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Columbia · 1955

Concert by the Sea

Erroll Garner

Recorded: September 19, 1955   Original cat#: CL 883
Erroll Garner — Concert by the Sea album cover

Concert by the Sea documents Erroll Garner's trio performance at the Sunset School auditorium in Carmel-by-the-Sea, California, on September 19, 1955, released later that year (some sources cite early 1956 for wider distribution) as Columbia CL 883. Garner (piano) is joined by Eddie Calhoun (bass, at the start of an 11-year tenure with Garner) and Denzil Best (drums, in what would be his only recording with Garner's trio). Columbia trimmed the original 19-song concert down to an 11-track LP.

The recording exists almost by accident: an Armed Forces Radio Network DJ named Will Thornbury taped the concert intending only a single broadcast for servicemen at nearby Fort Ord, and secured Garner manager Martha Glaser's permission on the condition that she'd get the tape back afterward. Glaser reportedly held the reel on her lap for the entire flight back to New York rather than risk it as checked luggage. The resulting album became one of the best-selling jazz records in history – over $1 million in retail sales by 1958, gold-record territory by the standards of the day even though it was never formally RIAA-certified – despite Columbia's own acknowledgment that the auditorium's acoustics were poor and the piano itself somewhat out of tune.

Best early pressing for audiophiles: Original Columbia mono, CL 883 – the original single-microphone radio recording, mono only.

Best modern pressing for audiophiles: No confirmed AAA audiophile reissue (Speakers Corner, Analogue Productions, MoFi) of the original 11-track LP exists as of this writing; see the "Complete Concert" option below for the fullest modern vinyl treatment.

Best-value modern: A clean secondhand original remains the most straightforward way to own this title on vinyl in its classic 11-track form.

Recording history and tape provenance

Local promoter Jimmy Lyons had launched a Monday-night jazz series at Carmel's Sunset School as an experiment – a series that would go on to lay the groundwork for the Monterey Jazz Festival, founded a few years later. Erroll Garner's trio played the venue on an off-night from a nightclub engagement in San Francisco, arriving relaxed from the drive down the Pacific Coast Highway to a receptive audience swelled by servicemen bused in from Fort Ord. Nobody from Columbia thought the show worth documenting; it was capacity for a single Armed Forces Radio Network broadcast that got the tape rolling at all.

What Thornbury captured turned out to be extraordinary. Garner, who never announced tunes and rarely played a standard the way it was written – his rendition of "I'll Remember April" reportedly may be the only recorded version to treat the song in AABA form rather than its usual ABA structure – found in Calhoun and Best a rhythm section that matched his playful, elastic sense of time without ever seeming tentative about it. Manager Martha Glaser recognized what she had and secured the tape from Thornbury; producer George Avakian and Columbia turned it into an album rather than let it circulate only as a broadcast recording or bootleg. AllMusic later called it "arguably the finest record pianist Erroll Garner ever made"; the Penguin Guide to Jazz selected it for its Core Collection.

For the album's 60th anniversary, the Erroll Garner Jazz Project (with pianist and Guggenheim Award winner Geri Allen and Grammy-winning producer Steve Rosenthal) located and restored the complete, previously-unheard concert tape, applying the Plangent Process to correct speed inconsistencies inherent to the original single-microphone radio recording. In his own account of the project, Rosenthal describes how this material came to exist in one place at all: Garner had a "pretty cantankerous relationship" with his record labels over the years, and as a result much of what he recorded for them was returned to him and manager Martha Glaser rather than staying in label vaults – an unusual situation that left a genuinely comprehensive personal archive to work from. That archive turned out to span nine separate storage facilities in Manhattan, containing over 1,700 tapes across a wide range of formats (cassettes, two-track and four-track reels among them) plus thousands of photographs, covering Garner's career from 1937 up to a recording of his final show before his death. The result, released September 18, 2015 as The Complete Concert by the Sea, roughly doubled the available material – eleven additional tunes plus stage announcements and a post-concert interview with the trio – presented alongside a remastered version of the original 11-track program.

