The self-taught pianist was a Chicago native born with limited vision and brittle bone disease. By age 20 he was completely blind, but steadily employed. He moved to New York in 1961 and worked with Dinah Washington, but within two years, he had broken both his hips. Afterward, he slowed down but remained a guest musician with pianist Barry Harris and drummer Billy Higgins.
A memorial will be held Monday, March 31, at New York's St. Peter's Church (East 54 Street entrance between 3rd and Lexington.)
Chris Anderson (born 1926 in Chicago - died February 4, 2008 in Manhattan, NYC) is a jazz pianist who might be best known as an influence on Herbie Hancock.
Self-taught, he began in Chicago clubs in the mid-1940s and played with Von Freeman and Charlie Parker, among others. Hired as Sarah Vaughan's accompanist, he lasted six weeks with the cantankerous singer; fired in New York, he stayed there. In 1960 he had what might be his best regarded album in which he with bassist Bill Lee and drummer Art Taylor. His student Herbie Hancock praised him highly saying that, "After hearing him play just once, I begged him to let me study with him."[1]
Despite the respect of his peers, Anderson had difficulty finding work or popular acclaim due in large to his disabilities. He is blind and his bones are unusually fragile causing numerous fractures. This at times compromised his ability to perform at the times or places requested. That stated his most recent CD was in 2002 when he was well into his 70s
Chris Anderson, a jazz pianist whose sophisticated and personal approach to harmony made him a pronounced influence on many other players, notably Herbie Hancock, died in Manhattan on Monday. He was 81.
The cause was complications of a stroke, said Al Sutton, a longtime friend and archivist of Mr. Anderson’s recordings, who said that he left no immediate survivors.
Mr. Anderson had a thoughtful and rewardingly deliberative style; he could give the impression of creating new harmonic sequences in the course of an improvisation. He often drew his repertory from the standard songbook, including music by Duke Ellington, one of the few jazz pianists he claimed as an inspiration.
Mr. Anderson was born in Chicago with limited vision and the congenital condition known as brittle bone disease. By age 20, as a result of cataracts, he was completely blind.
By then Mr. Anderson, a self-taught pianist, was already working steadily in Chicago. His style endeared him to both visiting luminaries and local musicians. In 1950, when Charlie Parker played the Pershing Ballroom, Mr. Anderson was in the band. Mr. Hancock studied with him as a young man and later described him as a “master of harmony and sensitivity.”
Mr. Anderson settled in New York in 1961 after working there with the singer Dinah Washington. Within the next two years he broke both hips, restricting his ability to work. So his reputation grew mainly among musicians, including the pianist Barry Harris, who regularly featured him as a guest in his concerts, and the drummer Billy Higgins, with whom he would eventually record.
Mr. Anderson made just a handful of albums, and some of these — on the Alsut label, set up by Mr. Sutton for this purpose — were not widely distributed. But his sporadic appearances, usually in a solo or duo setting, drew followers as well as friends.
<P _extended="true">It is sobering to remember that Hancock’s honor comes only a few days after the death of his mentor and teacher Chris Anderson, the unheralded Chicago pianist. And though we rightly celebrate Hancock’s award as a victory of sorts for jazz, Anderson’s under-the-radar career is far more typical of the state of jazz music today. <P _extended="true">Few pianists of his generation had a more acute musical mind than Chris Anderson. You could savor his chords – big, thick, rich with overtones – the way a wine connoisseur enjoys a Napa cabarnet. They had a firm body, with a lingering aftertaste. And was it Anderson’s fault that most listeners didn’t have big enough ears to hear what he was doing? (Check out a review of Anderson’s “Where or When” <A href="http://www.jazz.com/music/2008/2/12/chris-anderson-where-or-when" _extended="true">here.) <P _extended="true">I will coin a useful term here . . . the “Chicago school of modern jazz piano,” and I will anoint Anderson as its most representative figure. Of course, a more distant starting point might be Lennie Tristano (another Chicagoan) and his <A href="http://www.jazz.com/music/2008/1/19/lennie-tristano-i-can-t-get-started-1946" _extended="true">1946 recording of “I Can’t Get Started.” The essence of this music is a judicious balance between the linear momentum of bebop and the vertical conception of Tatum and Hines. These Chicago keyboardists were two-handed players, with an ear for lush, resonant harmonies, and a knack for balancing the cerebral and emotional components in their music. When most players were emulating the spare left-hand work of Bud Powell, the Chicagoans had a more orchestral approach in mind. <P _extended="true">In addition to Hancock, Anderson and the early Tristano, we need to include Chicago native Denny Zeitlin in this group. Zeitlin also stands out for his acute harmonic sense and complex voicings. Sometimes he digs up his own finger-busting variants – I've even seen him play two notes with a single finger, sliding his pink across two black notes, finding a way to strike <U _extended="true">six notes with a single hand. At Juilliard, this might count as breaking the rules, but in the jazz world it gets you a thicker sound than the other cats on the scene. <P _extended="true">And we should also make room on our list for an artist even more unheralded than Anderson, the Chicagoan Billy Wallace, who <A href="http://www.jazz.com/music/2008/2/12/max-roach-blues-waltz" _extended="true">makes a brief appearance in Max Roach’s 1957 band, then drops almost entirely from view. Do a quick search for Wallace on Google, and you will find that the adjective “obscure” invariably shows up in the same sentence whenever his name is mentioned. But, like Anderson, he was a big time player even if he left behind a small time discography. Wallace perfected a dramatic two-handed piano attack during an era in which virtually every other modern jazz keyboardist was playing single-note bebop lines. <P _extended="true">So let’s enjoy Herbie Hancock’s award, and the luster it casts on the jazz world. But here at jazz.com, we will dedicate this honor to the unheralded members of the “Chicago school of modern jazz piano,” who made more than a small contribution to the Grammy winner’s success. <P _extended="true"><B _extended="true"><SMALL _extended="true">
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