First New Erroll Garner Studio Album To Be Released in Nearly a Quarter Century: 14 Tracks Previously Unreleased & Only Recently Restored After Nearly 50 Years on Acetate.

A new album of 14 previously unreleased studio performances by Erroll Garner and his backing musicians – drums (Jimmie Smith, Joe Cocuzzo), bass (Earnest McCarty, Jr., Ike Isaacs, George Duvivier, Larry Gales) and percussion (Jose Mangual) – Ready Take One is comprised of tracks recorded during seven extraordinarily productive sessions in 1967, 1969 and 1971. Ready Take One features six previously unreleased original Garner compositions – “High Wire,” “Wild Music,” “Back To You,” “Chase Me,” “Latin Digs,” and “Down Wylie Avenue” – alongside Garner’s swinging interpretations of a variety of jazz and pop standards including “I Want To Be Happy,” “I’m Confessin’ (That I Love You),” Bobby Hebb’s “Sunny,” Duke Ellington’s “Caravan” and “Satin Doll,” Cole Porter’s “Night and Day,” “Stella By Starlight” and a passionately rendered version of Garner’s own “Misty,” one of the most-often-covered jazz compositions of all-time and the most-requested number in Garner’s repertoire, recorded for this album on May 28, 1969 in Paris, France.

Drawn from sessions at Universal Recording in Chicago (November 28-29, 1967), Capital Studios in New York City (October 7, 1969) and RCA Studios in Manhattan (April 27, June 22 and December 2, 1971), Ready Take One finds Garner in the studio with his road-tested band and longtime manager Martha Glaser, firing off some of the most memorable performances of his career. For the first time, listeners are given a glimpse behind the studio doors, with rare insightful conversational tidbits between Garner and the group included between many of the songs. Glaser, known for her progressive guidance of Garner’s artistic and commercial interests, is heard here in producer mode, slating takes and joking with Garner over the control room talk-back mic. As album producer Geri Allen writes, “a kind of fifth member of the band, Glaser would support Erroll Garner in the moment of the creative act.” Indeed the title of the album comes directly from Glaser’s steady refrain of “Ready Take One.”

The first new Erroll Garner studio album to be released in nearly a quarter century, Ready Take One is the worthy successor to Legacy/Octave’s first Garner release, 2015’s critically-acclaimed Grammy-nominated The Complete Concert by The Sea, which debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard Jazz chart. Ready Take One is the first studio album from the extensive Octave Music catalog of previously unreleased Erroll Garner recordings and compositions.