Erroll Garner

Erroll Louis Garner was born on the fifteenth of June 1921 in the East Liberty neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, at 212 North St. Clair Street, the youngest of six children. His was a household of song: his father, Ernest Garner, worked in maintenance at the Westinghouse Electric Corporation and played guitar, mandolin, and saxophone, singing tenor in the family's church choir, while his mother, Estella, lent it her contralto voice. Erroll was a twin, born alongside his brother Ernest.

A prodigy who picked out chords at the age of three, Garner was gloriously self-taught and never learned to read or write a note of music, carrying every melody by ear his whole life. As a boy he broadcast over Pittsburgh's KDKA radio, and after moving to New York City in 1944 he rose swiftly through the clubs of 52nd Street, even sharing a 1947 session with Charlie Parker.

His art was one of pure, swinging joy — a rippling left-hand pulse behind cascading right-hand invention. In 1954 he composed "Misty," first recording it in 1955; graced later with Johnny Burke's lyric, it became one of the most beloved standards in the American songbook. His 1955 live album "Concert by the Sea" sold more than a million copies, a rare feat for a jazz recording.

Erroll Garner died on the second of January 1977 in Los Angeles, California, at the age of fifty-five. He remains one of the most original and gladdening voices the piano has ever known — a Pittsburgh son whose music still asks the world to smile.