Any Genre - Pick album(s) that best represents your favorite keyboard artist.

[wd8dky]

Ron Levy: B3 Blues and Grooves

 

 

[octa]

this has def been a Keith Jarrett year for me. Can't pick an album: the standards albums w/ Peacock, DeJohnette. Köln. The album w/ balloons on it. The duo LP's w/ Haden. 

[Ivan May]

I would have to say that a lot of Return To Forever albums have been pretty big parts of my record collection. I especially like No Mystery, Light As A Feather and Romantic Warrior and consider Chick Corea to be a heavy innovator of both the Fender Rhodes and Moog in any sort of music genre. He is dearly missed.

 

 

[Mark Zeger]

46 minutes ago, octa said:

The album w/ balloons on it. 

Belonging? That’s one of my all time favorite albums. Probably top 5.

[ShadowMan]

Chuck Leavell - Brothers and Sisters, Sea Level

Lyle Mays- Pat Metheny Group

Rick Wakeman - Six Wives of Henry VIII

Leon Russell - everything

[harmonizer]

Bill Evans: Kind of Blue (he plays on 4 out of the 5 songs)

McCoy Tyner: My Favorite Things

 

I consider Zawinal in a separate category, because I think of him first as an exquisite maker of musical sounds, where sometimes it's not even obvious those sounds are coming from a keyboard. For example on the Heavy Weather album, it's often difficult to tell whether some noises are coming from Zawinal or Jaco, which is part of the beauty of those songs, and the beauty of how they played together.

[funkyhammond]

On 12/2/2022 at 12:17 PM, timwat said:

The Bremen Concert, 2/2/75 - Keith Jarrett solo (not the same as the ECM release of similar name, it's a bootleg of this particular date, found online)

 

I hadn't heard of this. Thanks for the heads up. It took a bit of digging but I found it once I realized the ECM release was an earlier date of 7/12/1973.

 

FYI for anyone else, it's also called "Live at Die Glocke, Bremen"

[o0Ampy0o]

On 12/2/2022 at 1:30 PM, o0Ampy0o said:

Mark Kelly on any and all Marillion albums.

 

"Bob Mayo on keyboards, Bob Mayo" the live from Detroit album and all he was doing in the later decades live which I don't think were commercially recorded and released before his passing.

 

Gregg Rolie on Santana and Journey records, especially the pre-Perry and Japanese soundtrack.

 

 

I wish to add Kitaro to my list. The work from the 80's for sure. Gorgeous melodies and soundscapes. I did not listen to him during the 90's onward. I sampled a little of it and got the impression he had moved away from synthesizers and was using traditional instrumentation which was less appealing to me.

[bill5]

I have to add Stevie Wonder in here but to me he's practically his own genre so wasn't sure how to label him. And IMO Innervisions is "the" album easily to nominate. 

[Docbop]

One of my all time favorite bands Stuff!!!   Sadly most of the band is gone now Richard Tee, Cornell Dupree,  Eric Gale, but the remaining member morphed into The Gadd Gang.  One of the best things in my past was getting to hang at all the sessions for a couple Joe Cocker albums that Cornell Dupree, Chuck Rainey, Bernard Purdie, and Richard Tee laided all the tracks down for.  Watching them work was amazing little talk just lots of eye contact and everything came together.  

 

 

[Outkaster]

Born to Run

Darkness on the Edge of Town

[SamuelBLupowitz]

On 12/2/2022 at 2:13 PM, justin_havu said:

 

This.  Also, Hornsby's "Spider Fingers."

The difference between Angry Young Man and Spider Fingers is that I've been playing one since I was 14, and the other makes me feel like I should quit music and leave it to the big boys. 🤣

 

Anyway, I just dug up an old favorite of mine, 2002's "Ben Folds Live." An absolute masterclass in playing singer/songwriter piano in the context of a rock band ... except, there's no rock band, just the piano. With minor, deliberate exceptions, he manages to make it feel like a big rock show even though it's a solo acoustic set.

 

Here's some video from the same tour the album is compiled from:

 

[wineandkeyz]

Some repeats, some others not mentioned yet:

 

Chuck Leavell - Allman Brothers "Brothers and Sisters" album

Billy Powell - Skynyrd's "One More From the Road" and "Street Survivors"

Jan Hammer - "The First Seven Days"

Floyd Domino - Asleep at the Wheel's "Texas Gold"

Floyd Cramer - "Last Date" and "On the Rebound"

Keith Emerson - ELP's "Trilogy" and "Brain Salad Surgery"

Rick Wakeman - "Six Wives" and "Journey to the Center of the Earth"

Jon Lord - Just about any Deep Purple album, but "Machine Head" for sure

T Lavitz - T Lavitz and the Bad Habitz self-titled album and The Bluesbusters "This Time"

Billy Payne - Any Little Feat album, but "Waiting for Columbus" is probably my favorite

 

Edit: I realized I left out Seth Justman - J. Geils Band's "Full House Live," "The Morning After," and "Bloodshot"

[16251]

3 hours ago, wineandkeyz said:

Some repeats, some others not mentioned yet:

 

I would say repeats are good. This thread was not about listing best albums. It is about what albums do you consider a players best work. I was going to phrase the thread - name the albums you think a novice listener would hear the genius of their body of work (if that makes any sense.)

 

Thanks all that contributed. I still have explore more of people's choices, especially in areas I a not a familiar with.

[RABid]

Thelonious Monk - The Memorial Album

 

I never had any pop/rock keyboardist that I looked up to. Most of my influences were people like Adrain Bleu on guitar or Jon Smith Saxophone (Edgar Winter's White Trash Roadwork album). I bought The Memorial Album because of logic. If he has a memorial album he must be good. Hey, I was a hillbilly from a small town and was never exposed to jazz. Some good musicians told me that I need to listen to jazz. My first attempt was a failure after buying a couple Wynton Marsalis CD's. Gosh, that was some awful music for someone who had won Grammies. So dry and mechanical. I was giving jazz one more chance when I bought the Monk album. Wow. That was some real music. For the first time I listened to a keyboardist and thought he thinks the way I do and plays 100 times better.

[Tom Williams]

As stated, the question is tricky.

My favorite keyboard album is Billy Joel's Piano Man, a wonderful collaboration between him and Michael Omartian; but my favorite keyboardist overall is still Emerson.  If I have to pick an album that represents Emerson, I'd have to go with Trilogy for its title track's sheer musical beauty, even if the piece's final ten seconds comprise one of the worst endings in musical history.

[mcgoo]

Close to the Edge- Yes (Wakeman) 

American Garage-Pat Metheney (Lyle Mays) 

Get Yer Ya Ya's Out- Stones (Ian Stewart offering up the most bad a$$ honky tonk piano ever on a handful of cuts) 

[Al Quinn]

Rock:

Billy Payne — Little Feat, Waiting for Columbus

Rick Wakeman — Yes, Close to the Edge

 

Classical:

Vladimir Horowitz — Horowitz in Moscow

Glenn Gould — J. S. Bach: Goldberg Variations

Jazz:

Bud Powell — The Genius of Bud Powell
Bill Evans — Portrait in Jazz
Chick Corea — Now He Sings, Now He Sobs

Keith Jarrett — Standards Vol. 2
Mulgrew Miller — Live at Yoshio’s

Brad Mehldau — The Art of Trio Volume 1