Track Listing

Disc 1:

1. I Love You
2. Five
3. Conception
4. Easy Living
5. Displacement
6. Speak Low
7. Our Delight
8. No Cover, No Minimum [Take 1][Alternate Take]
9. No Cover, No Minimum [Take 2]
10. I Got It Bad (And That Ain't Good)
11. Waltz for Debby
12. My Romance
13. Minority
14. Young and Foolish
15. Night and Day
16. Oleo

Disc 2:

1. Tenderly
2. What Is There to Say?
3. Peace Piece
4. Lucky to Be Me
5. Some Other Time
6. Epilogue
7. You and the Night and the Music
8. How Am I to Know?
9. Woody 'N You [Take 1]
10. Woody 'N You [Take 2]
11. My Heart Stood Still
12. Green Dolphin Street
13. Peri's Scope
14. Witchcraft

Disc 3:

1. Spring Is Here
2. What Is This Thing Called Love?
3. Come Rain or Come Shine - Bill Evans
4. Blue in Green [Take 2][#]
5. Blue in Green [Take 3]
6. Autumn Leaves [Mono Version]
7. Autumn Leaves [Stereo]
8. Someday My Prince Will Come
9. When I Fall in Love
10. Elsa
11. Sweet and Lovely
12. Beautiful Love [Take 1][#]
13. Beautiful Love [Take 2]

Disc 4:

1. I Wish I Knew
2. Boy Next Door
3. Haunted Heart
4. Nardis
5. How Deep Is the Ocean?
6. Israel
7. Who Cares? [Take 4][#]
8. Who Cares? [Take 5]
9. Goodbye
10. Nancy (With the Laughing Face)
11. Toy
12. Elsa
13. Waltz for Debby
14. Venice
15. I Know What I Mean? [Take 12][Alternate Take]
16. Know What I Mean? [Take Re-7]

Disc 5:

1. Alice in Wonderland [Take 1][Alternate Take]
2. My Foolish Heart
3. All of You [Take 1][#]
4. My Romance [Take 1]
5. Some Other Time
6. Solar
7. Gloria's Step [Take 2]
8. My Man's Gone Now

Disc 6:

1. All of You [Take 2]
2. Detour Ahead [Take 1][Alternate Take]
3. Waltz for Debby [Take 1][Alternate Take]
4. Alice in Wonderland [Take 2]
5. Porgy (I Loves You, Porgy)
6. My Romance [Take 2][Alternate Take]
7. Milestones
8. Detour Ahead [Take 2]
9. Gloria's Step [Take 3][Alternate Take]

Disc 7:

1. Waltz for Debby [Take 2]
2. All of You [Take 3][Alternate Take]
3. Jade Visions [Take 1][Alternate Take]
4. Jade Visions [Take 2]
5. ...A Few Final Bars
6. Danny Boy
7. Like Someone in Love
8. In Your Own Sweet Way
9. Easy to Love
10. How My Heart Sings
11. Summertime - Bill Evans
12. If You Could See Me Now
13. Walkin' Up

Disc 8:

1. Very Early
2. Show-Type Tune
3. Re: Person I Knew
4. 34 Skidoo
5. Polka Dots and Moonbeams
6. I Should Care
7. I Fall in Love Too Easily
8. Ev'rything I Love
9. I Love in Vain
10. Stairway to the Stars
11. In Your Own Sweet Way [Take 1]
12. In Your Own Sweet Way [Take 2][#]
13. It Might as Well Be Spring

Disc 9:

1. Wrap Your Troubles in Dreams (And Dream Your Troubles Away)
2. When You Wish Upon a Star
3. You Go to My Head
4. You and the Night and the Music
5. Interplay
6. I'll Never Smile Again [Take Re-6][#]
7. I'll Never Smile Again [Take Re-7]
8. Loose Bloose [Take 3]
9. Loose Bloose [Take 4 and 2]
10. Fudgesickle Built for Four
11. Time Remembered

Disc 10:

1. Funkallero - Bill Evans
2. My Bells
3. There Came You
4. Fun Ride
5. What Kind of Fool Am I? [Take 1][#]
6. Medley: My Favorite Things/Easy to Love/Baubles, Bangles and Beads [#]
7. When I Fall in Love [#]
8. Medley: Spartacus Love Theme/Nardis [#]
9. Everything Happens to Me [#]
10. April in Paris [#]

