After the Verve years, Evans settled into a more stable trio, with Eddie Gomez on bass for a solid eight years. His drummer from 1975 until 1978 was Eliot Zigmund. This trio recorded one of his finest albums, You Must Believe In Spring, in August of 1977 at Capitol Studio, with Al Schmidt at the controls. Capitol Studios’ sound is known to any record collector as the place where Nat King Cole and Frank Sinatra recorded, but it had fallen out of favor during the pop era. Kevin Gray’s remastering of this Warner Brothers recording for Craft Recordings’ new 45 RPM two record set shows the great studio in all its glory. One of Evans’ most introspective sessions is bathed in a more romantic, lush sound than the up-close hard edges of Van Gelder studios. The Johnny Mandel hit ‘Suicide is Painless’ from the 1970 movie Mash is given an entire side here and it is as good musically and sonically as anything recorded by Evans.
Branching out beyond these classics, avid collectors will pick up some of the Resonance Records titles. Resonance Records came out of nowhere in 2008 and specializes in mining nooks and crannies, releasing hitherto unheard performances discovered in someone’s archive. Over a half dozen Evans titles have been released, but the initial vinyl runs disappear quickly leaving the not so fleet of foot to settle for CD copies. Frequent record stores and you are likely to find the occasional Fantasy, Milestone, or Warner Brothers title for small change—transactions you cannot lose on.
Everything mentioned is worth the effort and expense involved. But what constitutes the crème de la crème — the five essential Bill Evans albums? I’ve already tipped my hat on the top three. But when it comes to SAVV and Waltz For Debby there are no current releases that can be recommended. Used copies of the Analogue Productions issues are not inexpensive, but they are a lot less than originals and they are well mastered. The Mobile Fidelity SAVV is one of the few One-Step releases that may be all analogue, so it will probably be expensive and hard to find. The One Step Portrait In Jazz, on the other hand, had a DSD stage in its mastering process. Lots of copies were sold to collectors who did not know about the indifferent recording quality and probably bought it to flip it and make a profit. There are lots of copies for sale and this disc can probably be found for its original purchase price.
For spot number four, the wonderfully recorded and played You Must Believe In Spring gives us one essential album that is both a current release and widely available. Craft Recordings has made some missteps in the past, most notably a horrible sounding Sonny Rollins Way Out West, but they have learned from their mistakes and scored a big success with this reissue.
My fifth spot on the list of essential Bill Evans albums goes to a Fantasy Records recording that I haven’t mentioned so far and which has been hard to find for quite a while. Who does not love The Tony Bennett Bill Evans Album? Mobile Fidelity re-issued the disc back in 1984, and Analogue Productions did an even better job in 2006, but otherwise your best hope is to find is an OJC issue, although pressing problems seem to make acceptable copies scarce. This will certainly be reissued—someday. The Fantasy catalog now belongs to Concord Records, and Craft Recordings is that label’s premium re-issue label so you’d think that this disc must certainly be in their schedule.
