IT’S AUTUMN IN NEW YORK AND TWO MUSICIANS, ALONE IN an apartment, play through a ballad, searching for the perfect chords to bring
out the beauty of the song. The bass player tunes up with an E harmonic on
the A string while the pianist runs through the beginning of “My Foolish
Heart.” Bill Evans plays the song in the key of E, an unusual choice that sounds
simultaneously bright yet moody.
“Unbelievable … powerful … beautiful …” says
the bassist, Scott LaFaro, struck by Evans’s modulation
to the key of F. LaFaro begins to accompany,
but the chords are not flowing yet.
“We’re now talking about …” says Evans.
“Eb minor,” says LaFaro, finishing the
thought musically and verbally.
Evans begins to explore lush voicings, possible
new paths through the harmony. “Yeah …
I think I was playing … full-type piano … I wish
I could go a little lower on this one … A might
be nice.”
LaFaro is on his wavelength. “Yeah, that’s
where I …” he begins. He sings the melody while
playing his bass line, and the pair, working as
if with one mind, continue to burnish the
changes of the familiar tune.
“Come on, let’s get the better of this one,” says
Evans, determined to find the core of the song.
“All right,” answers LaFaro.
SETTING THE STAGE
The conversation is taken from a new CD, Pieces
of Jade, that also features the first U.S. release
of five tunes LaFaro cut in 1961 with pianist
Don Friedman, plus a ’66 interview with Evans.
Resonance Records is releasing the disc in conjunction
with a new biography, Jade Visions:
The Life and Music of Scott LaFaro [University
of North Texas Press], written by
his sister Helene LaFaro-Fernández.
The Evans/LaFaro rehearsal recording,
running almost 23 minutes, provides
a glimpse into the musical minds of two
legendary jazz players. They later recorded
“My Foolish Heart” in a trio with drummer
Paul Motian at New York City’s Village
Vanguard on June 25, 1961. The track,
from Sunday at the Village Vanguard,
serves as an artistic milestone in the development
of the jazz piano trio, due in no
small part to LaFaro’s contribution.
At the time of the rehearsal, LaFaro
was earning his reputation as the hot new
bassist on the jazz scene. He started playing
the double bass in 1954 and had been
playing only a few years when he began
turning heads. Recalls pianist Friedman:
“What struck me about Scotty was the
short amount of time it took him to go
from being just a good player, when I first
heard him in California, to being a great
player, when I heard him in New York
just a few months later. It was also the
amazing solos he took at any tempo and
the way he interacted with the piano.”
LaFaro’s best-known musical association
began in the fall of 1959, when he
joined Motian and Evans to form the Bill
Evans Trio, a group that redefined the
piano trio with its conversational style of
improvisation. Before the Bill Evans Trio,
most jazz featured a solo instrument on
top of a supporting rhythm section. Evans,
LaFaro, and Motian adopted a democratic
approach in which players were free to
simultaneously improvise on a given tune
to create a complex, contrapuntal texture.
Says bassist Larry Grenadier, “The
thing that amazed me right away about
Scotty—and still does to this day—is his
audaciousness. When you think of his
young age and the short time he had been
playing the bass, it’s amazing that he had
the balls to do what he did.”
THE BEGINNINGS
Rocco Scott LaFaro was born on April 3,
1936, in Irvington, New Jersey, a suburb
of Newark, and grew up in Geneva, New
York. He came from a musical family
immersed in opera, classics, and jazz, with
a father who was a professional violinist.
Scott started out playing classical music
on clarinet, saxophone, and piano. During
his junior year of high school, he was
selected for the New York Music School
All-State Band as a clarinet player. Out
of this ensemble, LaFaro helped organize
a septet of students—the Rhythm Aires—
to play jazz and dance music. He also won
many honors as a student clarinetist and
performed concertos with the Seneca and
the Finger Lake symphonies.
In Jade Visions, LaFaro-Fernández
recalled: “Pretty much by his freshman
year in high school, Scotty totally fell in
love with jazz, most especially jazz saxophone,
and he began listening, listening,
listening. The listening and transcribing
continued into college even after he
switched to playing only the bass. He had
originally intended to be a sax player, and
maybe that’s one reason he focused on
melodic flights of fancy.”
LaFaro’s father gave him his first double
bass, a light-colored Kay, just before
he started attending Ithaca College in the
fall of 1954. He was 18 years old.
