No one with a background in jazz, who ever experienced a performance of the American Walter Norris, would doubt that he saw a true master of jazz piano: Walter Norris, who was born in Little Rock in 1931, started taking classical piano lessons at the age of four. As a teenager he was so impressed by boogie-woogie pianists that he started playing jazz. After graduating from high school his first professional jobs were in a quartet of the blues musician Mose Allison and in the Jimmy Ford quartet. From 1954 to 1960 Norris was a part of the west coast jazz scene of Los Angeles and played with all famous local musicians – Stan Getz, Dexter Gordon, Johnny Griffin, Charlie Mariano, Herb Geller. In 1958 he appeared on Ornette Coleman’s legendary recording “Something Else!!!”. Two years later Norris went to New York, where he worked at Hugh Heffner’s Playboy club from 1963 to 1970, first as a pianist and then as artistic director. Norris explains: “So maybe it was not a jazz club in the traditional sense of the word, but people like Oscar Peterson came in and played there. As artistic director I encouraged my musicians to accept all sort of jobs and we were then sent a replacement. So we got people like Ron Carter or Tony Williams as replacements! Monty Alexander was working there and Herbie Hancock used to drop by regularly. It was an amazing atmosphere for a pianist.”
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