Chicago pianist Chris Anderson could truthfully be called a ‘musician's musician's musician.’ In fact, even some of my most knowledgeable jazz aficionados couldn't recall who he was. Completely blind by the age of 20, he was also tragically afflicted by brittle bone disease. He became resident house pianist at many of his hometown's jazz clubs and backed every visitor from Bird to Brownie, Rollins and Getz. His admirers included locals like George Coleman, Clifford Jordan, Von Freeman and Harold Mabern and, in 1960, Herbie Hancock, by then a big star, who came to Anderson for lessons, calling him “a master of harmony and sensitivity” and saying Anderson “had a whole other facet of tools of expression and harmonies that I hadn't heard in Bill Evans.” Which is some statement! Anderson has an orchestrating streak in his playing and often said he'd rather listen to the work of arrangers like Gil Evans or Nelson Riddle than to other pianists. The two albums on this Fresh Sound CD are the VeeJay LP My Romance, which was only issued in Japan, even then only many years after it was recorded and the even better Orrin Keepnews-produced Jazzland Inverted Image, with Perkins finishing the sessions that Philly Joe couldn't. The standouts are probably the almost perfect ballad treatments of songs like Romance’, ‘A Fellow Needs A Girl’, ‘My Funny Valentine’ and ‘I Hear a Rhapsody’. A real legendary figure, Anderson passed away in 2008, aged 86. If you like what you hear, check out two more of Anderson's albums in my collection – a 1997 special duo with Charlie Haden (None But the Lonely Heart) and a 1998 set with Billy Higgins, David Williams and European singer Sabina Sciubba (You Don't Know What Love Is), both on the British label, Naim.