There are a few anomalies which bear mentioning. In between my other obligations, I finished the right hand in March, and after quite a bit of close listening I was able to figure out most of Bley's left hand. The live set contains a version of 'All The Things You Are' with a solo by Paul Bley that is at least as mind-bending as the studio version. Thanks to Kevin Sun for sharing his transcription of this remarkable solo.Ī little bit later, I found Together At Newport, a quasi-legitimate European release that documents a live performance with the same quintet (with Henry Grimes playing bass instead of Bob Cranshaw). In my years of listening to him and trying to play like him, I had never heard his solo on 'All The Things You Are' ( Sonny Meets Hawk).

Yet with all this early influence, I'm a little embarrassed to admit that it was just last year that I learned Bley had recorded briefly with Sonny Rollins. He had and continues to have a huge influence on my playing. Some of Carla's tunes appeared on the record, so I bought it, and my life began to change.īased on his recordings, I transcribed his versions of Annette Peacock's 'Cartoon' and 'Touching', and learned to play Carla Bley's 'Vashkar', 'Syndrome', and 'Jesus Maria', as well as Paul's solo on 'When Will The Blues Leave' (Footloose! 1962). (This was probably in 1999.) It was a double-LP on Arista called 'Copenhagen and Haarlem', which came out in 1975 but was a reissue of two dates recorded a decade earlier.

I wanted to hear how these tunes sounded, so I went searching for recordings of them, and I came across a Paul Bley record at Wazoo in Ann Arbor. They all seemed to be written by Carla Bley. After buying my first Real Book I was intrigued by the tunes without barlines. Paul Bley was one of my earliest influences as a pianist.

Bill evans all of you transcription