Jade Visions

Jade Visions: The Life and Music of Scott LaFaro
Helene LaFaro-Fernandez
University of North Texas Press, 2009

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This is not so much a review of Jade Visions as it is a chance for me to say some stuff about Scott LaFaro, whose life and work have really intrigued me recently.

Scott LaFaro was a jazz bassist who died in an automobile accident in 1961 at the age of 25, and is best remembered as a member of the first Bill Evans Trio. Jade Visions is not the biography I assumed it was when I got it via interlibrary loan a few months ago. But it fills a void, since there is no other existing Scott LaFaro bio to my knowledge. The book is not without value, but much of it, alas, is poorly written and even amateurish.

While the authorship is credited to LaFaro’s sister, Helene LaFaro Fernandez, there are other hands in the book. Most of these are in the 100+ pages of appendices and other back matter. These contributions range from musical analyses to remembrances of people who knew “Scotty,” to insights of the luthier who restored his 1825 Prescott bass, severely damaged in the crash that killed him.

My interest in Scott LaFaro revived last fall, in a case of one thing leading to another, and another after that. There’s a guy in France who writes guitar transcriptions and makes them available to his Patreon supporters, of which I am one. He sent around a link to “Waltz for Debby,” the Bill Evans tune, and I got totally hooked on its very cool chord changes.

“Waltz for Debby” is probably Evans’s best-known tune. He wrote it in the early 1950s, and several years later the writer Gene Lees added lyrics, which were in the loss-of-innocence vein. Tony Bennett recorded the song a couple of times. His 1975 version, with Evans on piano, brings tears to my eyes. (An earlier version, not so much.)

But “Waltz for Debby” is essentially an instrumental. The Bill Evans Trio recorded it as such in a now-legendary date at the Village Vanguard in June 1961, shortly before LaFaro was killed. LaFaro’s bass lines flow like oil.

“He had a lyrical sensibility that reached its pinnacle in his work with ... Bill Evans,” Gene Lees writes in the intro to Jade Visions. 

Evans, of course, also recognized LaFaro’s abilities, which the bassist had not fully harnessed when the two first met. “He was a marvelous player and talent,” Evans said, “but it was bubbling out of him almost like a gusher. Ideas were rolling out on top of each other; he could barely handle it.”

LaFaro himself felt his playing ran contrary to prevailing standards. “My ideas are so different from what is generally acceptable nowadays,” he told The Jazz Review in 1960, “that I sometimes wonder if I am a jazz musician. I remember that Bill and I used to reassure each other some nights kiddingly that we really were jazz musicians.”

In addition to Bill Evans, Scott LaFaro also played, during his brief career, with such luminaries as Hank and Thad Jones, Roy Haynes, Hampton Hawes, and even Benny Goodman. He also played on Ornette Coleman’s landmark Free Jazz album, which featured a double quartet. Ornette later named a tune “The Alchemy of Scott LaFaro.”

While it may not be the biography I anticipated, there is still much value in Jade Visions. It is a tragedy that LaFaro died so young, and in view of that, it is remarkable how great his influence has been. As a composer he completed only two works: the titular “Jade Visions,” and “Gloria’s Step.” Both were recorded by the trio that June night in 1961. “Gloria’s Step” is probably the better known of the two, and is widely performed to this day. Even I have fiddled with the chords. My favorite versions, apart from the trio’s, include a bass and guitar duet with Miroslav Vitous and Bireli Lagrene, and Cyrus Chestnut on his 2015 album A Million Colors In Your Mind. There are plenty of others. I’m embedding a version by someone named A.J. Luca, who performed it (credited erroneously to Bill Evans) as a piano major at a music school somewhere.

Bill Evans Trio, June 1961. L-R: Scott LaFaro, Bill Evans, Paul Motian.