Billboard : 03/02/1957
Spotlight on… selection

Evans, a young pianist, makes an auspicious solo debut. He has his own distinctive modern style, playing long, logical and appealing lines that won’t scare off less hip listeners. He displays extremely good taste and he swings. This is the type of talent, well-grounded technically and in the dominant jazz piano styles, that should grow and grow. As is, he has turned out a most satisfying LP which deserves to be demonstrated by dealers and deejays. Try Conception or Easy Living.

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American Record Guide
Martin Williams : September, 1958

This is a belated report. The record—a solo and trio piano recital—is by now many months old. In all there are eleven numbers, three of them brief, out-of-tempo things that don’t seem to have much point. Of the others, it is a great pleasure to report on a “new” jazzman who has largely absorbed his influences and not only made a style that is homogeneous but which also often shows a real originality in harmony, line and rhythm, a meaningful variety in touch and dynamics, and a flexibility that suggests that the possibilities for further development are there.

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American Record Guide
Joe Goldberg : 02/1960

Review of New Jazz Conceptions, Riverside RLP 12-223

Everybody Digs Bill Evans, Riverside RLP 12-291

The Ivory Hunters. United Artists UAL-3044

Evans is possessed of such consummate musicianship that anything short of complete acceptance might well be considered, with more than the usual justice, the failure of the reviewer rather than the musician. For that reason, and because the reservation is a purely subjective one, I will leave the quibbling till the last.

The best of these albums is the one called Everybody Digs Bill Evans. It is noteworthy, in a branch of music that consistently over-records young claimants to whatever thrones are available, that Evans recorded his first LP as leader (New Jazz Conceptions) in September, 1956, and waited until December, 1958 for his second. He felt, during the intervening 27 months, that he did not have sufficiently new things to say to warrant recording forty minutes worth of music.

While the first album is far beyond the capacity of most pianists whose debut records you have heard, the growth in two years is astounding. Evans was well on his way to becoming an original the first time out, by 1958 he had definitely made it. He had worked with Miles Davis during those two years, an experience that has matured, as well as brought to a public notice that might otherwise have been longer in coming, many of today’s top-rank jazz musicians.

The Ivory Hunters album is a two-piano set made with Bob Brookmeyer, and while another solo album might have been preferable, it shows Evans in the light of soloist as well as unusually empathetic sideman.

What makes Evans so unusual? First of all, he has an almost unparalleled virtuosity on his instrument, one that he keeps constantly in the service of his musical thought, never employing it for its own sake. In the exchanges with the rhythm section at the end of Night and Day, for instance, on RLP 12-291, he plays unaccompanied runs, both linear and chordal, that would be outside the range of most pianists, but these are not indulged in for their own sake. Elsewhere in the same album, on an original composition Peace Piece, which is the gem of all these sets, he essays a piece of French Impressionism, somewhat reminiscent of Debussy’s The Engulfed Cathedral. Some might be tempted to say it is not jazz, but in at least one sense it is: it is pure improvisation. In an interview with Nat Hentoff in The Jazz Review, Evans said:

“It’s completely free form. I just had one figure that gave the piece a tonal reference and a rhythmic reference. Thereafter, everything could happen over that one solid thing. Except for that bass figure, it was complete improvisation. We did it in two takes. Because it was totally improvised, I so far haven’t been able to do it again when I’ve been asked for it in clubs.”

Considering this, the stature of the piece, when compared with some work of the French composers, is nothing short of amazing.

Evans is very much his own man. His originals, the choice of his tunes, and the manner in which he plays them, show that he is making his decisions for himself. He has a magnificent touch and a sense of harmony that will enable him to produce Peace Piece, and rhythmic mastery that is responsible for such a solo as the one on George Russell’s All About Rosie, on Columbia WL-127. The audible influences are not the usual ones: beside the French composers, you can hear Lennie Tristano, and only the English pastoral composers could be the inspiration for such an exquisite cameo as Epilogue, on RLP 12-291.

After these encomiums, the reservation. Evans is always in the service of music, but only rarely, I think, in the service of himself. One searches in vain except for, perhaps, his last phrase before the entrance of the rhythm section on The Man I Love, in the Ivory Hunters album (when he suddenly weds the Gershwin of the larger works to the composer of the popular songs) for the inner depths of a man that forces music out of him, music that will strike the depths of a listener in a way that makes all the theorizing about music mere academic chatter. 