Disc 11:

1. All the Things You Are [#]
2. Santa Claus Is Coming to Town [#]
3. I Loves You, Porgy [#]
4. What Kind of Fool Am I? [Take 2][#]
5. Love Is Here to Stay [#]
6. Ornithology [#]
7. Medley: Autumn in New York/How About You? [#]
8. All the Things You Are [#]
9. Lover Man
10. Love Is Here to Stay
11. Stella by Starlight

Disc 12:

1. 'Round Midnight
2. Who Cares?
3. Boy Next Door
4. Isn't It Romantic?
5. What Is This Thing Called Love?
6. How About You?
7. Blues in F/Five
8. Everything Happens to Me
9. In a Sentimental Mood
10. My Heart Stood Still
11. Time Remembered
12. Wonder Why
13. Swedish Pastry

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #51267 in Music
• Released on: 1991-07-01
• Number of discs: 12
• Format: Box set

Amazon.com
The span of this 12-CD box set is generally acknowledged as the best Bill Evans material available. That's saying a lot, considering the high quality of The Complete Fantasy Recordings and The Complete Bill Evans on Verve. What the Riverside recordings display is a young Evans discovering his revolutionary harmonic depth and improvisational genius with bursts of energy that, by his second session, had established a kind of moody intensity that seemed to deepen the music while making it at once more complex and easier to absorb. Evans's Riverside years encompass his early dynamos: Everybody Digs Bill Evans is resplendently here, as is the material from Sunday at the Village Vanguard and Waltz for Debby. So, too, are sessions with Cannonball Adderley, Jim Hall, and Zoot Sims. Through it all, Evans remains firmly planted in a winding style that's creatively unstoppable and visceral in its intensity. One could write hundreds of pages about these 12 CDs. Instead, you should indulge their dozen-plus hours. --Andrew Bartlett

Customer Reviews

Bedrock of modern jazz piano
Like a lot of boxed sets of first-rank artists, the real question is: do you need it? Most of the albums included here are the lynchpins of Bill Evans' oeuvre, & some of the most familiar & influential jazz of the postbop era. So: here's a quick runthrough of what you get--you can make up your mind, depending on how much of this material you already have:

_New Jazz Conceptions_--a solid early date with Teddy Kotick & Paul Motian; Evans is as yet not that distinctive a pianist, & the real early achievements are to be found in his sideman appearances on George Russell's albums.

_Everybody Digs Bill Evans_--a date from two years later, during Evans' tenure with Miles Davis; the rhythm section is Sam Jones & Philly Joe Jones. The first great Evans album, split between hard-hitting uptempo numbers like "Oleo" and his trademark luminous ballads like "Young and Foolish".

A session with Paul Chambers & Philly Joe Jones only released in 1975: this was an unplanned recording (they were in the studio as the rhythm section for a Chet Baker date, & the producer invited them to continue afterwards & cut a trio recording); the material is easily picked standards. An excellent date, & one of the only ones here not currently available outside of the box set.

_Portrait in Jazz_, _Explorations_, _Sunday at the Village Vanguard_, _Waltz for Debby_: the classic trio with Scott LaFaro & Paul Motian. This is material every jazz fan should know. Nice to have the Vanguard tracks here in the original order of playing, rather than the ordering on the CD reissues, which puts duplicate versions of the same tune next to each other.

Cannonball Adderley's _Know What I Mean?_, a session included because it was intended as a feature for Evans. Some interesting material on this one: the title track is a modal tune; "Elsa" is an Earl Zindars tune that Evans also covered on _Explorations_; "Toy" is a tune by Adderley's protege, the saxophonist Clifford Jordan (cf. Jordan's _Spellbound_ date).

A previously unreleased abortive attempt at a solo album: Evans was still very depressed about LaFaro's death in a car accident at the time, & there's some of Evans' most downcast & fragile ballad-playing here. Not perhaps a session to listen to too often, but interesting, & again it's not available outside this set.