Said LaFaro-Fernández: “He continued
double-bass lessons in a class with
Forrest Sanders, a cellist at Ithaca who taught bass to Scotty verbally, since he
did not play that instrument himself. In a
matter of weeks, Scotty became consumed
with the bass.”
THE ARRIVAL
LaFaro’s first major professional gig was
playing with trombonist Buddy Morrow,
whose popular big band had a hit with
“Night Train.” LaFaro built up his road
chops and paid his dues with the Morrow
band, and in the fall of ’56 left Morrow in
Hollywood to join Chet Baker’s small
group. LaFaro freelanced around the West
Coast for the next few years and worked
with pianist Pat Moran in Chicago in the
winter of ’58, playing opposite the Ramsey
Lewis Trio.
In Jade Visions, former Lewis bassist
Eldee Young recalls playing duets with
LaFaro: “Scotty and I would go into the
back room between sets and have twobass
sessions. There was a camaraderie
among musicians then, especially between
bass players. George Duvivier, Percy
Heath, and Oscar Pettiford were heroes
to Scotty and me. Scotty had
a lovely style. He could
play his butt off, and he was a nice guy.”
LaFaro made a couple of records with
pianist Moran, This Is Pat Moran and
Beverly Kelly Sings with the Pat Moran
Trio. But his big splash came in ’58 with
The Arrival of Victor Feldman. On this
recording, LaFaro plays strong ensemble
time as well as solos that would rival any
guitarist’s of the day for speed, ideas, and
bebop phrasing. The huge contrast to his
playing here and the later recordings with
Bill Evans comes out of his ensemble playing—
with keyboardist/percussionist Feldman
he showed he could play 4/4 time as well as any bassist on the planet.
Says bassist Phil Palombi, author of Scott
LaFaro: 15 Solo Transcriptions, “In 1958
he was swinging like any of the greats: Ray
Brown, Paul Chambers, Sam Jones. That
was Scott’s starting point.” Grenadier adds,
“I’ve always been surprised by the way people
too easily categorize Scott LaFaro as a
player who only played in the thumb position,
didn’t walk, and wasn’t concerned
with accompanying. I’ve never found any
of these stereotypes to be true. My first introduction
to Scott was not on the Bill Evans
records but the sides with Victor Feldman
and [saxophonist] Harold Land.”
Says pianist Steve Kuhn, who worked
with LaFaro in Stan Getz’s quartet: “Scott
told me once that one of his greatest experiences
listening to jazz was hearing Paul
Chambers walk. Scotty was very much
taken with PC and his ability to walk, and
when Scotty felt like just walking, he could
play his ass off.”
LaFaro shows great control on the
Feldman recording, playing precise, measured
ensemble parts, digging in to play
walking passages, and playing solo lines
the likes of which had never before been
heard on the bass. “Scott’s melodic phrasing
seemed integral and logical,” says
bassist Chuck Israels, who followed
LaFaro in the Bill Evans Trio. “He showed
a great deal of control of that part of his
playing on the recordings with Victor.
Later, a more interactive element began
to surface in Scott’s music.”
THE BREAKTHROUGH
The Bill Evans Trio with Scott LaFaro and
Paul Motian recorded Portrait in Jazz on
December 28, 1959. Evans had been
working with other great bassists before
that—Teddy Kotick, Sam Jones, Jimmy
Garrison, and Paul Chambers—but LaFaro
opened new doors. He was the bassist
who could push Evans to his limits.
Speaking to Adam Gopnik in The New
Yorker, Motian recalled, “[LaFaro] was
the one man who could be tough on Bill.
Like, if he didn’t think the music sounded
right—if it was great but not perfect—he’d
say to Bill, ‘Man, you’re just fucking up
the music. Go look at yourself in the mirror!’
He’d even say it to me, when he didn’t
think I was playing right. And he had
only been playing the bass for a few years.”
Portrait in Jazz was the ear-opening
shout-out that a new way of trio playing
had arrived. Using standards like “Autumn
Leaves,” “Witchcraft,” and “Come Rain or
Come Shine,” LaFaro broke from the traditional
time-keeping role, choosing instead
to play around the piano lines while letting
the drums outline a steady groove.
Evans called the approach “conversational.”
Notes Palombi: “On the surface, it
appears that Scott went from being an
average bassist to a super-human bassist
all by himself. That is partially true, and
you can hear the seeds of his soloing style
in 1958, but not of his accompanying style.
His transformation occurred when he
teamed up with two other musicians who
allowed him to be adventurous within the
trio. We may never have heard Scott play
the way he did on ‘Waltz for Debby’ if it
wasn’t for Bill Evans and in particular
Paul Motian.”
