Paul Bley - My Standard (SteepleChase, 1995

This post is by Dan

Paul Bley (p); Jesper Lundgaard (b); Billy Hart (d)

Recorded December 8, 1985

Paul Bley's My Standard is an album that excels because of the contributions of Jesper Lundgaard and Billy Hart. Their impact is immediately obvious on "Santa Claus Is Coming to Town," which starts the album off in an unexpected but joyful way. Don't snicker; the revered Bill Evans also covered this holiday ditty. 

I've lavished praise on both Lundgaard and Hart in previous posts. Their work here together is amazing and just right for the ofttimes unpredictable Bley. The pianist can be as abstract as anyone in 1980s jazz, but here his creativity is craftily shaped by his bandmates and by the standards program. 

In the mid-1980s, the popularity of CDs was growing rapidly. In response, record companies would complement the vinyl release with a CD version. CDs could house almost 80 minutes on a single disc, so many CD versions contain extra tracks, some of them alternative takes but also tunes just left off the LP. 

For the My Standard CD, SteepleChase added seven additional tracks from the recording session. Three of them are not standards but rather Paul Bley compositions. Unfortunately, his tunes don't fit into the flow of the ten standards, thereby spoiling the album's integrity. This may sound like nit picking, but I prefer the original program of ten songs. Others may feel that more songs are a better bargain or that more is always better than less. Sometimes less is more.

To resolve this issue for myself, I have ripped the CD to my digital library and deleted the songs not on the original LP. It's one of the cool tricks I've learned about digital music. More importantly, it preserves the original program of one of the great trio albums of the decade. 

The digital recording is superb - rich and detailed. I have not heard the LP.