The 100 Best Live Recordings - No. 94: Gene Harris at Maybeck: Maybeck Recital Hall Series Volume Twenty-Three

No. 94 - Gene Harris at Maybeck: Maybeck Recital Hall Series Volume Twenty-Three (Concord Records, 1992)

Concord Records

I began listening to jazz properly while in pharmacy school in the early 1980s. Like a zillion other young adults coming of age in the 1970s, the extent of my jazz collection consisted of Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue (Columbia, 1959). The extent of my classical music was Beethoven’s 5th Symphony. The performance I purchased hot off the presses in 1974 was Carlos Kleiber and the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra on Deutsche Grammophon, Cat. No. 4474002. Fifty years later, this turned out to be a good start for the rest of my musical life.

Break forward to the mid-1980s, while in graduate school, I listened to Mississippi Public Radio’s “Jazz with Sam Sherrill” broadcasting from WMPN 91.3 FM (Jackson, MS). Sherrill was a devotee of William “Count” Basie’s big band and small group recordings. He liked Basie’s blues and swing sensibilities. As part of his show, Sherrill featured younger artists steeped in the Basie tradition, pianists like Monty Alexander, Junior Mance, Ahmad Jamal, Ray Bryant, Wynton Kelly, and…Gene Harris. One evening, Sherrill played in its entirety the Gene Harris All-Star Big Band, Tribute to Count Basie (Concord, 1987). Hidden in this recording were Ahmad Jamal’s “Night Mist Blues” and Ray Brown’s “Dejection Blues,” on which Harris played with the same bluesy economy as Basie. I had found my guy.

All of this, plus the previous entry in this list, The Ray Brown Trio - Bam Bam Bam (Concord, 1989) contributes to my personal story of music revelation that I try to put to paper in these reviews. Gene Harris became an obsession. I listened carefully to all of his music released after 1980. My overwhelming impression of Harris’ artistry and pianism was that it “smiled.” Harris’ playing was always full of joy and all the positives of what music offers. He divines all that is good and happy from the blues. W. C. Handy once said, “The blues are happy as well as sad—sometimes joyous, sometimes jubilant.¹”

Nowhere is this shown than in Harris’ solo performance at the Maybeck Recital Hall in Berkeley, CA. Between 1989 and 1995, Concord Records sponsored and recorded the recitals of 42 pianists at Maybeck. These releases received universal praise. Harris’ recording is volume 23 of the series. I stated in an earlier article² that Harris received the only standing ovation of the series. The only reference I can find of this is in my earlier article. That was romantic dreaming, and I apologize for such rubbish.

Harris performed ten songs: eight standards and two original compositions. There are three blues, five hard-core jazz standards that harbor a mini, three-song homage to Frank Sinatra. Infused in these songs is Harris’ smiling musicality. The opening “Lu’s Blues” is an exacting example of a modified 12-bar blues played slowly. Harris shows his command of tempo and pace, enabling his left hand to anchor the song's pace, freeing his right hand to deliver embellishments. While addressing the blues, Harris includes his own “Elephant Blossom Blues” and “Blues For Rhonda.” Oscar Peterson’s treatment of the blues densely informed Harris’ approach, so much so that Harris described himself as a “blues piano player with chops.” The blues are squarely in Harris’ wheelhouse.

The pianist also includes the blues in some more unlikely places. Blues phrases and virtuosic blues playing pepper “Penthouse Serenade.” The same is true of Harris’ treatment of “They Can’t Take That Away From Me,” where he furnishes the song with orchestrally constructed blues passages. Harris’ most ingenious injection of the blues is in a very dark performance of “Angel Eyes,” part of the Frank Sinatra homage here, with “In The Wee Small Hours Of The Morning” and a staid, balladic “My Funny Valentine.” Harris is quite the ballads player as well.

Pure, unadulterated smiles come from this exceptional live solo recording by an equally exceptionally talented Gene Harris.

1. Handy, W. C. “Father of the Blues: An Autobiography,” (Macmillan, 1941).

2. Bailey, C. Michael. “Gene Harris.” All about Jazz, Allaboutjazz.com, 10 Aug. 2005, www.allaboutjazz.com/gene-harris-gene-harris-by-c-michael-bailey. Accessed 14 July 2025.