Recording of the Week, Bill Evans, 'You Must Believe In Spring'

(Photo by Dany Gignoux)

It’s always nice to revisit an old favourite, and this week I’ve had an excuse to go back to Bill Evans’ posthumously-released 1981 record You Must Believe In Spring. Something of a rarity to see on record store shelves until recently, it’s now been reissued as part of Craft Recordings’ efforts to unearth nuggets of Bill Evans’ back catalogue with releases like On a Friday Evening or the compilation Everybody Still Digs Bill Evans. Though You Must Believe In Spring didn’t drop until a year after Bill Evans’ passing in September 1980, it was originally recorded a few years prior in 1977 with bassist Eddie Gómez – one of Evans’ most significant and long-term collaborators – and drummer Eliot Zigmund, who at the time had been playing in Evans’ trio for a couple of years. It was during this period that Evans was in the midst of one his most celebrated collaborations, two albums released with vocalist Tony Bennett: 1975’s The Tony Bennett/Bill Evans Album and 1977’s Together Again, duet records that at the time came as quite the surprise, being that Bennett wasn’t (and to some still isn’t) considered much of a jazz singer.

Evans would continue recording his more orthodox piano trio records until his death, with 1979’s We Will Meet Again and 1980’s I Will Say Goodbye – both recorded around the same time – being his final two records released during his lifetime. But it’s You Must Believe In Spring that tends to be the most celebrated of his final albums, and it’s a particularly personal album at that. Two of the originals on here, ‘B Minor Waltz (For Ellaine)’ and ‘We Will Meet Again (For Harry)’, are dedicated to his late wife Ellaine Shultz and his brother Harry respectively, both of whom took their own lives. Evans went on to title what would be his final studio recording after this standard, with 1979’s We Will Meet Again (recorded that same year, but released before Evans’ death and therefore predating You Must Believe In Spring), and it wasn’t until this recording that Evans decided to dedicate the then-unreleased original tune to his late brother, the father of the same Debby named in ‘Waltz for Debby’.

Left to right: Eddie Gómez, Eliot Zigmund, Bill Evans

By the time Bill Evans recorded You Must Believe In Spring he was already past the peak of his career – records like Everybody Digs Bill Evans, Portrait In Jazz or Sunday at the Village Vanguard were almost two decades old by this point – but even towards the end of his life, and despite the battles with drug addiction that had plagued his career, Evans was still a peerless jazz pianist with unmatched lyrical vocabulary in his playing, and knew well how to pick his sidemen too. The delicate ‘B Minor Waltz’ and title track that open the record both feature sharp, careful interplay between the three, and both of Evans’ trio mates also shine as soloists throughout the album’s runtime. The title track, a Michel Legrand tune, features Gomez on electric bass throughout and has one of his most spirited solos on the record, while ‘Gary’s Theme’ plays it pretty sombre by contrast in tribute to quite a tragic figure in jazz music. Another highlight of the album is the trio’s take on Jimmy Rowles’ ‘The Peacocks’, which sees Evans’ trickle-like piano lines dance nicely around Gomez and Zigmund.

This version of You Must Believe In Spring also includes the three bonus tracks added to the 2003 reissue; Vincent Youman’s ‘Without a Song’, Miles Davis’ ‘Freddie Freeloader’, and Cole Porter’s ‘All of You’. ‘Freddie Freeloader’ includes one of Evans’ rare use of the electric piano – having been quoting that he ‘quickly tires of it’ when he does use it, and never truly embracing it like his contemporaries – and Evans doesn’t even use it for the entirety of the tune, beginning on acoustic piano then switching to his Fender Rhodes before switching back to acoustic after Zigmund’s drum solo. Ironically, of all the tracks on Kind of Blue, the original recording of ‘Freddie Freeloader’ was the only track you won’t hear Bill Evans on.

Meanwhile the trio’s 8-minute version of ‘All of You’ calls back to his earlier trio’s performance of the tune on 1961’s Sunday at the Village Vanguard, making for a comparatively energetic closer to the original record’s ‘Theme From MASH.’. Despite its name, it perfectly embodies the autumnal jazz piano trio sound, a mostly rather low-key affair yet not unexpected from the king of Cool Jazz piano. Being such a late-career Evans recording, You Must Believe In Spring has things down to a science, and easily makes for one of the finest listens in his catalogue.