Piano as Percussion Instrument (Inspired by McCoy)

Herr Liszt

Pianos are percussion instruments (Nice history here). Beethoven, Liszt, Chopin and company did not write namby-pamby music and the evolution of the piano was spurred, in many ways, by trying to make the instrument play louder and faster.

Jazz pianists took full advantage of the piano's dynamic range, although there have always been widely different approaches to "touch." Early stride players like James P. Johnson, Willie the Lion Smith and Lucky Roberts were called "two-fisted" players. They were likelier to work the keyboard harder than those players coming through the more "modern" jazz vector of Earl Hines and Teddy Wilson, who put more emphasis on the right hand and, rather than striding (breaking up the chord in oom-pah fashion), using the left hand to just play the chord.

The bop pianists, Bud Powell, Tadd Dameron, Al Haig and company, were mainly occupied with right hand lines and block chords and tended to play in the mezzo forte to forte range most of the time. Art Tatum, Jaki Byard, Oscar Peterson, Jimmy Rowles and others continued to utilize both bop and stride approaches. Thelonius Monk and Count Basie used both stride and line approaches also, but were, in some ways, sui generis.

This post is not meant to be an omnibus catalogue of jazz pianistic touch, however, but to emphasize the more percussive end of the spectrum. We'll start with two of the premiere stride, or "Harlem" style pianists, contrasted with two seminal bop players.