Minority

Minority is Gigi Gryce's tune rather than one of Evans's own, a minor key bop line from the middle fifties that horn players took up first. It moves quickly and turns hard, and it asks for exactly the playing Evans is least remembered for.

He put it at the head of Everybody Digs Bill Evans, recorded in December 1958 and released by Riverside the year after, which is where the 1959 comes from. Sam Jones is on bass and Philly Joe Jones on drums, and Evans had left Miles Davis's sextet only weeks earlier, after eight months in the band that made his name. The album took its title from its own sleeve, which carried endorsements from Miles, Cannonball Adderley, George Shearing and Ahmad Jamal. What the record opens with is not the hushed player of the reputation: single lines taken at speed, straight through the changes, over a rhythm section that gives no quarter. The same session produced Peace Piece, and having both on one record is the argument for it.

The transcription follows the performance as played, with the left and right hands on separate MIDI channels. That is worth more at this tempo than at any other: the right hand can be lifted out and taken at half speed until the phrasing sits, while the left keeps the comping exactly where Evans put it.