“The Peacocks”
Composed by Jimmy Rowles.
Recorded by Jimmy Rowles for Halcyon on April 7, 1974 in New York.
Jimmy Rowles, piano and Rusty Gilder, bass.
The story:
I have spent many contemplative hours listening to the music of pianists Jimmy Rowles (1918-1996) and Bill Evans (1929-1980).
Jimmy Rowles was one of the rare musicians who was as brilliant as an accompanist as he was a soloist. Understatement was his strength, and his best solos often sound preplanned, spare, with each note perfectly chosen for its color. His keyboard touch was like velvet. He also composed interesting music, including the Impressionistic piece “The Peacocks.”
Bill Evans was one of the titans of jazz piano from the late 1950s until his death in 1980. His refashioning of the jazz piano trio, which started in the 1960s, redefined the roles of bass and drums in such a setting. Evans is credited with influencing the harmonic language of jazz piano. Evans’s harmonic approach was influenced by Impressionist composers Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel. His versions of jazz standards, as well as his own compositions, often featured thorough reharmonizations. Musical features he employed included added tone chords, modal inflections and unconventional harmonic substitutions and modulations. (1)
Rowles, whose birth name was James George Hunter, was a pianist, vocalist, and composer. He was born in Spokane, Washington. He later spoke about his early life: “My real father, whose name was Hunter, passed when I was three months old, and I was raised by my mother and a stepfather who adopted me and gave me his name. My mother had studied guitar and she played the piano real well by ear…” (2)
Rowles’s initial jazz inspiration came from pianist Teddy Wilson. He also listened carefully to the music of the big bands of the swing era, and took note of the relationship between what the bands were playing melodically with what was going on underneath that. What was going on underneath was an unending source of ideas for him when accompanying either a singer or an instrumentalist on piano.
Rowles met the tenor saxophonist Ben Webster in late 1939. After moving to Los Angeles in 1940, with the assistance of Webster, he integrated himself into the jazz community there. He joined Lester and Lee Young’s group in 1941. (At right: Jimmy Rowles in the 1940s.)
By September of 1942, he was a member of Benny Goodman’s band, and appeared with them in the United Artists feature film The Powers Girl. Rowles relished telling the story of how his audition to get into the Goodman band went: “‘The audition took place in MCA’s Beverly Hills office in a studio musicians called ‘the blood room,’ because so many had sweated blood in it while trying out for new jobs. Benny met me there and asked what I’d like to play, just the two of us. I appeared to mull this over, but actually had decided earlier that I’d play something I had worked out with Lester Young, a version of ‘Body and Soul’ in the key of E, or four sharps. Customarily the tune is played in either C-natural or D-flat. Benny was somewhat at a loss trying to keep up with me, because it put him (on his clarinet) in six sharps. I played the hell out of it, while Benny struggled. I had him at a disadvantage, which is exactly what I had planned. Impressed, Benny hired me then and there.” (3)
By early 1943, Rowles was a member of Woody Herman’s band. He entered military service later in 1943, and rejoined Herman upon his discharge in April of 1946. In early 1947, he joined Butch Stone’s band briefly, then rejoined Goodman in Los Angeles in mid-March of 1947. He worked with Goodman through June of 1947, and began free-lancing with various bands in Los Angeles then. Rowles worked regularly with Georgie Auld in early 1949, then began an association with Jerry Gray in late 1949 that lasted into 1952. By 1953, Rowles had begun his career as a free-lance studio musician in Los Angeles. In this capacity, among many other studio calls, he began recording frequently accompanying female vocalists, including Billie Holiday, with whom he had first worked in 1941. (Above left: Billie Holiday and Jimmy Rowles – their musical communion was special.)
In late 1956 Rowles accompanied Ella Fitzgerald at the Mocambo nightclub in Hollywood. He then appeared on several recording sessions with her in the 1960s before joining Ella in 1981 (replacing Paul Smith) as her regular accompanist for nearly three years. In 1982 Rowles appeared on Ms. Fitzgerald’s final collaboration with Nelson Riddle, The Best Is Yet to Come. His song “Baby, Don’t You Quit Now,” written with the great lyricist Johnny Mercer, was included on her final album, All That Jazz, released in 1989.
In the 1950s Rowles frequently accompanied Billie Holiday and Peggy Lee. In January of 1957, along with other heavyweights, he supported Billie Holiday in a group of recordings that were marketed in an LP package entitled: Billie Holiday – Body and Soul. It is among Ms. Holiday’s best late work, and the accompaniment she receives from Rowles and the other musicians is superlative.(4)
Rowles was praised as an accompanist by many female singers. Carmen McRae, whom he accompanied on her 1972 live LP album The Great American Songbook, described him as “the guy every girl singer in her right mind would like to work with.”
