Erroll Garner was a musical illiterate who became one of the greatest jazz pianists who ever lived.
He couldn't read music. He couldn't write it down. He never took a lesson. Everything he knew about music came from listening and playing and intuiting what worked. He learned piano by ear, which is to say he learned it the hard way, by developing an ear so sophisticated that he could hear something once and reproduce it, transpose it, improvise around it.
And then he went on to sell out Carnegie Hall. To record albums that became jazz standards. To influence generations of pianists who could read music perfectly but couldn't touch what Garner could do instinctively.
This is one of the most profound challenges to the credentialing system that surrounds music. We teach people that you need to learn to read music. We teach them that formal training is essential. We set up institutions to teach the correct way to play. And then Erroll Garner comes along and proves that none of that is necessary. That what you need is an ear and a willingness to listen and the dedication to develop whatever gifts you have.
Garner was unique in some ways. Most of us don't have the natural ability to learn music entirely by ear. Most of us benefit from training and instruction. But his example raises important questions about what that training is for, what it's teaching us, whether it's helping us develop our actual gifts or whether it's just getting us to conform to a standard that isn't necessarily connected to musical truth.
The pianist who learned to read music perfectly but plays without depth is not a better musician than Garner. The system that teaches you to read music is valuable, but it's not the only valuable thing. The things that are valuable are: the ability to listen, the willingness to practice, the commitment to get better, the courage to trust your ear when it tells you something is right.
Garner had all of those things. He had them to such a degree that he didn't need sheet music to access them. He could learn music the way children learn language, not from textbooks but from immersion, from listening, from mimicry that eventually becomes original creation.
What's also interesting about Garner is that he became a musician not because he had been identified as talented early on and been trained in a conservatory. He became a musician because he fell in love with the sound of music and he was willing to spend the time it took to develop that love into skill.
This is available to anyone. You don't need permission to love music. You don't need credentials to try. You don't need to be identified as a prodigy at age seven and enrolled in the right schools. You just need to listen, and practice, and be willing to be bad at it for a while until you get good.
Erroll Garner proved that. His records prove it. He's not just an interesting historical footnote. He's one of the great pianists in the entire jazz tradition. Not despite the fact that he couldn't read music, but in some cases because of the specificity of how he learned.
When you learn music by ear, you develop a relationship to sound that's more immediate. You're not mediating the music through notation. You're hearing it and reproducing it and improvising around it in real time. You develop speed and instinct in ways that can take longer if you're learning from sheet music.
All of this is to say: if you want to make music, you don't need permission. You don't need the right background. You don't need to have gone to the right schools. You need to listen, and practice, and trust the gifts that you have.
Erroll Garner couldn't read music. But he read the music that mattered, the music that was in the air and in his ear and in the spaces between the notes. And he became one of the greatest musicians who ever lived.
THE MUSIC
If the history is what brings you here, the music is what keeps you here.
Until next time.
Sid
P.S. Tomorrow, Friday, November 6, is Bandcamp Friday. For 24 hours Bandcamp waives its share of every sale, so more of what you spend goes to the artist. My latest album, Songs of My Father, is there, along with Good Way Home on vinyl and CD: https://sidkingsley.bandcamp.com