Garland's somewhat intermittent career included periods of considerable popularity, initially through his association with Miles and Coltrane. Throughout, he retained a quite distinctive sound, especially when playing block-chords in the right hand, thanks to what I once characterised as ‘wrong’ notes. That sound, and his equally quirky single-note phrasing, are well in evidence on these 16 tracks drawn from a week at San Francisco's Keystone Korner, with top West Coast walker Leroy Vinnegar. The other great joy of the set is hearing Philly Joe at such length, not only for his expert underpinning of Garland's arrangements (including the inevitable ‘Billy Boy’ as heard on Milestones) but for some extended drum solos that are so musical they not only retain the interest but keep you on the edge of your seat. A couple of tracks appear to be edited in mid-stream (possibly the tapes ran out) but this is a piece of history not to be missed.

Jazzwise spoke to producer Zev Feldman about the album How did this archive project come about?

The Elemental label is working on several projects, and we became aware of this great stash of tapes done at Keystone Korner, which was Todd Barkan's club and which had a very special atmosphere to it. Among other things, there were these never-before-released tapes of this trio, which had never worked together until this gig. Of course, Red and Philly Joe were together in that great Miles Davis quintet, but working with Leroy Vinnegar, who was THE bass player on the Coast. Incidentally, there's no overlap here with previous albums that came out in Japan, which were pretty much bootlegs. I think those were done by a friend of Leroy Vinnegar's, with a machine on one of the tables in the audience, with pretty inferior sound. [Our material] is taken direct from cassettes recorded off the club's mixing-board, and they sound fine. It's so great to hear Philly Joe, who's such a presence here.

Why choose to focus on Red Garland in particular?

Well, I'm too young to have heard him live, but I've always loved his albums. Todd, who incidentally went through all the tapes and suggested the running order, had Red at Keystone several times and was managing him for a while. He had disappeared off the scene earlier, when he went back home to Dallas to look after his mother and then stayed there. He was quite a character and, of course, early on he made his living as a boxer. Anyway, we decided there may never be a book about Red, but this had to be a real tribute. So the first person I approached was Nat Hentoff, who wrote a new essay for the booklet, and then I spoke to Ira Gitler and Don Schlitten, who both worked for Prestige back in the day. And then we got the musicians' perspective from [pianist] Benny Green and Kenny Washington, who actually worked with Red before he died in 1984.

Apparently Miles Davis told Red to play “more like Ahmad Jamal”…

To me they're very different. For a start, Red was a blues player, and he did brilliant ballads. I also learned all about subtlety from listening to Red Garland, just like I learned about subtlety from Bill Evans.