In 1983 Rowles mentored the young Canadian jazz pianist Diana Krall in Los Angeles, shortly after she left The Berklee College of Music in Boston. He worked with her to developed her playing abilities, and encouraged her to add singing to her presentation. In 1994, he accompanied jazz singer Jeri Brown on A Timeless Place, recording an album containing only his own compositions. “A Timeless Place” is the title of Rowles’s composition “The Peacocks,” with a lyric composed by singer Norma Winstone.
Rowles’s abilities as a pianist were hardly limited to the role of accompanist. A good portion of his career was spent as an improvising musician, recording with, among many others, Ben Webster, Stan Getz, Zoot Sims, Red Mitchell, Sweets Edison, Henry Mancini and his own daughter Stacy, a trumpeter. His musical collaboration with composer/arranger Mancini covered more than twenty years. He also recorded as a solo pianist. His interpretations of the music of Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn are extremely rewarding. He also sang occasionally, but his singing is an acquired taste. (Above left: Rowles in the 1950s with drummer Art Mardigan and bassist Red Mitchell.)
Rowles moved to New York from Los Angeles in 1973 for several years after an appearance at the Newport Jazz Festival, and performed there regularly, often with Al Cohn and Zoot Sims, at such Manhattan venues as Bradley’s, the Knickerbocker Saloon and the Village Vanguard. He had a relationship with the singer Carol Sloane at that time. He recorded quite often, including an album with tenor saxophonist Stan Getz called The Peacocks, in 1977. In 1980, he recorded Jimmy Rowles Plays Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn, and in the mid-80’s made several albums for Contemporary. In 1994, he recorded his last album, Lilac Time, for Kokopelli Records. (5)
Rowles, a left-hander, was also a talented sketch artist.
When Rowles died in 1996, he was survived by his wife, Dorothy, of Burbank, California; daughter Stacy, of North Hollywood, California; another daughter, Stephanie, of Cambria, California; and a son, Gary, of Philomath, Oregon.
“The Peacocks” is Jimmy Rowles’s best-known composition. The Rowles recording of it presented here is its first and is musically pristine. Since this recording appeared, dozens of artists have recorded cover versions of “The Peacocks.” Although Rowles’s 1977 recording of “The Peacocks” with Stan Getz is very good, perhaps the greatest interpretation of it by another artist was by jazz pianist Bill Evans. (See below.)
“The Peacocks” is one of many jazz tunes performed on the soundtrack of Bertrand Tavernier’s 1986 feature film ‘Round Midnight. That film presented jazz tenor saxophonist Dexter Gordon as an actor, in the leading role. His acting received much critical praise.
Rowles’s debut recording of “The Peacocks,” which can aptly be called haunting, begins with an Impressionistic four-bar introduction. Although there is a bass present on this recording (played by Rusty Gilder), it is barely audible, something that is the fault of the recording technicians, not the musicians. That is unfortunate because Rowles set the tempo for this performance at a very slow pace, and his piano notes often hang in the air as a result, something I’m sure he intended. The bass could have been used throughout (and probably was) to create spare, subtle counterlines under the piano sounds to add sonoric and harmonic balance. As it is, we have Rowles’s piano, essentially, presenting the melody of “The Peacocks.”
The form of “The Peacocks” is AABA with each section eight bars in length. The first eight bars reveal that the A section has two different musical halves, A1 and A2. A1 is the basic primary melody, which is gently winsome; A2, which descends then ascends, is decidedly darker. The secondary or bridge melody (B) consists of upward then downward fragments (8 bars) employing unusual intervals. Rowles finishes the first chorus with an 8-bar recapitulation of the A section.
The second chorus begins with the A section for 8 bars then goes into the bridge and returns to the A section before a delightful cadence and Impressionistic finale.
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“The Peacocks”
Composed by Jimmy Rowles; this performance was developed by Bill Evans.
Recorded by The Bill Evans Trio for Warner Brothers Records on August 25, 1977 in Hollywood.
Bill Evans, piano; Eddie Gomez, bass; Eliot Zigmund, drums.
The story and the music:
Bill Evans’s first studio recording of “The Peacocks” was made in late August 1977 as a part of his wonderful Warner Brothers LP entitled: You Must Believe in Spring. I present this performance because it, like Rowles’s own recording presented above, represents a fresh and inspired interpretation, but in this case by one of the masters of modern jazz piano. Evans incorporated “The Peacocks” into his regular performance repertoire in the last few years of his life (he died in 1980). Several live performances of it were recorded, however few of them have the magical blend of intimacy and passion found in this one.
