. I was looking for Tyner’s approach on super-conventional harmony. It’s still heavily rooted in speedy technique and pentatonics.
Grandfather’s Waltz – Bill Evans
from But Beautiful, a live album recorded in 1974 with Stan Getz. This solo is jammed with the classic Bill Evans vocabulary that I love, and it’s quite a composition in it’s own right.
Grandfather’s Waltz – Bill Evans
Updates:
Here is a subsequent post analyzing the form of this tune
And here is the transcribed track, via Youtube:
With a Song In My Heart – Sonny Clark
From the Great sextet album Sonny’s Crib, with Coltrane, Don Byrd, Curtis Fuller, Paul Chambers and Art Taylor. A great snapshot of the patterns Sonny could play at a blistering tempo!
With a Song In My Heart – Sonny Clark
Unit Seven – Wynton Kelley
From Smokin’ at the Half Note (1965 with Wes Montgomery, Paul Chambers & Jimmy Cobb)
How My Heart Sings – Bill Evans
from Getting Sentimental (1978 – live at the Vanguard with Philly Joe Jones on drums and Michael Moore on bass). My favorite chromatic 3-6-2-5 run comes from this solo.
How My Heart Sings – Bill Evans
Night and Day – Bill Evans
This is From the Stan Getz & Bill Evans album (1964 – with Getz on tenor, Ron Carter on bass and Elvin Jones on drums). I love the 8 bar tacit solo breaks in this arrangement. This was my first serious transcription attempt, and I should go back and get the second chorus and some of the harmony.
The Complete Bill Evans on Verve box set includes a lot of outtakes from this album, including one or two where Bill stops in frustration on a tacit solo section. There are other delightful moments from the recording of this album, like when Stan Getz starts playing Dark Eyes, and Bill comes in with a honky-tonk stride piano part. This is the only recorded example I know of where Bill Evans plays stride piano.
My Funny Valentine – Bill Evans
From Undercurrent, the great duo album by Bill Evans and Jim Hall. Here are the piano solos from the primary and alternate takes
My Funny Valentine – Bill Evans
My Funny Valentine (alt take) – Bill Evans