I suppose I prefer solo, but I don’t have the dimension to really be a solo pianist entirely. I just haven’t expanded that part of my playing that much. But the feeling of playing solo, is a marvelous feeling, as you know. You have complete control of the nuances and the rubatos and so forth.

— Bill Evans, 1977, interview with Marian McPartland

About 2 years before that, he had recorded the utterly phenomenal Alone (Again) album. On that album is a recording of What Kind of Fool Am I? (available on YouTube). It’s something I started picking apart 2 years ago and simply couldn’t lift — I had looked at the transcription and said to myself: you’re not ready for this yet. Well, I definitely had gotten something out of it 2 years ago, and so it goes now, during this recent attempt. I flipped to the transcription again — now the patterns make more sense to me. Simple things like — you’re using the altered dominant 7 chord how? As a flat 6 alt 7 leading to the dominant sus chord? Maybe some theory book can explain it, maybe as some kind of 2-5-1 with some kind of tritone substitution that replaces the 2 with the flat 6 alt? But hearing it in the third bar of the melody is just brilliant.

What else is brilliant?

  • The use of pedal tones a la Bach to create tensions.
  • Can’t sleep on the left hand — so much of the interest in solo piano comes from strong left hand — bane of my existence as a pianist!!
    • Adding the low bass note adds so much.
  • The absolutely brilliant use of the dominant sharp 11 flat 9 chord (i.e., major triad built on the #11 of a dom7 chord) to support the melody. And other chords too. Sus chords in particularly are huge in his vocabulary — and not in a cheesy way.
  • walking up a scale in block chords

The trouble with learning transcriptions — you can’t really hope to learn the generative power behind the music by simply learning this transcription. This is a person’s life work that you’re hearing. Many of the bars can become their own exercises.