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All Music Guide:
One of the giants of the jazz piano, Bud Powell changed the way that virtually all post-swing pianists play their instruments. He did away with the left-hand striding that had been considered essential earlier and used his left hand to state chords on an irregular basis. His right often played speedy single-note lines, essentially transforming Charlie Parker's vocabulary to the piano (although he developed parallel to "Bird").
Tragically, Bud Powell was a seriously ill genius. After being encouraged and tutored to an extent by his friend Thelonious Monk at jam sessions in the early '40s, Powell was with Cootie Williams' orchestra during 1943-1945. In a racial incident, he was beaten on the head by police; Powell never fully recovered and would suffer from bad headaches and mental breakdowns throughout the remainder of his life. Despite this, he recorded some true gems during 1947-1951 for Roost, Blue Note, and Verve, composing such major works as "Dance of the Infidels," "Hallucinations" (also known as "Budo"), "Un Poco Loco," "Bouncing with Bud," and "Tempus Fugit." Even early on, his erratic behavior resulted in lost opportunities (Charlie Parker supposedly told Miles Davis that he would not hire Powell because "he's even crazier than me!"), but Powell's playing during this period was often miraculous.
A breakdown in 1951 and hospitalization that resulted in electroshock treatments weakened him, but Powell was still capable of playing at his best now and then, most notably at the 1953 Massey Hall Concert. Generally in the 1950s his Blue Notes find him in excellent form, while he is much more erratic on his Verve recordings. His warm welcome and lengthy stay in Paris (1959-1964) extended his life a bit, but even here Powell spent part of 1962-1963 in the hospital. He returned to New York in 1964, disappeared after a few concerts, and did not live through 1966.
In later years, Bud Powell's recordings and performances could be so intense as to be scary, but other times he sounded quite sad. However, his influence on jazz (particularly up until the rise of McCoy Tyner and Bill Evans in the 1960s) was very strong and he remains one of the greatest jazz pianists of all time.
Wikipedia:
Earl Rudolph "Bud" Powell (September 27, 1924 – July 31, 1966) was a jazz pianist who was born and raised in Harlem, New York City. His greatest influences on his instrument were Thelonious Monk, who became his close friend, and Art Tatum. Along with Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, Powell was a key player in the development of bebop, and his virtuosity as a pianist led many to call him the Charlie Parker of the piano.
Biography
Powell's father was a stride pianist. Powell took to his father's instrument and started to learn classical piano, at age five, from a teacher whom his father hired; but by age ten, he had also showed interest in the jazz that could be heard all over the neighborhood, mimicking Fats Waller at rent party and mastering James P. Johnson's "Carolina Shout" . His older brother, William, played the trumpet; and, by age fifteen, Bud was playing in his brother's band. By this time, he had had exposure to Art Tatum, whose overwhelmingly virtuosic technique Powell set out to equal . His younger brother, Richie, and his teenage friend Elmo Hope were also accomplished pianists who had significant careers.
Bud, though underage, was exposed to the exciting, musically adventurous atmosphere at Uptown House, an after-hours venue that was practically around the corner from where he lived. It was here that the first stirrings of modernism could be heard on a nightly basis, and where Charlie Parker first appeared when he was unattached to a band and stayed briefly in New York. Thelonious Monk had some involvement there but, by the time that he and Powell met, in about 1942 , the elder pianist/composer was able to introduce Powell to the circle of bebop musicians starting to form at Minton's Playhouse. Monk was resident there and, so, presented Powell as his protege. The mutual affection grew to where Monk was, and remained, Powell's greatest mentor -- returning the compliment a few years later by dedicating the composition "In Walked Bud" to him.
In the early Forties, Powell played in a few dance orchestras, including that of Cootie Williams, whom Powell's mother decided her son should play for and tour with (rather than have him accept an offer from Oscar Pettiford and Dizzy Gillespie, whose modernist quintet was about to open at a midtown nightclub). Powell was the pianist on a handful of Williams's recording dates in 1944, the last of which included the first-ever recording of Monk's "'Round Midnight". His tenure with Williams was terminated one night in January 1945, when he got separated from the band after a Philadelphia dance engagement and was apprehended, drunk, by railroad police inside a station. He was beaten by them and then briefly detained. Upon his release, he was hospitalized in New York City and then sent to a psychiatric hospital, sixty miles away. He stayed there for two and a half months.