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Army Times
Tom Scanlan : 04/06/1957

I enjoyed this record much more than any of the others listed here. His long lines on Easy Living, especially, impressed me greatly. Evans has a good deal of refreshing originality despite the restrictions of the modern piano style. A pretty original called Debby’s Waltz is included along with a simple, moving treatment of My Romance, a wonderful … song. Evans has been influenced by Bud Powell and Horace Silver. This is his first LP. Let’s hope a second one is on the way soon.

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Audio
Charles A. Robertson : May, 1957

Bill Evans, a 28-year-old pianist from Plainfield, NJ and the Mannes School of Music, has been working in the Tony Scott quartet for the past year. In his fist LP he closely resembles the clarinetist-leader in his ability to give maturity to modern jazz ideas while maintaining an individual voice. Rather than use his musical vocabulary as a based for improvisation, he applies it to throwing fresh light on standards, constructing long melodic lines in his originals and recasting the bop tunes Our Delight and Conception in new perspective.

He is joined by Paul Motian, drums, also a member of the quartet, and Teddy Kotick, bass, in eight numbers. Evans plays three solos and contributes four originals, from the stimulating uptempo Five and Displacement, the too brief Waltz for Debby, to the impressionistic blues No Cover. Clear piano sound by Reeves Studios, but more dynamics from the drums.

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Hammond Vindicator (Hammond, LA) : 09/19/1957
Musical Fame Comes to S.L.C. Graduate

Musical fame has come to a Southeastern College graduate.

He is Bill Evans, a ’50 music school graduate, who recently release a record album, New Jazz Conceptions.

On the Riverside label, the album features several selections composed by the Southeastern graduate. These include Waltz for Debby, written for the young daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Harry Evans of Baton Rouge. Mrs. Evans is better known as Miss Pat, who conducts the award-winning “Romper Room” program over WBRZ-TV.

Critics have praised Evans’ album, pointing out that “he can safely be judged on his merits as of ‘right now’ and is surely destined to be a jazz artist of steadily growing stature.”

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Hartford Courant (Hartford, CT)
Jac Miller : 03/24/1957

Bill Evans is a piano man who has a Riverside LP called New Jazz Conception. The recording is certainly very new, although the conception is one that has been bandied about for quite a few years now, especially on the West Coast. Teddy Kotick’s bass (Teddy Charles’ sideman on Atlantic) and Paul Motian’s drums are saving factors. Motian is an earthy yet imaginative drummer and picks up the trio when Evans goes too far afield with his variations.

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Metronome
Jack Maher : May, 1957

Although Bill Evans (a pianist just gaining recognition through his work with Tony Scott’s Quartet), most certainly belongs to the Horace Silver-out-of-Bud Powell school of pianists, there is something more: it is an element of imagination within his concept. On this, his first release, Bill uses his right hand with sureness and good feeling. Especially on Five, Conception and Displacement he has deft approach and the ability to do odd, strong and stimulating things rhythmically against the consistent time of the rhythm section. Throughout his soloing you get the feeling of twisting and turning. Solo piano ballads: Got It Bad, Debbie and Romance, show another turn; a slight over-embellishment—a particular trap that many pianists fall into—but warmth and, especially on Debbie simplicity.

Well worth hearing—this pianist has imagination, solidity and technical prowess.

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San Antonio Light (San Antonio, TX)
Renwicke Cary : 02/24/1957

Another Riverside release (a single 12-inch disc) presents Bill Evans, an important jazz pianist, in New Jazz Conceptions. This is a collection of 11 standards and originals – three times for unaccompanied piano, the others with Teddy Kotick (bass) and Paul Motian (drums). Evans is an articulate artist who likes to embark upon long melodic lines, always with an eye to new jazz patterns.

