Bill Evans Trio - At Shelly's Manne Hole

1989 European CD reissue.

This is the last album Bill Evans made for his first label. The fact alone would give this at least historical significance; and there is surely also some importance to its being one of only two occasions on which the pianist was recorded for Riverside during "live" performance (the other, or course, resulted in the classic pair of Village Vanguard albums, now OJCCD-140-2 and OJCCD-210-2).

But above all, these two nights at Shelly Manne’s club in Hollywood marked the only recording by the excellent but short-term third trio; after the untimely death of Scott LaFaro, bassist Chuck Israels joined Bill and Paul Motian; then in 1963 Los Angeles studio-stalwart drummer Larry Bunker made this brief but noteworthy contribution to the Evans legend.