Powell resumed playing in Manhattan immediately, in demand by various small-group leaders for nightclub engagements in the increasingly integrated midtown scene. His 1945-46 recordings, many as the result of his sudden visibility, were for Frank Socolow, Dexter Gordon, J. J. Johnson, Sonny Stitt, Fats Navarro, and Kenny Clarke.
Powell soon became renowned for his ability to play accurately at fast tempos, his inspired bebop soloing, and his comprehension of the ideas that Charlie Parker had found from the chords of "Cherokee" and other song-forms. His solos, conceived in emulation of and rivalry with Parker -- he maintained an animus toward the acknowledged nonpareil saxophone virtuoso and leader of the bebop movement, throughout their careers -- are instantly recognizable, with frequent arpeggios punctuated by chromaticism. They are nonetheless progressive-sounding, exploring the harmonic series in unexpected ways. He often formed carefully phrased statements, singing along with his playing. Powell's generally rough-edged execution contrasted with his very daring and virtuosic passages at higher tempos. Many later pianists copied his melodic ideas.
Powell adhered to a simplified left-hand "comping" recalling stride and pianist Teddy Wilson. The comping often consisted of single bass notes outlining the root and fifth. He also used a tenth, which he was able to reach easily due to his very large hands, with the minor seventh included.
He freed the right hand for continuous linear exploration and facilitated in the left a statement of the harmonies typical of bebop. When Art Tatum questioned his neglect of the left hand, the younger player responded audaciously in a subsequent tune by soloing with his left hand. His favoring the treble was not to avoid integrating the hands, which is essential to both a solo and accompanying technique. These formed the basic small ensembles that have dominated jazz since the bebop era (after swing). Before Powell, Art Tatum and Earl Hines had also somewhat explored independent homophony closely resembling later piano playing.
Powell's career advanced when Charlie Parker chose him to be his pianist on a quintet record date, with Miles Davis, Tommy Potter, and Roach, in May 1947. Powell demonstrated his mature style on the third complete take of "Donna Lee", where he got a brief solo spot, and with his jocular chord fills while the horn players paused to breathe during "Buzzy", the last tune recorded. When the quintet came together for the final ensemble section, Powell's piano made its final, sarcastic comment on the proceedings.
The Parker session aside, Powell was inactive for most of 1947. In November, he had an altercation with another customer at a Harlem bar; in the ensuing fight, Powell was hit over his eye with a bottle. When Harlem Hospital found him incoherent and rambunctious, it sent him to Bellevue, to the ward where patients were given psychiatric evaluations. It was determined that he be sent to Creedmoor State Hospital, where he was kept for eleven months. Powell eventually adjusted to the conditions in the institution, though in psychiatric interviews he expressed feelings of persecution founded in racism. From February to April 1948 he received electroconvulsive therapy, first administered after an outburst deemed to be uncontrollable. It might have been in reaction to learning, after a visit by his girlfriend, that she was pregnant with their child.
While the electroconvulsive therapy was said to have made no difference, Powell was given a second series of treatments in May. He was eventually released, in October 1948, though he suffered from emotional instability periodically, for the rest of his career. Powell's increased celebrity, now that he was active again and bebop was becoming more accepted, made plain to fellow musicians and fans that he had a serious problem with alcohol alcoholic; even one drink had a profound effect on his character, making him aggressive or morose. Nonetheless, and with a repeat (though brief) hospitalization in early 1949, the year was Powell's greatest, both for his thrilling nightclub performances and for a handful of record sessions of unrivaled virtuosity on his instrument.
Jazz pianist Bill Cunliffe, whose music was influenced by Bud Powell, said in an interview with All About Jazz:
Bud Powell is the most important pianist in jazz and one of the most underrated because he spent over a third of his life in mental and medical hospitals. He was beaten by the police when he was twenty and he never fully recovered from that beating and as a result, he suffered pain and had to take drugs to alleviate the pain. ... In spite of that, he created a whole lot of wonderful music. He was really the first guy. Before Bud Powell, pianists were playing "boom, chuck" in the left hand and a lot of melodic figures in the right hand that tended to be arpeggios ... Bud Powell was imitating Charlie Parker. So Bud was the first pianist to take Charlie Parker's language and adapt it successfully to the piano. That's why he is the most important pianist in music today because everybody plays like that now. -- Bill Cunliffe
It is generally agreed that from 1949 through 1953 Powell made his best recordings, most of which were for Alfred Lion of Blue Note Records and for Norman Granz of Mercury, Norgran, and Clef. The first Blue Note session, in August 1949, features Fats Navarro, Sonny Rollins, Powell, Tommy Potter and Roy Haynes, and the compositions "Bouncing with Bud" and "Dance of the Infidels". The second Blue Note session in 1951 was a trio with Russell and Roach, and includes "Parisian Thoroughfare" and "Un Poco Loco", the latter selected by literary critic Harold Bloom for inclusion on his short list of the greatest works of twentieth-century American art. Sessions for Granz (more than a dozen) were all solo or trios, with a variety of bassists and drummers including Russell, Roach, Buddy Rich, Ray Brown, Percy Heath, George Duvivier, Art Taylor, Lloyd Trotman, Osie Johnson, Art Blakey and Kenny Clarke.
