A waltz for Bill

I was introduced to Bill Evans sometime during my sophomore year of high school or so, first as the extremely famous (although then a relative nobody) pianist on the majority of Kind of Blue and then as a separate entity from Miles Davis. From the KoB recordings, he is probably best showcased on "Blue in Green" (allegedly his own composition that Miles later claimed credit for, as he was wont to do throughout his career), which I thought was just the loveliest song that could ever be.



It's hard to separate jazz artists from the groups they perform in; different combinations of people seem to produce different ideas and sounds from the same artist. "Waltz for Debby" is an early and extremely famous Evans piece that predates his time with Miles but has the same sort of bizarrely clear, drifting, aching sound, like water, a tone I always associate with Evans despite the fact that it changed somewhat in his later life (he died of drug complications in 1980). I'm not sure where and when this particular recording is from, but I would guess sometimes either late 1950s or 1960s, after his fame had risen considerably. Anyone who has ever played the piano with any degree of seriousness at all understands exactly how difficult this sort of melodic fluency is to obtain.