Erroll Garner couldn't read a note of music. Not that it affected his career a jot. His Concert By The Sea from 1955 helped him become Columbia Records’ biggest-selling jazz artist of his day. Yes, he had sold more records than Miles Davis, Duke Ellington, Charles Mingus or Dave Brubeck before he left the label in 1959. He wanted control of his own product and, after a hard-fought legal battle, formed his own label Octave, and Dreamstreet (which had been recorded in 1959) heralded the return of Garner on record after a hiatus of a couple of years. He didn't disappoint – as the late Geri Allen has pointed out, his music is a direct and uncensored experience, “honest and immediate, free flowing, clearly delivered and focused with fearless projection”. Though he'd recorded with Charlie Parker in the 1940s, Garner couldn't really be tied down to any particular style – he was simply himself, possessor of a style so personal that it's instantly recognisable, as his classic performance of ‘Mack the Knife’ from One World Concert reveals, recorded live at the Seattle World Fair in 1962. This, his first live album since Concert By The Sea, is the finest of this initial batch of five exemplary remastered albums of what will be a 12-album set. Garner liked to devise introductions that were completely left of field and here, with a subtle allusion to Beethoven's ‘Moonlight Sonata’ (Piano Sonata No. 14 in C sharp minor), he keeps the audience guessing until Kurt Weill's memorable theme explodes into view. There is something compelling and hypnotic about Garner's playing – even his exposition of the ‘Mack the Knife’ melody vibrates with energy and excitement, and is followed by a joyous rollercoaster ride through chorus after chorus of seat-ofthe-pants improvisation. This performance contains all the hallmarks of Garner's style – his ability to play on top of the beat with his left hand and in front, or behind it, with his right hand (or vice versa), his exuberance, a wonderful feel for melodicism that never distanced him from his audience and, above all, a compelling sense of swing. His playing is mood changing – it's impossible to listen to Garner without a smile. With good reason a profile of Garner on America's National Public Radio was called The Joy of a Genius. Of the studio albums, Closeup In Swing is probably the best; the theme-based A New Kind of Love takes the music from the motion picture A New Kind of Love with a large studio orchestra, while A Night at the Movies, an album of cinematic themes with his regular trio, is of interest but not indispensable in the way One World Concert, Closeup In Swing and Dreamstreet are. Today, the current fashion is to consider Garner a bit ‘primitive’, but these albums contain so many elements that still speak to us today. An erudite but, above all, very witty man, he showed through his talent and sheer creativity that joy and happiness have an equal right to be expressed in jazz.