Pianist Walter Bishop Jr. was born in New York of West Indian parentage like many Jazz players (Sonny Rollins, Randy Weston,Arthur Taylor etc.) in 1927 and died in 1998. Bishop was the most swinging and hardest driving of the piano players who came out of the Bud Powell school of playing and there were many. Powell was to the piano what Charlie Parker was to the alto saxophone. Bishop was on the major league Jazz scene in New York from 1947 and played with Art Blakey, Miles Davis and was Charlie Parker's pianist from 1951 to Parker's death in 1955. Ironically Bishop never recorded an album under his own name until this one in 1961. It came out on a small independent label called Jazztime and was called "Speak Low". Walter Bishop displays his wares in fine fashion here with solid backing by Jimmy Garrison on bass and Granville (G.T.) Hogan on drums. The great Canadian Jazz icon Don Thompson told me back in 1961 to buy this album as he said "this is what a piano trio should sound like!" I agree and I think you will too!

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