Digging Peace Man

I remember as a kid in the sixties watching Jazz 625 on tv and being fascinated by the extreme playing posture adopted by pianist Bill Evans; one that made Glenn Gould look the epitome of convention. Now I finally have a disk of his, Everybody Digs Bill Evans. It's an original album with one bonus track rather than any best of compilation but I think it adequately distils Evans's work and it contains one particular track I have long coveted. It is a piano trio album with just a couple of solo piano tracks and the accompaniment from Sam Jones on bass and in particular Philly Joe Jones on drums is exemplary. The artistic drive is very much that of Bill Evans though. The vehicles for the trio workouts are mainly either compositions by post boppers such as Gigi Gryce and Sonny Rollins or standards such as Tenderly, Night and Day and Young and Foolish. Very much the playboy manifestation of what it was to be hip in the late fifties and early sixties. That one track which was the motivation for me getting this disk and no other by Evans is the remarkable solo tune that he wrote himself, Peace Piece. Peace as in calm and quiet, peace as in the opposite of war, peace as a forshadowing of "peace and love man." It is a Satie like concoction, in no way a virtuosic show off piece but creating a little nugget like gem where time is stopped and the world seems a better place. The bonus track, Some Other Time, almost replicates the mood and for once it is a bonus that adds something to the original vinyl album.