An Enormously Uneven Bill Evans Collection

Haven’t had enough Bill Evans? Here’s an opportunity to fill up your already teeming Evans shelf with yet another multiple-CD collection.

Packaged in an astonishingly ugly steel box, this 18-CD collection covers Evans’ entire output for Verve during the period between 1962 and 1970. Typically, the compilation is loaded with alternate takes, false starts, assorted studio dialogue and a few bonus items. There are, for example, some tracks from a 1957 Newport Jazz Festival concert in which the pianist was featured with the Don Elliott quartet--the Verve catalog’s earliest examples of Evans’ playing. Also included is material from “The Gary McFarland Orchestra With Special Guest Soloist Bill Evans,” a date for which Evans was not the leader, but which showcased him in an attractive musical setting.

On the other hand, the set also contains “Waltz for Debby,” a fairly negligible 1964 recording in which Evans and his trio backed Swedish singer Monica Zetterlund. And omitted, appropriately, from the lineup is an album of film themes, “The V.I.P.’s Theme,” originally released on MGM, which Evans himself felt was not up to his usual high level of artistry.

What about the balance of the package? Is there enough first-rate Evans here to justify the suggested retail price of $300?

For the true Evans fan, yes. And this package, along with the other boxed sets currently available, helps provide a virtually encyclopedic overview of the work of one of contemporary jazz’s most influential artists.

For the less than dedicated Evans devotee, however, the cost may be a bit high. And it might be worth waiting to pick and choose if, and when, Verve elects to issue individual CDs from the collection.

Evans worked with three basic rhythm teams during the period in which the albums were recorded: bassist Gary Peacock and drummer Paul Motian; Chuck Israels and Larry Bunker; and Eddie Gomez and Marty Morell.

Only a CD and a half are devoted to Peacock-Motian, a team with a roving, interactive style that brought out the best in Evans. Five CDs chronicle the Israels-Bunker association in a series of recordings that include both high spots and mediocre moments. There are times, in fact, with this team in which Evans plays with a surprisingly awkward rhythmic flow to his right-hand melodies.

The Gomez-Morell recordings also have their ups and downs. At times, Evans seems pushed, perhaps by the production goals of the period, into uncomfortably commercial frameworks. His electric piano playing, for example, on the “From Left to Right” tracks, is sweetly done, but miles away from his true jazz skills.

Some of the more compelling moments, in fact, come from more unpredictable circumstances. The tracks from “California, Here I Come,” for example, recorded live at the Village Vanguard in 1967 with Philly Joe Jones on drums and Gomez on bass, are propulsively energetic, containing some solid, driving Evans piano. The duet tracks with guitarist Jim Hall from “Intermodulation” are superb, and the Evans overdubbed piano numbers from “Conversations With Myself” continue to stand as insightful probes into the heart of jazz creativity.

In sum, then, the collection is all over the place, creatively, aesthetically and commercially--very much reflective of Evans’ personal life from the period. Evans’ inspiration may have been uneven at times in these years, but his music was rarely less than intriguing, and much of the time it was outright compelling.

(The total number of Evans CDs now available in boxed sets hits 59 with this release. The other collections are the six-CD “Turn Out the Stars” [Warner Bros.], the eight-CD “The Secret Sessions” [Milestone], the nine-CD “The Complete Bill Evans on Fantasy” [Fantasy] and the 18-CD “The Complete Riverside Recordings” [Riverside].)

*

Albums are rated on a scale of one star (poor), two stars (fair), three stars (good) and four stars (excellent).