_Moon Beams_ & _How My Heart Sings!_: dates with Chuck Israel on bass in place of the late Scott LaFaro; the date is especially notable for the return of Evans the composer (with LaFaro in the band Evans seems to have taken a back seat in this regard, encouraging LaFaro to contribute originals like "Jade Visions" & "Gloria's Steps"). Classic tunes like "Very Early" receive their premieres here.

_Interplay_ and _Loose Blues_. The former is a pleasing if inconsequential date with Jim Hall, Freddie Hubbard, Percy Heath & Philly Joe Jones, mostly doing lightweight old standards like "Wrap Your Troubles in Dreams"; the most important track is the one original, the intricate contrapuntal blues "Interplay". _Loose Blues_ has a similar group, with Hubbard & Heath replaced by Zoot Sims & Ron Carter; it is all originals, often very interesting ones, but the session went unreleased until after Evans' death because the musicians had such difficulty with the tunes that it proved impossible to produce complete & acceptable takes of several of the tracks. The versions here are spliced together from multiple takes. An interesting session, not least for glimpses of originals like "Fun Ride" which Evans never included in his regular repertoire, but not an especially successful date.

A superb & very important solo session, Evans's first; this went unreleased at the time, & only appeared after his detah in this box set, although it is now available separately. This is still something of the main attraction here: this is some of Evans's least celebrated music because of its belated release, but is certainly his finest recorded solo performance. One gets previews of material better-known in recordings he did for Verve--"Theme from Spartacus", "Santa Claus Is Coming to Town"--which is still at its freshest here, & there's a marvellous reading of "Nardis" which points ahead towards the unaccompanied improvisations on the tune which were the highlight of his late live recordings with Marc Johnson & Joe LaBarbara.

_Live at Shelly's Manne-Hole_ ends the set; there's some more material here than is available on the single-CD reissue of this date, which is very welcome. This material has Chuck Israels on bass, & on drums the west-coast player Larry Bunker. This is an underrated item in the Evans canon; it is notable for some well-prepared versions of standard material (there's a comprehensively reharmonized "What Is This Thing Called Love?" which deserves close study; & a deeply-felt "Round Midnight"), plus the first issued version of "Time Remembered" (the tune had earlier been on the unreleased Sims/Hall date).

There's little more to be said except: this is some of the great music of the last century. This set is certainly for those already committed to completism, but unlike many reissues this is a document that will also satisfy the casual listener: the sessions are not flooded with alternate takes & false starts, nor is there any bad music here. Of the unfamiliar material, I would single out the Evans/Chambers/Jones date & the solo sessions as first-rate; the others are more mixed in their success, but everything here is worth a listen.

Completely Wonderful
This collection of Bill Evans' wonderful work for Riverside is nothing short of magnificent. The 12-discs (nicely packaged in three, 4-disc holders similar to the old 2-cd sets) in this set contain over 13 hours of music (the remastering from 1987 is good) and almost 150 tracks. Evans' work from 1956-1963 (arguably his most productive) is what this box set is all about. The peerless recordings with Scott LeFaro and Paul Motian are highlights (of course) as well as a session with Cannonball Adderley, Evans' "Interplay" sessions, some previously unreleased, beautiful solo piano (subsequently available on other records--the Solo Sessions for example), and all Evans' other recordings for Riverside. Naturally this includes the brilliant "Everybody Digs Bill Evans", "Portrait in Jazz", "Sunday at the Village Vanguard", and "Waltz for Debby" amongst others. Many alternate takes (some more engaging than the originals) are included (most, if not all, of these have been included on recent re-releases of these classic albums) and the set comes with an excellent 32-page booklet (dimensionally similar to an lp) detailing the recording sessions and paying tribute to one of jazz's greatest pianists. While the majority of the music in this set can be collected via the individual cds, this set is well-packaged, well-annotated, more easily stored, and a lot easier to purchase. Fans of jazz piano and especially fans of Bill Evans (even if you own all the individual discs, this set is probably worth the investment) will very much enjoy this set and all the hours of listening enjoyment that come along with it. Very Highly Recommended.

a great set
This is a boxed set that contains some of the best jazz music you will ever hear. And it you are a Bill Evans fan, you'll have a great jukebox full of music to enjoy for the rest of your life. Yes, it's really that good.