Audio
Charles A. Robertson : March, 1957

On the scene as a pianist since the end of his Army service in 1944, thirty-three-year old William “Red” Garland is currently with the Miles Davis Quintet. In his first LP he shows a pleasant touch in six standards, including Little Girl Blue, Making Whoopee, A Foggy Day, and September in the Rain.

He gives credit to Nat Cole, Art Tatum, and Bud Powell as models who shaped his style. The know-alls will expend more effort in trying to distinguish these influences than in listening for Garland. It is not until the last two tracks that his real strength emerges undiluted. He is magnificent in Constellation, and Blue Red, an original blues theme, shows what he can do on his own. It is this vein he should exploit in the future.

Paul Chambers, bass, has been his section mate in the quintet and gives better support than a pianist should expect. Art Taylor is an able drummer and his one solo is well spotted in Constellation. Recording is by Rudy Van Gelder.

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Billboard : 01/19/1957
Score of 76

Red Garland is a piano player who has been around a long time, but only recently in his work with the Miles Davis quintet, has he been getting some of the recognition due him. Here in his first starring LP, he makes a deep impression with his warmth, taste and sincerity. He has a fast single-note right hand attack that shows the Bud Powell influence, style that is well applied in some of the ballads here. The assistance of Paul Chambers on bass and Art Taylor on drums is of such a distinguished order that it calls for almost as much comment as Garland’s work.

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High Fidelity : February 1957

There was a time when cocktail pianists were salting their styles with a few jazz tricks but now the trend is going into reverse. Jazz pianists are sounding more and more like dressed-up cocktail pianists. There are, fortunately, occasional exceptions such as Red Garland, a light-fingered, swinging pianist who gets extremely good rhythm support from bassist Paul Chambers and drummer Art Taylor.

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Oakland Tribune
Russ Wilson : 04/21/1957

A Garland of Red affords some overdue recognition to Red Garland, the pianist with Miles Davis‘s Quintet. Garland displays both his single-note style, which he uses most of the time, and his two-handed attack, He gets excellent collaboration from bassist Paul Chambers and drummer Art Taylor.

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San Francisco Chronicle
Ralph J. Gleason : 11/12/1957

Just about the last thing you would expect a boxer to end up as, especially if you’re a follower of Dan Parker and A.J. Liebling’s riotous reportage of that sport, is a piano player.

Yet William (Red) Garland of Dallas, Texas, did exactly that. His interest in music, however, was stronger than his interest in fighting. He is reputed to have once shared a ring with Sugar Ray Robinson. What this may have had to do with his decision to keep his hands on the keyboard and out of 8 ounce Everlasts is not known.

A couple of years ago, Garland was relatively unknown as a musician. True, he had worked with Hot Lips Page, Coleman Hawkins and other groups but he hadn’t attracted any attention from the jazz public. Then Garland joined the Miles Davis Quintet and was featured on a number of Prestige and Columbia LPs on which his fluid, warm, romantic yet strongly swinging style won him an immediate audience.

This pas year, Garland had two LPs released on Prestige. They were made under his own leadership and present him playing piano with accompaniment by Paul Chambers; his bass playing sidekick from the Davis group, and drummer Art Taylor. (Philly Joe Jones, who drummed with Garland in the Davis Quintet was supposed to make the dates but overslept!)

Both of these LPs are among the best piano albums of the year. I have become increasingly fond of the first one, A Garland of Red not only for the delightfully mellow way Garland plays ballads, but also for his deeply rooted, natural sounding approach to the blues in a song called Blue Red.

I have only recently come into the possession of the second Garland LP, although it has been out for some time. It’s called Red Garland’s Piano and like the first Garland LP, it has eight tunes. One of them, again, is a particularly rewarding blues, Please Send Me Someone to Love.

Describing Garland’s piano style is rather difficult. He sounds like a solid mixture of Bud Powell, Nat Cole and Erroll Garner. From Powell he has learned how to create swiftly flowing long lines of improvisation. From Cole he has learned the trick of thinking in phrases long enough to give his improvisation a singing quality as well as a type of swinging rhythm that is reminiscent of a series of waves lapping a beach. From Garner (and from Milt Buckner, too) he has picked up the locked-hands style in which he plays whole choruses with full chords periodically throughout his playing. Garland is a particularly restful pianist to listen to: you can play his albums by the hour all day long and they never bore you. It must be said that Chambers is a great asset on these albums, he fits Garland’s style like a glove.

I suspect that Red Garland is about to become the important new pianist in jazz.

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Saturday Review
Wilder Hobson : 01/26/1957

To return to jazz and the subject of tension. There is very little of the latter to be found in A Garland of Red, in which the pianist Red Garland, whom I have previously admired with the Miles Davis band, is joined by Paul Chambers, bass, and Art Taylor, drums. With a warmly lyrical modern style, combining single finger and chordal inventions, Garland obviously feels that the piano was made for love. His numbers vary from a rapid Constellation to a lingering My Romance and an early morning Blue Red. Meanwhile Chambers, on the bass, performs some of his delicately bowed solos which, as a musician friend of mine suggests, remind one of a quietly comic and sardonic monologue. In this disc we are back with the poetic jazz which is hard to find in the age of anxiety.

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Down Beat Review : 02/20/1957
Nat Hentoff : 3.5 stars

Garland, who has been with the Miles Davis quintet for over a year, previously worked with Hot Lips Page, Billy Eckstine, Parker-Davis, Coleman Hawkins–Roy Eldridge, etc. On this set, he is at his best on medium-up and up-tempos whereon his fluent and fluid technique is occasionally translated into moments of elated vitality, although in no intently personalized direction. He is less successful on ballads. Both Romance and Little Girl Blue open and close with large chunks of static minimum momentum although the middle, more flowing sections in both are attractive. Whoopee is rather stolid.