Notes Joe La Barbera, the last drummer
to play with Evans: “Paul Motian was
playing the time, and I think that was
exactly what Bill needed. The real interaction
was happening between Bill and Scott.”
“Everyone tends to label the trio’s concept as ‘group improvisation,’” says
bassist Stanley Clarke. “The word I find
to describe it is ‘interplay.’ There are a
few passages where they certainly do
improvise as a group, but Paul is mostly
playing time as if Scott is walking a fourto-
the- bar bass line.
“Prior to that trio, even Paul Chambers—
as great as he was—was a role player.
He laid down the rhythm, and then there
was a slot for him to play a solo. It was
all very regimented—Miles gave him a solo
every once in a while. What was cool
about the Bill Evans Trio was that regimentation
was thrown out the window,
there was a lot of interplay, and the music
was going in all directions—linear, forwards,
backwards.”
Says bassist Eddie Gomez, who played
with Evans from ’66 to ’77: “When you
look at the way Scotty played the bass,
that aspect by itself is extraordinary. But
the interactivity between all the instruments,
the dialogs, the space they created
was unique. I began to fathom that later
when I played with Bill: How much music
you can personally create is related to how
much you create as a group.”
Bassist Marc Johnson, who played with
Evans from ’78 until the pianist’s death
in ’80, told BASS PLAYER in November ’08:
“The things LaFaro did in-between piano
phrases and across the time were phenomenal
and made a deep impression on
me. It was a conceptual thing; he served
as a melodic counter-voice to everything
else that was happening. He wasn’t walking
all the time in 4/4, yet he had a real
groove with Bill and Paul Motian.
“When they played ballads, the groove
would go from first gear to second gear
and back to first gear with an implication
of double-time and other meters. He
played with ideas that went over the bar
line and obfuscated the one. His approach
was truly creative and beautiful.”
Israels observes that “the smaller the
group, the more dependent the music
becomes on the individual players, and it
is next to impossible to find opportunities
to work with musicians who are as prepared
individually and as an ensemble as did. We agreed on our musical aims and
we didn’t try to force the music, and we
all believed in each others’ talents. And
that was it.”
The ’61 Vanguard recordings—Sunday
at the Village Vanguard and Waltz for
Debby—deserve righteous reverence, but
another collection of live tracks, The 1960
Birdland Sessions [Fresh Sound], recorded
in March and April of that year, provide
a noteworthy addition to the trio’s legacy.
Broadcast on Symphony Sid’s radio show,
the sessions find LaFaro on fire, full of
reckless abandon, pushing and sparring
with Evans and Motian. Notes Grenadier,
“While I do love the Vanguard recordings,
I think I like the Birdland recordings done
about a year earlier even more. It’s great
to hear that trio really swinging and also
exploring the freedom that is highlighted
on the Vanguard tapes.”
The Bill Evans Trio recorded the studio
album Explorations on February 2,
1961, but most listeners agree that the
June 25 live tracks capture the group in
full bloom. Recorded in one day—two
matinees and three evening sets—of a twoweek
gig, the Village Vanguard albums
are now ranked among the top jazz
albums of all time. On that Sunday in June,
LaFaro reached into territory no other
bassist had explored.
THE TECHNIQUE
Up until the late ’50s, most jazz bassists
earned their livings playing in the lowest
third of the instrument. Pioneers like
Charles Mingus, Ray Brown, and Red
Mitchell began to expand the range, sometimes
reaching into thumb position. But
Scott LaFaro was the first to use the whole
range of the bass, up to the high G two
octaves above the open string. His speed
and two-finger right-hand plucking style,
plus his ability to pre-hear the lines he was
going for, gave LaFaro his saxophone-like
technique.
Gomez recalls a chance sighting at a
New York studio when he was 16 years
old: “One night Stan Getz was rehearsing
with Pete LaRoca, Steve Kuhn, and Scotty,
and I was peeking through a window watching him play. Scott’s technique seemed
unusual because it looked like he was not
using any standard fingering. He didn’t use
his thumb as an anchor—it looked like he
was playing a keyboard. For someone like
me who was studying the Simandl
approach, it looked awkward. But I was
enthralled by the fact that he was there and
I got to see him.”
“His forte was his virtuosity and ability
to make the bass a voice just like a
saxophone player or a guitar player,” says
Clarke. “The thing I really liked about
his playing was what he did with his right
hand—how he actually brushed across
the strings. He had a different way of
plucking.”