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San Francisco Chronicle (San Francisco, CA)
Ralph J. Gleason : 07/21/1957

For some unaccountable reason I have missed this LP until lately. Evans is a really excellent pianist with a sharp, brittle, provocative style that has elements of Monk in it but seems to me to have the advantage of more innate ability play the piano, if not the soul that comes through in Monk’s playing. It is one of the most unusual and intriguing piano LPs of the year and I think that Evans is going to be a jazz man who will make his mark in the music. Highly recommended.

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Saturday Review
Whitney Balliett : 03/16/1957

Evans is a twenty-eight-year-old pianist from New Jersey, and this is a fairly impressive recording debut. He has a competent technique (that is marred, however, by a careless touch and no sense of dynamics), a ready flow of ideas that moves along in Tristano-Powell-Silver channels, and fortunately, far less brittleness than is the mark of many modern pianists. He is at his best here on a long, slow blues, in addition to which there are seven standards, and three originals. On all but three sides he is accompanied by T. Kotick and Paul Motian, a Roach-inclined drummer who has considerable power and little taste. The now fairly common practice among drummers of double-timing accompaniment on a slow tempo, which Motian does here on the blues, is distracting, and gives a nervous air to what otherwise might have flowed like wine.

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Virginian-Pilot (Norfolk, VA)
Robert C. Smith : 03/24/1957

Pianist Bill Evans, who appeared in Norfolk with Tony Scott’s group, is beginning to live up to the promise he showed. The young innovator has a New Jazz Conceptions album for Riverside which is one of the best trio sets of the year. His compositions, Five and Displacement, are thoughtful and sensible and his playing exciting. Teddy Kotick and Paul Motian assist.

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Washington Post (Washington, DC)
Paul Sampson : 03/17/1957

A striking solo debut by a pianist with a fresh sound and talent for extended variations. Even when playing a fast piece like Conception, Evans maintains a full-bodied sound and never becomes merely percussive. His originals, notably No Cover, No Minimum, are much better than average. Clean, well-balanced sound. Heartily recommended.

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Down Beat : 03/21/1957
Nat Hentoff : 4.5 stars

This is an important first-LP-as-leader, and on any count, is one of the more creative modern jazz piano albums in a number of months. Evans, 28, has been working with Tony Scott during the last year. By signing him, Riverside displays the small label astuteness that the larger companies so often lack.

His influences are horns (Bird, Dizzy, Miles and Getz) as well as pianists (Nat Cole, Bud, the Tristano-Konitz school, Silver). His approach, however, is determinedly individual, and he is a strong example of a man who has absorbed his influences to release his own voice.

The program is unusually well balanced and variegated, illuminating thereby the range of Evans’ abilities. He can cast standards into new, refreshing perspective; he can do the same for such modern jazz manifestos as Conception and Our Delight.

He can build his own intense, incisive originals, and within them, he ranges from the crackling fire of Five and Displacement to the momentary but nonetheless memorable lovestrong Waltz, and finally to be the blues-virile, funky No Cover, the most satisfying track on the LP. Kotick has a fine solo on it, too. Note also the fresh reflectiveness in Easy Living.

As Orrin Keepnews notes, Evans like to use “long melodic lines… Basically, he phrases more like a horn man.” But he does have a pianist’s feeling for and knowledge of his instrument. He can be percussive without distorting the piano sound, and his technique is clean and clear. He also swings deeply. Good support from Kotick and Motian. Evans is not only a pianist who should become a major contributor; he already has arrived as a man to dig now.

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Liner Notes by Orrin Keepnews

Followers of the current course of jazz hardly need be told that a substantial number of albums these days are being devoted to the work of new talents. On the whole (although there are cases where young musicians seem to have been pushed into the spotlight a bit too soon), most of these debuts seem legitimate signs of a highly productive jazz period, not just an artificial flurry built up by over-eager record companies. However, this emphasis on presenting newcomers does have its drawbacks: for one thing, it seems almost standard form to claim that every one of them is blazing a new trail; and, rather paradoxically, it is also customary to suggest that the performer be judged with special leniency – less on the basis of what he has to offer right now than on what he’s likely to produce at some slightly later date.

But Bill Evans, the somewhat shy and studious looking young pianist being introduced here, does not stand in need of any such straining or near-apologizing on our part. While we happen to feel that Evans is surely destined to be a jazz artist of steadily growing stature, there is no point in referring to him here primarily as showing “promise.” He can safely be judged on his merits as of right now. For this first LP offers ample specific evidence that Bill has truly original contributions to make and that he already possesses a considerable degree of maturity, in terms both of technique and of the quality of his jazz ideas.