Red has a pleasant track in the easy-rolling but root-sure Blue Red (dig the full-toned, blues-building solo by Paul Chambers that opens the number which begins a cappella and then is joined successively by Art and Red). Red’s blues therein is an enjoyable if not strikingly individual combination of gentleness and funk. It is Chambers who is the outstanding soloist on the LP, playing remarkably, pizzicato and arco. Art Taylor is a fine, sturdy support.


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Liner Notes by Ira Gitler

The word garland immediately brings to mind a string or wreath beautiful flowers. It also represents a collection of short literary pieces usually consisting of poems and ballads. Without considering it a semantic license, I believe I can assume that garland applies in the same sense to this collection of short musical pieces consisting o! standards (ballad tempo and above), a blues and an original. In this collection, however, there are two garlands, the one being presented and the one who presents it.

William McKinley “Red” Garland was born in Dallas, Texas on May 13, 1923. His musical career did not begin until high school when his father bought him a clarinet. During 1939-40 he proceeded to study with Prof. A.S. Jackson.

The period of 1940-43 found Red making one switch in the musical field and also entering another area of endeavor. The switch was to the alto saxophone under the tutelage of Prof. Buster Smith, the man who has been suggested as one of Charlie Parker’s early influences. Red says him, “He was like a Tatum of the alto.”

The new area was the squared area of the professional prize-fight ring. In three years Red had 35 fights as a lightweight in California, Chicago and Detroit among other places. Then Army service interrupted his boxing career but opened a new avenue of expression in music to him. He did box an exhibition with Ray Robinson at the Army Camp when no one else was available or would volunteer. Red escaped unhurt (he says it was due to the heavy gloves) and with considerable new prestige around the post but by this time he had become more absorbed with other things. He had been playing alto in the Army band but through Lee Barnes, the pianist with the band, he became interested in the keyboard and its manifold possibilities. This was in 1943-44 and with Barnes he began to study the newly found instrument which was to become his permanent medium of expression.

In 1944 Red was discharged from the Army and began his professional career with Hot Lips Page‘s band. He stayed with Lips through 1945 and then migrated from the Southwest to Philadelphia where he joined the Billy Eckstine orchestra. With Billy during 1946 he met with many of the key figures in the insurgent bop movement including his present leader, Miles Davis. After leaving Eckstine, Red furthered his acquaintanceship with many of them in his role of house pianist at Philadelphia’s Downbeat Club where from 1947-49 he backed such diverse tandems as Charlie Parker-Miles Davis, Fats Navarro–Eddie Davis and Flip Phillips–Bill Harris.

In the later part of 1949 Red left Philly to tour with Coleman Hawkins and Roy Eldridge and remained with their group through 1950. During 1951-52 he was back in Philly doing a single but in 1953 rejoined Hawkins who then had a quartet.

Boston enjoyed Red’s music in 1954 as he fronted his own trio at such clubs as Wally’s, The Hi Hat, and Storyville.

The most recent phase of his career is probably the one more familiar to most listeners and that is the important role he has been filling with the Miles Davis quintet such its formation in the latter part of 1955. By his own admission, he has learned a lot since joining the group and gives Miles much credit.

When I asked Red about influences and favorites three names, Nat Cole, Art Tatum and Bud Powell came to the fore.

He started listening to Nat (know at that time as King Cole when he first became interested in the piano during his Army days. “I used to copy Nat’s solos note for note”, remembers Red.

Tatum first entered his ears through the efforts of a friend shortly after Red’s discharge. “My friend played Tatum’s record of Tiger Rag for me and fell on the floor laughing when I asked him who the piano players were. I thought it was four or five cats.”

Re: Powell “Miles brought me over from Philly to New York just to hear Bud. That was about 1947. Bud was something else.”

Powell, it seems, made the greatest impression on Red’s playing as you will hear, but even in that segment of his style it is far from a copy of Bud (and who could really copy the Powell of the Forties) but rather a personal expression of that idiom. Cole is there in the touch and is paralleled in the ability to choose phrases and not just notes. Red feels that instead of just running a lot of notes, choosing certain phrases is inherently tastier and leads to greater swing. You will hear a lot of notes on Charlie Parker’s Constellation but they are consistent with the up tempo.

Apart from his single-note right hand attack Red also exhibits a locked hands chord style which he stumbled on one day while trying to phrase a certain idea. Becoming frustrated, he dropped his hands on the keyboard in despair and they fell into place to produce a sound he instantly like. Since that time his playing has become a happy amalgam of the two styles.

The garland of Red is a well chosen, well wrought collection. The moods range from a sprightly, not unhappy Foggy Day (note Art Taylor’s brushwork), to a romantic My Romance (up to and including Red’s quote of Isn’t It Romantic?, a laconic, bluesy-grooved Makin’ Whoopee, a dodging between the raindrops September In The Rain, a dreamy Little Girl Blue, a swinging thing that is What Is This Thing Called Love?, a swift, high cruising Constellation and the basic Blue Red. On the latter you hear a modern jazzman with roots whose experience goes back before the evolution at Minton’s and although healthily modern within the developments since then, still retains the spirit of the immediately earlier period.

The rhythmic support is one of the finest with Paul Chambers and Art Taylor combining with Red as if they had been together for a year rather than a day. Chambers, who of course as Red’s section mate in the Miles Davis quintet’s rhythm department had been with him more than a day, contributed bowed and plucked solos throughout which are among the most highly articulate bass statements of the day. His backing cannot be overlooked either. Taylor, whose rapid development into a top drummer in the past two years certainly rates him the often misapplied title of new star, offers superb support too. An ever facile soloist, he displays his wares in a solo on Constellation and the exchange of “fours” on What Is This Thing.