LaFaro was not alone in his quest for a
new bass aesthetic. Chuck Israels was one
of the new breed of innovators. “I was
deeply impressed with his abilities,” Israels
says, “the strength of his technique, his
knowledge of harmony and bebop phrasing,
plus his fluid way of translating what
we normally heard from saxophonists,
pianists, and guitarists onto the bass. The
breakthroughs that seem to be solely attributed
to him were happening in the music
of other bass players too—Steve Swallow,
Charlie Haden, and Albert Stinson all come
to mind. Scott visited a Don Friedman
recording session in which I was a participant
and quickly let me know that he
understood our shared area of interest. I
knew there was some overlap in our aesthetic
ideas.”
Notes Swallow: “Scott and Gary Peacock
were in the vanguard of a wave of
young players making fundamental changes
in the approach to the bass. They were lowering
their action, which allowed them the
possibility of legato phrasing throughout
the instrument, most significantly in the
upper register.” Clarke adds: “Throughout
bass history there are certain players I call
‘The Culminators.’ These guys are the culmination
of two or three players—this guy
tried this, but that guy tried that. Scott was
like that with the soloing thing. The bass
was moving forward at that time.”
High on LaFaro’s list of influences—as
with countless other players—is Ray Brown.
“The Ray Brown influence is striking,” says
Grenadier. “The sound and propulsiveness
of the beat are definitely a reflection of Ray’s
approach.” Palombi adds: “He was definitely
influenced by Ray Brown, although
I don’t think he was influenced in a traditional
way. You can hear it mainly in the
way Scott utilizes the diminished and wholetone
scales.”
Bassists in the early ’60s were still using
gut strings and searching for ways to effectively
amplify the instrument. Says Swallow:
“Players like Scott were making use of microphones, and some of us began to
wrap a mic in a cloth napkin and wedge it
below the bridge between the tailpiece and
the body of the instrument.” Many eyewitnesses
to LaFaro’s live performances report
that to be better heard, he would sometimes
step forward with his bass just before
taking a solo and step back afterward.
Said Marc Johnson: “Scotty’s sound was
unique and natural—so real and fluid-sounding.
He never used a pickup, and you never
heard any clicks or metal string noise,
because he used gut strings.”
To reach LaFaro’s technical and artistic
level, a bassist has to have good ears, musical
sense, and strong chops, in addition to
the passion and drive to go beyond being
merely good. “Scott was an incessant practice-
aholic,” says Palombi. “If a bass player
wants to be great like Scott, it’s going to literally
take eight hours of practice a day.”
Recalled LaFaro-Fernández: “In his
career years, Scotty still practiced basics
and techniques incessantly, just working
things out. He practiced the bass from his
old clarinet books, bowing melodies, bits
of classical pieces—he was working on his
arco technique then as well.”
Said Evans, “His technique was built
through fire—some kind of spark inside him
that took over, and he would just grab the
bass and work and work and work.”
THE END
On July 3, 1961, shortly after recording the
Village Vanguard sessions, LaFaro played
at the Newport Jazz Festival with saxophonist
Stan Getz, which was captured on Stan
Getz Special: Newport Jazz Festival [Audio
Fidelity]. This was Scott’s last performance
and recording. On July 5 he visited his
hometown of Geneva, New York, and after
midnight on July 6 he was on the road with
high school friend Frank Ottley when their
car crashed into a tree and burned, killing
both men. LaFaro was 25 years old.
“To this day, it is still very difficult to
deal with that loss—we were very close,”
says Kuhn. “The extraordinary talent he
was—full of life and a lot of positive energy.”
In a career that spanned a mere seven
years and some 30 albums, LaFaro established
a musical legacy that places him firmly
in the pantheon of great jazz bassists. Says
Stanley Clarke: “There are just certain guys
on the top of my list, and it would be wise
to listen to them if you want to be a complete
bass player. Along with Ron Carter,
Charlie Mingus, Richard Davis, and Oscar
Pettiford, Scott LaFaro is one of the guys.”
“I think about Scotty and Coltrane,” says
Kuhn. “They have influenced generations
of musicians and changed the course of the
music from that time going forward.”
Gomez concurs: “Scott is like Paul
Chambers—tree trunks of modern bass playing.
Everything after that is a development.
The trio just happened and then it was gone.
Scott was there at the right time and the
right moment. He was a visionary like Bill,
and their music came together like a cataclysmic
event that turned into an incredible
pasture of beauty.”
