Jazz Piano. - sound recording reviews

National Review, Nov 24, 1989 by Ralph De Toledano

Jazz Piano

Jazz piano came in strongly with ragtime, had a separate jazz existence, and then merged with the jazz bands which germinated in New Orleans and then moved up the Mississippi to Chicago and the country at large. The importance of the piano in jazz is demonstrated in Jazz Piano, collected by the Smithsonian's resident jazz scholar and critic, Martin Williams (Smithsonian Recordings, Dept. JP, P.O. Box 23345, Washington, D.C. 20026). On four CDs (or six LPs or four cassettes) you can revisit jazz as it was played by Jelly Roll Morton in the early 1920s and follow it through to the present. The power, scope, and versatility of the piano as jazz instrument are laid before us by Fats Waller, the Mozartian Teddy Wilson, James P. Johnson, the magnificent Art Tatum, the boogie-woogie pianist Meade Lux Lewis, Mary Lou Williams of the Andy Kirk band, Earl Hines (who was influenced by and influenced the young Louis Armstrong), and others.