Frank Evans: Mark Twain - A Jazz Suite for Guitar and Strings (1970)

An incredible, though hardly known, jazz guitarist from Britain with a beautiful small-group album.
It's mellow, blues/bop based jazz with a bit of classical and bossa thrown in. As such this is far more conventional than one might think from the title and subject of the suite.

Evans' love for Wes Montgomery and Jim Hall is pretty obvious (as is his love for Bill Evans), his tone on amplified guitar is ample, dark and warm. Yet he's also capable of using classical techniques as shown on two delicate acoustic tracks. This is a quiet and relaxed album with a strong sense of beauty. Evans is a wonderful player - imaginative, fluid, intelligent, technically excellent and always melodic.

The string quartet is used quite discreet, enhancing the music without ever standing in the foreground and thus adding to the somehow cozy atmosphere of the album.

If there are any folk or even country elements here - which one may expect as this is meant to illustrate scenes and characters from Twain's Tom Sayer books - they are buried deeply in compositions that mainly show Evans love for classic jazz. It sounds like Evans wanted to illustrate Twain's books with the means of jazz, not to create music based on elements we may associate with the time and place Twain's stories were set in.

The session was recorded for a small British independent label, whose catalogue consisted mainly of folk and trad jazz. It's a pretty rare album and there are no traces of a cd reissue. It's in fact hard to find any traces of this album at all on the web. A discogs.com entry and a few auction are the only search results google comes up with.


Here's the only noteworthy biographical info on Evans i could find online:

"Jazz guitarist, Frank Evans, died on February 6th 2007 at the age of 76. A former member of Tubby Hayes Quartet, Frank performed and recorded most often as a solo guitarist. Since the mid-60s, Frank generally shunned the London scene, preferring to operate from his home in Bristol. He took up the guitar at the age of eleven and learned his craft, without formal tuition, through a lengthy apprenticeship in jazz clubs, ballrooms and restaurants around the world.

Frank Evans' debut album was recorded at a concert in 1968 ("Jazz Tete-A-Tete" - 1966 according to other sources) with Tubby Hayes and Tony Coe. After further albums on the 'Saydisc' label, Frank set up his own label 'Blue Bag' to release his solo album 'Noctuary' (BB101) Although today countless musicians have set up their own label and are able to distribute their music digitally, this was an unusual move at the time. “I was fed up with being mucked about by record companies and that whole hassle of the music business. Someone in London said I'd be lucky to sell 500 altogether. But I sold 500 in the first two weeks." Frank said at the time. The album went on to top the UK jazz charts.

He made hundreds of appearances on BBC and ITV television, including the 'Michael Parkinson Show' several times and his own ITV programme 'Frank Evans and Friends' featuring guests, Georgie Fame and Marion Williams. He wrote scores for film and television, particularly for BBC's 'World About Us' series. His earliest influence was Django Reinhardt, but other favourites were Jim Hall, Charlie Christian, Wes Montgomery and Laurindo Almeida, with whom he recorded an album on the 'Blue Bag' label.

In recent years, with his health declining, Frank's performances became rarer and much anticipated, particularly in his beloved West Country. " (source: http://www.paulvernonchester.com/FrankEvans.htm)


I'm wondering if the statement that Evans was a member of Tubby Hayes' group is correct (every source on Evans i could find repeats it) or if it's just based on the fact that both appeared on the "Jazz Tete-A-Tete" album, albeit NOT playing together (Evans is featured with a trio and Hayes with a guitar-less group).

Evans preferred to stay in his hometown and not to seek fame and fortune on the international jazz scene (as far as playing jazz can provide fame and fortune at all…) One can wonder how many other talents are "lost" to the international listeners since they prefer to stay with their families. Let's not forget that even Tal Farlow, one of the greatest talents ever to bend the six strings, preferred to spend most of his live painting signs instead of recording and doing gigs.

Big, big thanks go out to jazzjet who introduced me to this wonderful player. After listening to his share of "Noctuary", i wanted to buy all i could find from Evans, my own copy of Noctuary included of course (coming soon). Evans' albums are pretty scarce, yet not really expensive when found.

Frank Evans: Mark Twain - A Jazz Suite for Guitar and Strings
77 Records ‎- 77 SEU 12/37
UK, 1970

- The Suite
A1 Big Missouri
A2 Lazy Afternoon
A3 Hymn For The Minister
A4 Ballad To Becky
A5 Huckleberry's Thing
A6 The Pipe Of Peace And Reprise

- Ballads And Blues
B1 Whose Bloos
B2 Con Alma (Gillespie)
B3 Waltz For Django
B4 Days Of Wine And Roses (Mancini/Mercer)
B5 Longing For Baia (Caymmi)

All tracks composed by Frank Evans, except as indicated.

Frank Evans (g, arr) Norman Cole (b on A1-A6, B2, B5) Jim Richardson (b on B1, B4) Eddie Clayton (d on A1-A6, B2, B5), Tony Faulkner (d on B1, B4) + unknown string quartet on A1-A6, B2, B5