Red Garland Trio

Red Garland fused the standard touchstones of his peers—Nat Cole, Bud Powell, and Ahmad Jamal—into a personal style whose signature block chords would shape pianists throughout the 1960s. He first took up clarinet and alto saxophone before turning to piano at age eighteen. Between 1946 and 1955 he worked consistently in New York and Philadelphia, accompanying such leading figures as Charlie Parker, Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young, and Roy Eldridge, yet he stayed largely out of the spotlight. His profile rose sharply upon joining the celebrated Miles Davis Quintet from 1955 to 1958, where he anchored a rhythm section completed by Paul Chambers and Philly Joe Jones. Once he departed Miles, Garland led a successful trio and cut numerous sessions for Prestige, Jazzland, and Moodsville from 1956 to 1962, most of which later appeared in the Original Jazz Classics catalog. The pianist eventually went back to Texas and entered semi-retirement, though he reemerged slowly during the 1970s to record for MPS in 1971 and for Galaxy between 1977 and 1979, after which he stepped away once more.