Waltz for Debby – Bill Evans Trio

**Adam Maness** (0:21)
I'm Adam Maness.

**Peter Martin** (0:22)
And I'm Peter Martin.

**Adam Maness** (0:22)
And you're listening to the You'll Hear It podcast.

**Peter Martin** (0:24)
Music explored.

**Adam Maness** (0:26)
Jazz explored even?

**Peter Martin** (0:27)
Sometimes we circle back.

**Adam Maness** (0:29)
That's right. Brought to you today by Open Studio. Go to openstudiojazz.com for your jazz lesson. I brought that back, Peter, because we're bringing it back to a little bit of our roots here.

**Peter Martin** (0:40)
Yes.

**Adam Maness** (0:41)
A little bit of a straight up, straight ahead jazz trio album by the name of Waltz for Debby.

**Peter Martin** (0:46)
Yes. Do not adjust your dials. You know, we are jazz musicians. In case you're new on the You'll Hear It bandwagon. First of all, where have you been? What have you been listening to?
What are you doing?

**Adam Maness** (0:56)
That's a great Rihanna record. We should get off of this Bill Evans stuff and go.

**Peter Martin** (1:00)
My umbrella, Ella, Ella, that one?

**Adam Maness** (1:03)
Okay. Yeah.

**Peter Martin** (1:03)
But this record, I think, is somehow hasn't quite made it onto the Mount Rushmore of crossover for people that like, you know, the kind of people that have just a couple of jazz albums. Like they're very classy people, but they're not like big into jazz, but they would of course have kind of blue.

**Adam Maness** (1:21)
This is on the cusp though. Yeah.

**Peter Martin** (1:22)
And I think actually it's in more collections than we think for that. This is such a great combination of jazz piano trio nerddom for sure, but also very accessible, pleasant sounding. Dare I even say, and this is not an insult, boring coffee house jazz. This is maybe the greatest boring coffee house jazz record of all time.

**Adam Maness** (1:43)
Before we get into the album though, I just want to let everybody know we're going to do in the next couple of weeks here, a mailbag episode.

**Peter Martin** (1:49)
Yes.

**Adam Maness** (1:50)
So we want to hear from you. You can go to youllhearit.com and you can leave us a voice message. SpeakPipe, remember those? Speaking of callbacks, you could also send us an email. Mailbag at youllhearit.com is the address.

**Peter Martin** (1:59)
Yeah, you can send a question. You can send a video question. You could send an audio question if you're sophisticated, or you can just type in your question. Don't send it by the mail though, because the regular USPS.

**Adam Maness** (2:08)
Not going to get it.

**Peter Martin** (2:08)
We don't know if it's going to get here.

**Adam Maness** (2:09)
We definitely won't get it. This is such a great album and it's an amazing story too. This is one of the last albums in this run by this great trio of Bill Evans, Scott LaFaro, and Paul Motian. This was recorded June 25th, 1961, at the famed Village Vanguard Club.

**Peter Martin** (2:27)
Seventh Avenue South, West Village, Greenwich Village, New York City.

**Adam Maness** (2:32)
Yeah, not controversial to say this is probably the greatest jazz club in the world. I think that's pretty much universally. I wouldn't argue with that. I don't think anybody would. And I say that it was recorded Sunday, June 25th, 1961, because actually two albums were recorded this day. Sunday at the Village Vanguard, which is not this album, and Waltz for Debby.
It's the same Sunday, though. Same Sunday, yeah. Same day, those two now classic albums were recorded live. So this is actually a live album, which you almost wouldn't know by the cover and the title.

**Peter Martin** (3:01)
Right, and there's even parts, and we're gonna get into that as we listen to it. I think it's such a sonically arresting, stunning album, really. I mean, I think this album is, I'm just gonna go ahead and throw this out there. I think this is one of the best sounding jazz records ever recorded live or otherwise.

**Adam Maness** (3:17)
I couldn't agree more. I couldn't agree more. Okay, so I'm not as controversial as I thought. So let's check out the first track. This is the stunningly beautiful, the unbelievably gorgeous.

**Peter Martin** (3:25)
And by the way, One of the great starts to an album, too.

**Adam Maness** (3:28)
You know, you and I are both a sucker for the ballad start. Yes. Which takes guts to do.

**Peter Martin** (3:33)
Sue us, we're introspective, romantic gentlemen.

**Adam Maness** (3:35)
Yeah, typically when you're putting together a set list for an album, you think, oh, let's hit them with something bouncy, something catchy.

**Peter Martin** (3:41)
Skiddy-diddity-da-pow, skiddy-diddity-da-pow.

**Adam Maness** (3:43)