PLAY LIKE SCOTTY : 5 PATTERNS IN THE LAFARO STYLE
Even in this day of super-fast chops, pentatonic gnat-notes, and risky
reharmonizations, there are few bassists who come close to the virtuosic
technique Scott LaFaro developed in his mere seven years of playing
bass. To master these basic LaFaro licks and patterns, start slowly,
and play them in all 12 keys.
Example 1 shows how LaFaro might play over an Em7 chord. In bar
1 he uses an Em7 arpeggio on beats two and three and plays a D triad
on four. This is a clever way to outline the chord with colorful upper
tones—the 9th (F#) and 11th (A). In bar 2 the line comes down the E minor
scale in quarter-note triplets. LaFaro used eighth-note and quarter-note
triplets often, sometimes changing gears mid-line.
LaFaro mastered triplet arpeggios up and down the bass. Example 2
shows a Cmaj7# 11 starting on E and C, moving up in 3rds. This is a common
harmonic device LaFaro used, and he practiced these arpeggios to
perfection. By keeping each of the triplets in one left-hand position, he
would play three notes and then shift to the next three notes, moving his
left hand on each quarter-note beat. Start slowly and make sure you nail
the left-hand shifts. Sometimes LaFaro ghosted the last note of each
triplet, which helped the line swing and dance
a bit and made the quick shifts between positions
easier to manage.
LaFaro had a solid command of wholetone
scales and augmented (# 5) arpeggios.
Example 3 ascends with an eighth-note triplet
on a C7#5 arpeggio and descends with a quarter-
note triplet on the C whole-tone scale.
This once again shows his use of the time shift
from eighth- to quarter-note triplets.
Example 4’s pattern sits well on the bass,
but the rhythm is tricky. Look at the sequence
that begins with the high E, the third triplet
eighth-note on beat one. From this point
onward, LaFaro is using descending triads:
E–C–A, D–B–G, C–A–F, and so on. It is a scalar
sequence, but since the triads start on the
third eighth-note of the triplets, it has the
feeling of a metric modulation—a shift in the
fundamental rhythm.
One of the most common rhythms LaFaro
used was two quarter-note triplets followed
by two eighth-notes played within the triplet
rhythm. In Ex. 5, the line runs down the A natural
minor scale, jumping out of the scalar
sequence on beat four of bar 2. By using quarter-
note triplets during his solos, LaFaro
achieved a relaxed feeling. Quarter-note
triplets are obviously faster than quarter-notes
but slower than eighth-notes. This signature
technique can be heard in almost all of
LaFaro’s later solos with the Bill Evans Trio.
EVANS ON LAFARO
In these excerpts from producer George Klabin’s 1966
radio interview with Bill Evans—included in the Resonance
CD Pieces of Jade—the pianist offers insights into
Scott LaFaro’s musicianship and work with Evans’s trio.
FIRST IMPRESSIONS
I heard this tremendous talent who was trying to do
everything at once. He was overplaying his instrument,
he was trying to let out so much at once, that
he wasn’t really getting anything together in any
organized way—it was just bubbling over. . . . But you
could definitely hear what was there.
WITH THE TRIO
Scott had come into the job and expressed an interest in building and
developing as a trio, which is the thing that we needed. We needed to
have people that were interested in each other so we could spend a
year or two years just growing without any verbal ambitions, just allowing
the music to grow and allowing our talents to merge in a very natural
way. … It was rather a struggle for a couple of years—we didn’t get
too much work. But the trio did develop amazingly.
THE VANGUARD RECORDINGS
What you hear on those records are at least the
minimum standard of those two weeks. We were
quite dissatisfied, yet when we heard the tapes we
were quite excited because we heard that there
was a lot happening. We had some really marvelous
moments. Scott is heard to good advantage on
those records.
THE METHOD
It wasn’t one of those things like, “It’s 3 o’clock, and
now I’m going to play for an hour.” He would just
pick up [the bass] and get involved. And he would
get involved with maybe one figure, one particular
type of cross-fingering or cross-string fingering, or double-stop
or quadruple-stop, or whatever, and he would just work it and
work it and work it. . . . He would force himself farther into his intuitive
insight into the hidden mechanics, the secret mechanics of
stringed instruments. . . . It was not a studied approach, it was a
total encompassing, enveloping approach where he seemed to
master a whole area.
UP FROM THE ASHES: THE LAFARO PRESCOTT.