Original Columbia pressing (1955/56)

Cat. CL 883, mono, red/black "six-eye" Columbia label. A genuine multi-microphone stereo mix of this recording has never existed, consistent with the recording's single-microphone radio origins. Owners consistently describe it as "fresh and crisp" for a mono recording of this vintage, if inherently limited in soundstage given the source. Because of the album's enormous and sustained commercial success, it was repressed steadily for years; later-1960s and 1970s Columbia label variants of the same mono mix also circulate. Note: Columbia did issue a "stereo" pressing in 1969 (cat. CS 9821) – this is an electronically rechanneled/reprocessed fake stereo, not a genuine stereo recording, and isn't sought after for sound quality; see "Pressings to avoid" below. NM originals remain genuinely affordable relative to rarer period jazz titles, reflecting the very large original and ongoing pressing runs.

Identifying an early pressing: matrix/runout suffix numbers give a rough sense of how many generations removed from the original lacquer your copy is. One detailed collector account describes a six-eye mono original with runouts ending 1C (side 1) and 1A (side 2) – i.e. among the earliest stampers cut. By contrast, that same collector's 1969 CS 9821 fake-stereo copy carries runouts ending 4B/4D, a later-generation stamper, and was also noticeably sped up compared to the original – a second, independent flaw beyond the fake-stereo processing itself. Lower suffix numbers generally indicate an earlier pressing run, though this isn't an exact science across all Columbia pressing plants.

The Complete Concert by the Sea (2015) – the expanded vinyl option

Cat. 8875139881 | Format: 2×180g LP, gatefold, remastered. Presents an expanded selection from the rediscovered complete concert tape rather than the exact 11-track original program. Because the underlying 1955 recording is fundamentally mono, this edition applies a processed, enhanced-stereo-style presentation to add spatial separation to bass and drums – reception is mixed but generally positive about the intent: "the fake stereo isn't too bad, a decent job trying to add back the drums and bass," though one detailed review found it "lacks bass and drums compared to the original '360' [Columbia] pressing... but makes up for it with by far the most detailed presentation of the piano." Worth understanding as a different listening experience from the mono original rather than a straightforward upgrade to it. Discogs

A historical curiosity: the UK Philips 7" EP (1958)

Not a full-album pressing and not part of the tier table below, but worth knowing about if you come across one: Philips issued a 3-track 45rpm 7" EP in the UK, cat. BBE 12184 (also catalogued as 429 394 BE), collecting "Where Or When," "I'll Remember April," and "Autumn Leaves." A period-specific format footnote for the album's original release era rather than a practical way to hear the album – confirmed via Discogs and period retailer listings.

Pressings to avoid

Columbia CS 9821 (1969, "stereo"): An electronically rechanneled/reprocessed fake stereo pressing of the mono original. As with similar period "fake stereo" reissues of other mono jazz recordings, this is a period curiosity rather than a sound-quality upgrade – seek an original mono CL 883 instead. At least one detailed A/B comparison found a copy of this pressing noticeably sped up relative to the mono original – a second, independent problem beyond the fake-stereo processing itself, though this may not affect every copy equally.

No specific bootleg is widely documented, though given the recording's unusual radio-broadcast origin story, buyers should be aware that unofficial tape circulation was always a risk this title's history acknowledges directly – Glaser's securing of the master tape from Thornbury was explicitly done to prevent exactly that outcome.

Buyer's guide by budget

$ (Budget): A clean original Columbia mono, CL 883 – genuinely attainable given the scale of this title's original and ongoing pressing runs.

$$ (Affordable): The Complete Concert by the Sea (2015) 2LP set, for the expanded program and enhanced-stereo presentation – a different, not strictly superior, listening experience.

Pressing tier summary

Tier ⇅ Pressing Cat# Year ⇅ Format Source / Mastering Notes Market ⇅
B Original Columbia mono CL 883 1955/56 Mono, 33⅓ Original single-mic radio recording Genuinely attainable; large original pressing run
51 for sale · from $2
$38VG+
$50NM
$56M
B The Complete Concert by the Sea 8875139881 2015 Processed stereo, 33⅓, 180g, 2×LP Rediscovered tape, Plangent Process remaster Expanded program; enhanced-stereo treatment of mono source
7 for sale · from $32
$64VG+
$84NM
$94M
C Later Columbia label-variant repress CL 883 1960s–70s Mono, 33⅓ Same metalwork lineage Budget option –
F Columbia electronically rechanneled "stereo" CS 9821 1969 Fake stereo, 33⅓ Reprocessed from mono original Not a genuine stereo recording; some copies also noticeably sped up; period curiosity only –

References

Related guides: Ellington at Newport · Milestones · Lady in Satin

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