Home recording of Keith Jarrett - March 1965
Winchester, Massachusetts
by Ted Knowlton

Background:
Back in 1965 I was a full-time engineer doing piano gigs whenever.  Each year my wife and I threw a jazz party and invited friends and musicians that I had worked with.  That year I invited a drummer with whom I had worked, Dannee Fullerton, to be the drummer at out party.  Dannee asked if he could bring a friend, a piano player. (Dannee said he didn't want the guest piano player to crowd my act!)  I said "fine," no problem.  So Dannee showed up with a kid (see picture) and a bass player, Kent Carter.

After I played for awhile, I asked the kid if he'd like to play.  He sat down and started playing the standard tune, 'Tangerine.'  I said "WOW!" and dragged out an old Bell 2-track tape recorder (mono).  I had an old condenser mic which I plopped down in the middle of the drum, bass, and piano.  The piano was a "no-name" baby grand (Bradbury).

I was so excited that I wound the take-up end of the tape (a 95-cent Radio Shack bargain) around the hub of the tape recorder - rather than the take-up reel itself.  (When I went to remove it later, you can imagine the pile of spaghetti tape I had on my hands.)  The resulting misalignment of the tape accounts for some gaps in the recording.

The recording of 'Tangerine' is a tour-de-force of the young Keith.  After a few choruses of "regular" playing (right-hand solo lines, left-hand chords), he gets into some two-handed octave lines that are pretty incredible.  During the bass solo, he silently sets up chords using the selective sustain pedal - the middle pedal, then strums the strings to get the harp-like effect - which is immediately answered with some regular piano chords.

After the Kent Carter bass solo comes an awesome solo right-hand exercise.  This leads into Danny's drum solo.  Keith's left hand emerges from the drum solo with yet another prodigious display of technique.

Then the crowd-pleaser final chorus.

This mp3 file may take awhile to download, but it's worth it!

Click to download Tangerine.mp3

Click to hear another recording from that same period.
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