The Prescott bass Scott LaFaro played on his classic
recordings was all but destroyed in the car crash that
took his life. But thanks to a luthier’s labor of love,
the instrument can be heard once more.
The bass LaFaro recorded with before April 1958
was made in Mittenwald, Germany, according to the new
LaFaro biography Jade Visions. Scott and his father had
picked it out in 1954 shortly after he had begun working
professionally. That bass was stolen from LaFaro’s
car after a gig in Los Angeles when he ran into a coffee
shop for a late-night snack.
Bassist Red Mitchell helped LaFaro find a new
instrument—which would turn out to be his
ultimate bass—in a Los Angeles music store
called Stein’s on Vine. Made by Abraham
Prescott circa 1825, the e-sized flatback
had gamba (square) corners, rounded
Busetto-style lower bout corners, and a
41w-inch string length. Prescott was an American
bassmaker who usually built very large
instruments, but LaFaro’s bass was not
a typical Prescott. It was small and built
for speed, with a warm tone defined by
LaFaro’s Golden Spiral gut strings.
Scott loved the Prescott’s playability,
but the sound was not optimal for
him. In 1960 he recorded John Lewis Presents
Jazz Abstractions in a two-bass formation
playing alongside George Duvivier, who
introduced LaFaro to well-known Long Island luthier Samuel
Kolstein. Kolstein agreed to modify the Prescott’s sound by making
structural changes.
Kolstein’s improvements are evident in LaFaro’s 1961 recordings,
most notably the Village Vanguard sessions with Bill Evans.
The Prescott was in the car with LaFaro on the night he and a
friend died in a fiery crash. The bass was shattered and charred.
Helen LaFaro, Scott’s mother, sold the remains of the bass
back to Samuel Kolstein, knowing he would care for it.
Samuel’s son, Barrie Kolstein, eventually took on the arduous
task of restoring the instrument for display at the
1988 International Society of Bassists convention. The
incredible restoration has left the bass world with a
physical connection to LaFaro, one that can be played
and heard.
Kolstein lent the instrument to former Evans bassist
Marc Johnson for a recording with Eliane Elias, Something
for You [Blue Note]. “I had the action set a little
higher than Scotty would have, but it was eminently
playable in every way,” Johnson reported in April ’08.
“It has a fat, warm yet very clear sound, and when you
hit a note, it rings forever. It’s also very even through
each register.
“Scotty was such an iconic figure in the jazz bass world,
so the instrument is a talisman of sorts. Just having it in the
room with me was very special.”
Says Barrie Kolstein, “When Marc Johnson approached me
with his project, there was not even a second thought that this
would be the perfect person and venue for the Prescott to once
again be recorded.”
Is there a “LaFaro sound” inside the Prescott? “What Scotty created
came from his mind, heart, and soul,” says Kolstein. “The physicality
of his playing really was a byproduct of his spirituality.”
SELECTED DISCOGRAPHY
Compilation: Pieces of Jade,Resonance. With the Bill Evans Trio: (all on Riverside/OJC) Sunday at the Village Vanguard; Waltz for Debby; Explorations;Portrait in Jazz. With Stan Getz:
Stan the Man, Verve. With Stan Getz & Cal Tjader: The Stan Getz/Cal Tjader Sextet, Fantasy. With Ornette Coleman:Ornette!, Atlantic; The Art of the Improvisers,Atlantic; Free Jazz,
WEA/Warner. With John Lewis/Gunther Schuller: John Lewis Presents Jazz Abstractions, Atlantic. With Victor Feldman: (both on Contemporary) Latinsville!; The Arrival of Victor Feldman.With Marty Paich: The Broadway Bit (w/I Get a Boot Out of You), Collector’s Choice. With Booker Little: Booker Little, JVC Japan. With Hampton Hawes: For Real!, Contemporary/OJC.With Pat Moran: This Is Pat Moran:Complete Trio Sessions, Fresh Sound.
BOOKS
Jade Visions: The Life and Music of Scott LaFaro, Helene LaFaro- Fernández [University of North Texas Press].The definitive biography.Scott LaFaro: 15 Solo Transcriptions,Phil Palombi [Phil Palombi Music;www.philpalombi.com]. Accurate transcriptions from the Village Vanguard sessions.The Bill Evans Trio—Volume I, 1959–1961 [Hal Leonard]. Piano, bass, and drum
parts in score format.
The editor recommends: The Jazz Bass Book, John Goldsby [Backbeat]. Historical and musical information about LaFaro and many of his contemporaries.