Search - George Wallington :: Knight Music

A forgotten great of modern jazz, pianist George Wallington was an inventive, fluent bebop stylist and composer best known for the bop opus, "Godchild," which Miles Davis recorded on the groundbreaking Birth of the Cool. Wallington, who died in 1993, was there at the dawn of the modern era, playing in trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie's original quintet on 52nd Street. He later worked with Charlie Parker, Gerry Mulligan, and Zoot Sims, and ultimately led his own trios to quintets. Despite his prowess--his playing had a Bud Powell-like fire and imagination--renown proved elusive. Active through 1960 (and then briefly in the '80s), Wallington nonetheless made several highly regarded albums, among them Jazz for the Carriage Trade, Live! At Café Bohemia, George Wallington Trios, and Knight Music. Recorded in 1956, Knight Music teams Wallington with two longtime partners: bassist Teddy Kotick and drummer Nick Stabulas. The trio tackles five originals and six standards with cohesiveness, vitality, swing, and creativity; this is bebop-based trio music at its best. Wallington can take any theme, be it the fluid "Godchild" or the whizzing-by "It's All Right with Me," and tell a compelling aural tale; his ideas--long or short, darting or lulling--are always fresh, richly melodic, and heartily rhythmic. The winning program also includes such originals as the perky "Up Jumped the Devil" and buoyant "Serendipity" and the standards "Will You Still Be Mine," brisk and vibrant, and the lovely Ellington ballad, "In a Sentimental Mood." --Zan Stewart