Bill Evans/Jim Hall: Undercurrent [JACKPOT]

Why you'll love it

Kevin Gray cut this all-analog (AAA) Jackpot reissue from the original master tapes, and it comes in a gatefold jacket. It's the album that brought Evans back as a leader in 1962, paired with Jim Hall for six duets that set the standard for piano and guitar.

This edition

• Cut from the original analog master tapes
• All analog (AAA)
• Mastered by Kevin Gray
• Gatefold jacket
• Stereo mix

About the album

Piano and guitar are both chord instruments, which on paper makes a duet between them a recipe for two people talking at once. Evans biographer Peter Pettinger put it best: Evans and Hall had the intelligence and mutual awareness to avoid the snare, and both knew the value of space. Undercurrent is the proof, recorded in April and May 1962 with Alan Douglas producing.

It opens with "My Funny Valentine," usually a slow ballad, here the one up-tempo romp on the album (and the last thing they recorded). "Skating in Central Park" comes from John Lewis's score for Odds Against Tomorrow, which both men had played on, "Romain" is Hall's own tune, and "I Hear a Rhapsody," "Dream Gypsy" and "Darn That Dream" are given all the patience in the world.

The cover photograph, Toni Frissell's Weeki Wachee Spring, Florida, is one of the most striking images in jazz, and the music matches it for calm. Two masters, no drums, no bass and nobody in a hurry; it's the most polite argument ever put on tape.

Also at Kops: more Bill Evans on vinyl · browse Classic Jazz

Tracklist

Listen

On Jackpot Records / United Artists Jazz (cat# JPR 107), a reissue of the 1962 album.