More than a few top musicians already are part of an intense Evans rooting section – and perhaps the most impressive aspect of this is that the list is by no means limited to men whose jazz approach is precisely the same as Bill’s. He was first brought to Riverside’s attention by Mundell Lowe, who insisted that this was someone special. Don Elliott and Vinnie Burke, who have known Bill since his ‘teens, are among others who are outspoken in their enthusiasm; and another is Tony Scott, in whose Quartet Evans has been working since the late Spring of ’56.

The most strikingly new element in Evans’ piano style lies in his use of extremely long melodic lines; his choruses are constructed in longer, more sustained units than is the case with almost any other pianist who comes to mind. Basically, he phrases more like a horn man than a pianist. This, in a jazz era in which so many other instruments (notably the piano’s rhythm-section mates: bass, drums, guitar) have been freed from what were once their ‘normal’ limitations, seems a logical and intriguing avenue of development. For Evans, this is apparently an inevitable path; he notes that he has always tended to look to horn players for “melodic feeling, and also for a feeling of structure,” paying particular attention to Charlie Parker and to Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, Stan Getz.

Bill has been involved with music for just about all his life. He was born in August, 1929, in Plainfield, NJ; there were no professionals in his family, but there was an appreciation of music that led to early piano lessons for Bill (he also studied violin and flute, and still works at the latter). His very first job came in his early ‘teens, when he filled in with a young local group whose piano player had come down with the measles! At about 16, he and an older brother (who has also become a jazz pianist, and teaches music as well) had their own band – Don Elliott played with them at times. Then there was the usual series of local dances-and-weddings jobs that threw him in with pros from whom he absorbed basic jazz chord patterns. Private study continued during his period. Later, while earning a degree at Southeastern Louisiana College, he met Mundell Lowe in nearby New Orleans. Summer jobs with Lowe and bassist Red Mitchell introduced him into the jazz scene; in the Summer of 1950 he went with the Herbie Fields band for six months, before beginning a three-year Army hitch. Out of service in January, 1954, he spent some time at home, then joined Jerry Wald. He left that band in May, 1955, to study in New York (at the Mannes School of Music) for about a year before plunging fully into the jazz-for-a-living world with Tony Scott.

In addition to the previously-noted horn players, Evans points to Nat King Cole as an early influence, then to Bud Powell (whom he recalls first being aware of on the mid-’40s Dexter Gordon sides), then the Lee Konitz – Lennie Tristano school (“for structure and design”), and more recently Horace Silver. But although he feels he can find something of value in almost everyone he hears, Evans happens to have some very strong and well-taken points to make on the whole subject of “influences.” Too many young musicians, he feels, merely try to find the man they want to follow, and then proceed to try to be exactly like him – not just musically, but even by seeking to “live the same life.” But, not having really developed as themselves, such men are apt to be severely handicapped: having little or no “musical vocabulary for expressing their own personality,” they are forced to rely on “someone else’s vocabulary,” making them much more likely to become imitators than creators. “I don’t mean to seem to be lecturing on this subject,” Bill notes. “It’s a problem I’m certainly still wrestling with to an extent. But I happen to feel very strongly about this matter of being equipped, musically, to speak for yourself.”

This album should make it clear that Bill Evans has his own, distinctive voice. It took some time for us to convince him that he was ready to record (which is decidedly the reverse of the usual situation). Then he picked two skilled, sympathetic collaborators – Teddy Kotick has played with Parker, Getz, George Wallington and many others; Paul Motian, whose work has drawn highly favorable comment from Max Roach, has been with Evans in the Jerry Wald band and in the current Tony Scott group – and embarked on the varied program heard here. Included are imaginative variations on standards like Speak Low and I Love You; some intriguing originals; sensitive ballad treatments of Easy Living and of three brief, unaccompanied numbers; and the particularly challenging transfer into trio form of two early-bop band standards – Our Delight and Conception. Not an easy set of tasks; but, I think you’ll agree, highly and non-routinely rewarding.