Evans begins this performance without any introduction. One notices immediately, in addition to his crystalline keyboard touch, the sensitive support he gets from bassist Eddie Gomez and the whispering rhythms of Eliot Zigmund’s drums and cymbals. The tempo chosen by Evans is leisurely. In addition, he leaves spaces between musical phrases, that are filled masterfully by Gomez and Zigmund.
When this recording was made, the musical landscape of the United States (and many other places) was awash in the sounds created by various electronic instruments, including pianos and basses. Bill Evans himself was caught-up in this trend. Here is what he said about it: “I don’t think too much about the electronic thing, except that it’s kind of fun to have it as an alternate voice. … [It’s] merely an alternate keyboard instrument, that offers a certain kind of sound that’s appropriate sometimes. I find that it’s a refreshing auxiliary to the piano—but I don’t need it … I don’t enjoy spending a lot of time with the electric piano. I play it for a period of time, then I quickly tire of it, and I want to get back to the acoustic piano.” He commented that electronic music “…just doesn’t attract me. I’m of a certain period, a certain evolution. I hear music differently. For me, comparing electric bass to acoustic bass is sacrilege.” (1) I agree with that statement. The natural resonance of an acoustic bass is one of the sonic joys of any musical ensemble in which it is being played, especially if it is being played by a talented musician.
I must mention the sound of Eddie Gomez’s acoustic bass on this recording. I am quite sure that he used an electronic pick-up on his instrument to feed its sound into an amplifier. Consequently, the sound that we hear is very similar to the buzzing sound of an electric bass. In the decades since this recording was made, bassists who understand the importance of the natural resonance of a string bass (including Eddie Gomez), have largely abandoned the electronic pickup, and instead amplify the natural resonance of the instrument by simply placing a microphone strategically near its F-holes where it can capture the natural sound of the instrument without distortion. A quality amplifier will do the rest. (Above: Eddie Gomez in 2018. Notice the two microphones and an apparent electronic pickup on the tailpiece of his bass. I will leave it to bass experts to explain the purpose of the pickup in this set-up.)
Stylistic characteristics aside, the major difference between the Rowles and Evans performances of “The Peacocks” is that Evans, in the second half of his, improvises for an entire chorus. The jazz that he creates definitely complements the unusual melodic lines and intervals Rowles had composed.
Coincidentally, Bill Evans, like Jimmy Rowles, was left-handed.
The recordings presented with this post were digitally remastered by Mike Zirpolo. I must thank my friend and musical guru Dennis Roden for providing valuable insights into how “The Peacocks” is constructed.
Notes and links:
(1) The synopsis of Bill Evans’s approach to music comes from the Wikipedia post on him.
(2) Dancing on the Carpet …a profile of Jimmy Rowles, by Whitney Balliett, The New Yorker April 1, 1974, 47.
(3) Benny Goodman …The Record of a Legend, by D. Russell Connor (1984), 147.
(4) “Billie Holiday – Body and Soul must be a contender for that “finest album” spot. It catches her at a time when the melodic invention and rhythmic suppleness of earlier days has given way to a more deliberate, almost speech-derived style which places greater emphasis on the lyric than on the harmonies.” – PENGUIN GUIDE TO JAZZ
“Surrounded by exceptional musicians, Billie Holiday expresses a contained but palpable pain which, even if we could neglect to take it seriously, reveals the inner narrative and almost biographical dimension of the words of these standards, and offers the privilege of hearing them like never before, and probably never since.” – JAZZ MAGAZINE
- Billie Holiday (vocals)
- Ben Webster (tenor sax)
- Harry “Sweets” Edison (trumpet)
- Jimmy Rowles (piano)
- Barney Kessel (guitar)
- Red Mitchell (bass)
- Alvin Stoller or Larry Bunker (drums)
Hollywood, California, January 1957
(5) Information about Jimmy Rowles’s career was extracted from the Wikipedia post on him.
Here is a link to Bill Evans reinterpreting Duke Ellington’s “Reflections in D,” after we hear Maestro Ellington’s first recording of it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6tETjHbXyCs
Beyond superb, Mike. These are two of my favorite players, any instrument, in a lifetime of listening to jazz that began when I was eight in 1950. Your columns are inevitably richly detailed; this one, even in the company of your other work, stands out. Thank you so much.
Thank you Rick. Your interest in swingandbeyond.com and kind words are much appreciated.
A few years ago, I heard the song “Infinity (888),” by the late rapper XXXTentacion featuring Joey Badass. I got hooked on the sample: “The Peacocks” by Bill Evans and Stan Getz. This version is from a concert in Antwerp, Belgium, in 1974. It was released on record more than twenty years later, and it wasn’t sampled for “Infinity (888)” until 2018. AllMusic reviewer Ken Dryden called this version lush. For me, Evans and Getz set the tone for autumn perfectly. A bit melancholic, but beautiful.