The Return of Bud Powell

This week Kate Molleson explores the life and work of a jazz giant in his centenary year: the amazing Bud Powell, in the company of Powell’s biographer Peter Pullman. Focusing on Bud Powell as a performer, prioritising his own compositions but also appreciating the art of improvisation as spontaneous composition.

Bud Powell was born in 1924 and grew up in Harlem, against the backdrop of the Harlem Renaissance. He was a gifted pianist from a young age and became a pioneer of bebop. But he was a troubled soul and the great paradox of Bud Powell is how there could be such joy and expression in his music while his life was so painful.

Today Kate Molleson and Peter Pullman discuss Bud Powell’s return to New York in 1964. After five years in Paris, Powell’s homecoming was heralded with great fanfare. When he walked into Birdland – the jazz club where he’d reigned supreme in the late ‘40s and early ‘50s – he was given a 17-minute standing ovation. This was a mark of respect – a recognition, perhaps, of past, rather than present achievements, of a legacy that would live on beyond his own short life.

Peter Pullman's deeply researched biography of Bud Powell is called Wail: the Life of Bud Powell.

To listen on most smart speakers just say “Ask BBC Sounds to play Composer of the Week.”

Music featured:
All God’s Chillun Got Rhythm (from Jazz Giant)
Hallucinations (from The Return of Bud Powell)
If I Loved You (from The Return of Bud Powell)
Thelonius (from A Portrait of Thelonius)
Like Someone in Love (from Ups and Downs)
Bouncing with Bud (Keith Jarrett/Gary Peacock/Jack DeJohnette, from After the Fall)
Dusk in Sandi (Chick Corea, from Remembering Bud Powell)
Wail (from the Amazing Bud Powell)