Powell's continued rivalry with Charlie Parker, while essential to the production of brilliant music, was also the subject of disruptive feuding and bitterness on the bandstand, as a result of Powell's troubled mental and physical condition.
Powell recorded for both Blue Note and Granz throughout the fifties, interrupted by another long stay in a mental hospital from late 1951 to early 1953, following arrest for possession of marijuana. He was released into the guardianship of Oscar Goodstein, the owner of the Birdland nightclub. A 1953 trio session for Blue Note (with Duvivier and Taylor) included Powell's composition "Glass Enclosure", inspired by his near-imprisonment in Goodstein's apartment. His playing after his release from hospital began to be seriously affected by Largactil, taken for the treatment of schizophrenia; and, by the late fifties, his talent was clearly in eclipse. In 1956 his brother Richie was killed in a car crash alongside Clifford Brown. Three albums for Blue Note in the late fifties showcased Powell's ability as a composer, but his playing was far removed from the standard set by his earlier recordings for the label.
After several further spells in hospital, Powell moved to Paris in 1959, in the company of Altevia "Buttercup" Edwards, whom he'd met after an incarceration in 1954 . In Paris, Powell worked in a trio with Pierre Michelot and Kenny Clarke. Buttercup, though, did not have Powell's best interests in mind. She kept control of his finances and overdosed him with Largactil, but Powell continued to perform and record. The 1960 live recording of the Essen jazz festival performance (with Clarke, Oscar Pettiford and on some numbers Coleman Hawkins) is particularly notable. In December 1961 he recorded two albums for Columbia Records under the aegis of Cannonball Adderley: A Portrait of Thelonious (with Michelot and Clarke), and A Tribute to Cannonball (with the addition of Don Byas and Idrees Sulieman—despite the title, Adderley only plays on one alternate take). The first album (with overdubbed audience noise) was released shortly after Powell's death, and the second was released in the late 1970s. Eventually Powell was befriended by Francis Paudras, a commercial artist and amateur pianist; and Powell moved into Paudras's home in 1962. There was a brief return to Blue Note in 1963, when Dexter Gordon recorded Our Man in Paris for the label. Powell was a last-minute substitute for Kenny Drew, and the album of standards—Powell could not by then learn new material—showed him to be still capable of playing with some proficiency. In 1963 Powell contracted tuberculosis, and the following year returned to New York with Paudras for a return engagement at Birdland. The original agreement had been for the two men to go back to Paris, but Paudras returned alone (although Powell did record in Paris, with Pettiford and Clarke, in July 1964). In 1965 Powell played only two concerts: one a disastrous performance at Carnegie Hall, the other a tribute to Charlie Parker on May 1 with other performers on the bill, including Albert Ayler. Little else was seen of him in public.
Powell was hospitalized in New York after months of increasingly erratic behavior and self-neglect. On July 31, 1966, he died of tuberculosis, malnutrition, and alcoholism. Several thousand people viewed his Harlem funeral procession.
Legacy
The pianist Bill Evans paid Powell a tribute in 1979:
If I had to choose one single musician for his artistic integrity, for the incomparable originality of his creation and the grandeur of his work, it would be Bud Powell. He was in a class by himself.
In 1986 Paudras wrote a book about his friendship with Powell, translated into English in 1997 as Dance of the Infidels: A Portrait of Bud Powell. The book was the basis for Round Midnight, a film inspired by the lives of Powell and Lester Young, in which Dexter Gordon played the lead role of an expatriate jazzman in Paris. In February 2012 a biography titled Wail: The Life of Bud Powell by Peter Pullman was released as an ebook on Nook and Kindle.
