Keith Jarrett already knew his way around the Deer Head Inn when he rolled into the unassuming Poconos jazz haunt on Sept. 16, 1992. In fact, his special one-nighter qualified as a homecoming: Jarrett had worked what he later described as “my first serious trio job on piano” at the Deer Head as a teenager, almost 30 years prior.
Jarrett, born in Allentown and raised in the nearby Lehigh Valley borough of Emmaus, was accustomed to much grander stages by this point in his career. Making the gig even more special, it marked his reunion with an old band mate, drummer Paul Motian, for the first time in 16 years. On bass was the estimable Gary Peacock.
In his liner notes for At the Deer Head Inn, released on ECM in 1994, Jarrett recalled that evening as “a warm, humid, rainy autumn night in the Pocono Mountains,” adding: “The room was full of people and outside on the porch more people listened through the screen doors.” Three decades later, Jarrett and the label are releasing a second album of previously unheard material from the same engagement.
The Old Country: More From the Deer Head Inn will be available on Nov. 8. WRTI is proud to share the first taste of the album, a swinging version of “Straight, No Chaser” by Thelonious Monk. (Tune in tonight to Evening Jazz to hear its broadcast premiere.)
“Straight, No Chaser” — a 12-bar blues with a syncopated line, is among the most often-played Monk tunes. He composed it in B-flat, but Jarrett plays it in F, the key Miles Davis used when he recorded the song. Jarrett and Peacock had also recently recorded it, with Jack DeJohnette on drums, for a Davis tribute titled Bye Bye Blackbird. As the Standards Trio, they would go on to perform it live many times — recording it during a 1994 residency at the Blue Note and again at the 2001 Montreux Jazz Festival.
In this excellent performance, Jarrett leans heavily into the chromaticism of Monk’s melody, over a brisk, cruising swing beat. Peacock, whose walking bass lines are worthy of close study, connects effortlessly with Motian, his old partner in a mid-‘60s edition of the Bill Evans Trio. The drumming is impeccably crisp, with Motian maintaining a tippin’ ride cymbal and a conversational chatter on his snare.
Elsewhere on The Old Country, the trio interprets songbook standards by Cole Porter (“Everything I Love,” “All of You”), George Gershwin (“How Long Has This Been Going On?”) and Jule Styne (“I Fall In Love Too Easily”). As Davis famously did, they bring waltzing grace to a Disney theme, “Someday My Prince Will Come.” They also play a swinging version of “Golden Earrings,” a hit for Peggy Lee, written for the 1947 movie of the same name. The album’s title track is a tune by cornetist Nat Adderley, which he first recorded in 1960 on an album by bassist Sam Jones.
The result is a worthy companion to At the Deer Head Inn, which has been one of the most cherished albums in Jarrett’s discography since its 1994 release. In a four-star review for the Los Angeles Times, Zan Stewart proclaimed it “a compendium of grace,” singling out Jarrett’s propensity to “explore a tune’s harmonic and melodic structure literally, then stray away from it, like someone going for a hike and sticking mostly to the path, but taking now-and-then excursions from that trail.”
The Old Country features many such digressive moments, but its most striking aspect may be the quality of cohesion among Jarrett, Peacock and Motian — three modern masters no longer active on the scene. Motian died in 2011, at 80; Peacock died in 2020, at 85.
Also in 2020, Jarrett announced that he had suffered two strokes, and would no longer be able to perform publicly. So it’s even more of a gift to have this new release, which he approved in consultation with ECM founder Manfred Eicher, on the near horizon. The recordings, which drummer Bill Goodwin made for documentary purposes, struck Jarrett at the time as incredibly vital. It’s a safe assumption that he still stands by his assessment that “you can hear, on this tape, what jazz is all about.”
The Old Country will be released on ECM Records on Nov. 8.
