Bud Powell: Stockholm and Oslo, 1962

Sixty years ago this week, during the first week of 1962, Bud Powell was in Paris stealing drinks. As author Peter Pullman writes in his biography, Wail: The Life of Bud Powell, the pianist was at the Blue Note resorting to an old bar trick. Between sets, he'd quietly approach someone else's drink, stealthily snatch the glass off a table, down its contents and return the glass to where it had stood. Then Powell would move on. Except on one particular night, the victim was so offended by the obnoxious move that he called over the manager, U.S. expatriate Ben Benjamin, and told him what had happened. Powell was fired and replaced by pianist Kenny Drew.

Powell had been in Paris since 1959. He flew over in March of that year with his companion and overseer, Mrs. Altevia Edwards, and her young son, to play Club Saint-Germain. Work had dried up for him in New York, where clubs and jazz had moved beyond bebop. Paris, by contrast, was eager to welcome American jazz legends for long stretches. Powell remained in Paris gigging for several years, but by 1962, he had fallen into another funk brought on by mental illness.  

Soon after being let go by the Blue Note in early '62, Powell and Edwards decided to vacation in Switzerland. Once there, Edwards secured Powell two, one-night gigs—one in Lausanne and another in Geneva. Fortunately, Edwards was able to line up an additional round of gigs at Cafe Montmartre in Copenhagen, Denmark, followed by an invitation from a new club in Stockholm, Sweden—the Gyllene Cirkeln (the Golden Circle), managed by Abbe Johansson.

Powell opened at Copenhagen's Café Montmartre in the first week of February and remained there for two months. On April 7, he began a run at Stockholm's Golden Circle. According to Neil Tesser's liner notes accompanying the newly released Bud Powell: Stockholm and Oslo, 1962 (Steeplechase), one of his dates was captured by a fan listening to the radio:

“As the [Stockholm] engagement progressed, Johansson arranged to have two nights professionally recorded; more than 15 years later, those tapes first surfaced on SteepleChase vinyl as 'At The Golden Circle (Volumes 1-5).' But on April 17—two nights prior to the first 'official' club recording—Powell’s performance was taped for an upcoming broadcast by the Swedish national radio network. That broadcast caught the attention of a medical doctor and jazz aficionado named Jan Forsby, who made sure to tape the broadcast off the air. His recording—purchased by SteepleChase founder Nils Winther nearly three decades later—makes up the Stockholm portion of the album in your hands."

The April tracks that were previously unreleased were I Hear Music, Someone to Watch Over Me, Hot House and Just as Though You Were Here (mislabeled in the notes and track listing as If You Were Here; SteepleChase founder Nils Winther tells me the track was announced incorrectly by the radio announcer at the time and picked up).

I guessed that Just as Though You Were Here was taken at an almost slow-motion pace because the bassist and drummer were unfamiliar with the Eddie DeLange and John Benson Brooks song, recorded first by Frank Sinatra and the Pied Pipers in 1942 while the singer was still with Tommy Dorsey. Nils confirms this, mentioning that the radio DJ at the time talked about how Powell often would teach his bassist and drummer a tune they did not know.

The Oslo, Norway, tracks—Dance of the Infidels, I Remember Clifford and Hot House—were recorded in November 1962 at the city's Metropol Jazz House.

Powell is in lucid form on both sessions. In Stockholm, he was backed by Thorbjörn Hultcranz (b) and Sune Spångberg (d). In Oslo, the sidemen were Erik Amundsen and Ole Jacob Hansen. While this isn't Powell at his peak for Prestige in the late 1940s or Verve in the 1950s, the album's sound is fantastic and he exhibits emotional brilliance at every turn. This album features the only known recording by Powell of Just as Though You Were Here. How he navigates the ballad is extraordinary.

Hats off to SteepleChase founder Nils Winther. As Neil Tesser points out in the liners, the Covid lockdown allowed Nils time to explore projects that he had put on the side. This was one of them, and we're lucky to have these recordings by Powell.

Bud Powell died in 1966..

JazzWax clips: Here's Straight No Chaser...



Here's I Remember Clifford...



And here's Just as Though You Were Here...