Music Mon ~ Gemini Two-fer: Erroll Garner, Barry Manilow

As the Sun remains in Gemini I'm sticking with the two-fer style of last Monday, last Friday and the weekend. Two musical birthdays this week: one singer - still with us, the other musician left us in 1977:
Barry Manilow (17 June 1943) and Erroll Garner (15 June 1921). Most people know of the former, not so many, I suspect, the latter. The former, a singer and songwriter of sentimental romantic pop songs, the latter a jazz pianist, widely popular in his day, and still affectionately remembered by jazz enthusiasts. Both though have been, to some extent, the target of much mean-minded criticism. Why? Too many ordinary people enjoyed their talents. To find favour with some critics an artist, of whatever ilk, has to appeal only to a coterie of "hip" and "cool" would-be elites, should be virtually unintelligible to everyday folk who just enjoy a good tune and a sentimental ballad.

In Erroll Garner's case, though loved and respected by fellow-pianists, he was not regarded, in his time, as "one of the elite", probably due to his ability to bridge the gap between jazz and popular audiences. "We can't be having the Great Unwashed appreciating jazz", I'd bet his critics were declaring archly.

Garner's style was unique, self taught. He started playing aged 3, a complete natural, he never learned to read music, didn't need to, it was simply a part of him. As was written by Richard Cook & Brian Morton in The Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD, 6th Edition:

“Erroll Garner was one of a kind. He was as outré as the great beboppers, yet bop was alien to him, even though he recorded with Char­lie Parker. He swung mightily, yet he stood outside the swing tradition; he played orchestrally, and his style was swooningly romantic, yet he could be as merciless on a tune as Fats Waller. He never read music, but he could play a piece in any key, and delighted in deceiving his rhythm sections from night to night. His tumbling, percussive, humorous style was entirely his own.”

As for Berry Manilow, in an interview with Eric Spitznagel in Vanity Fair, while discussing critics the interviewer asked:

I read somewhere that when you met Bob Dylan, he hugged you and called you an inspiration. Are you sure he was being serious?

Manilow: I wish I knew, but that’s what I remember him doing. We were at a Seder at Burt Bacharach’s place, and he walked right up to me and hugged me and said, “Don't stop what you’re doing, man. We're all inspired by you.” It was very important for me at the time, because those were the days when the critics were just killing me. They would have annihilated me if they had the chance.

Interviewer: I’m sorry, I’m still trying to digest the idea of you and Bob Dylan and Burt Bacharach at a Seder.

Manilow: Isn’t that great? Frank Sinatra also said a kind thing about me around that same time. Somebody asked him about me and he said, “He’s next.” That meant a lot. Despite what the critics were saying, I did what I could do and I made the most beautiful music I knew how to make.

Here they are then:

Erroll Garner with a famous piece he wrote himself - Misty; and one he didn't:







One Manilow wrote: I Made It Through the Rain (he did too!)




And one he didn't write, Weekend in New England was written by Randy Edelman (another Sun Gemini by the way - born 10 June 1947).




I was going to leave it at the music and refrain from delving into their astrology, but having prepared this post, a previous tag popped up for Barry Manilow, and I found that I'd already looked at his chart in this 2010 post. Erroll Garner's natal chart is available at astro.com, here.