Currently listening: Bill Evans, The Complete Village Vanguard Recordings, 1961 (Live) ♫. Of the many glorious performances on this record, perhaps the most glorious is “I Loves You, Porgy.” Heartbreakingly beautiful … and all the time the tiny audience is chattering away in the background. I don’t blame them — there was no way for them to know that one of the definitive recordings in jazz history was being made right before them — but I just want to teleport into the room to scream “SHUT UUUUUUPPPP.”
After you listen to “I Loves You, Porgy” a few times, go back one more time and listen just to the bassist, Scott LaFaro. He was a great genius, and would die in a car accident eleven days later, at the age of twenty-five.