While undeservedly forgotten these days, the influence of piano pioneer Bud Powell is still heard in every musician in his wake. Almost completely by himself, Powell transported the stride style of piano playing into a brand new creation, with the left hand pounding out the torrid rhythms and exotic chords while the right hand would make lightning fast solos. This Second Volume of his work on this two disc, 38 song collection shows him at his creative peak, mostly through his favorite environment, the jazz trio.
There are a handful of sessions with Powell in small group settings, most intriguing being one with Ellingtonian Cootie Williams on “You Talked A Little Trash”. But his early small group sessions from the mid 40s with Fats Navarro/tp, Sonny Rollins/ts, Roy Haynes/dr, Max Roach/dr Tommy Potter/b, Art Taylor/dr, Curley Russell/b, Sonny Stitt/as, and Charlie Parker/as resulted in clarion calls of the era such as “Wail” “Long Tall Dexter”, Ornithology”, I Want To Be Happy” and “Move”.
But Powell was most emotive and creative in the piano/bass/drums trio setting with the aforementioned rhythmic artists, simply delightfully joyful on pieces like the mercurial “Sweet Georgia Brown and “ Indiana”, but incandescently graceful on “A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Squre” “Polka Dots and Moonbeams” and “Autumn In New York”. He was also a masterful interpreter of contemporary Thelonious Monk, prismatic on the bouncy “Off Minor” and haunting like a full moon on “Round Midnight”. With 80 years of retrospective listening, it’s difficult to appreciate how far ahead of his time Powell was with pieces like the fiery “Un Poco Loco” or the driving “Scrapple From The Apple”, but at the time, it was like hearing messages from another planet. It still sounds fresh and alive today.