"Intelligent, sensitive, beautiful."

The songs on this album cover a lot of territory. There are four jazz ballads (Someone To Watch Over Me, My Foolish Heart, Don't Blame Me, and You Are Too Beautiful), The Beatles' Nowhere Man, Jimmy Webb's Wichita Lineman, the Crowded House hit Don't Dream It's Over, Thelonious Monk's bebop standard Well You Needn't, and Elton John's Your Song. The remaining 6 tracks were improvised in the studio.

Dodson's playing contains elements of many styles (jazz, classical, pop, rock, gospel, blues, experimental) and many eras (stride, bebop, and the full gamut of pop and rock from the 60s through the present time, even including post rock). He's a master of space and harmony, creating vast open landscapes only to invade them with quirky (yet highly melodic) lines, some branching off from the core of the composition, others seeming to come from out of nowhere. He deconstructs popular songs and reworks them in a way that seems to give them a new soul. He was to the end of the first verse of the hugely famous Your Song before I recognized it. But when I heard it the second time his interpretation made all the sense in the world.

Chuck is joined on this album by cellist John Catchings (Bela Fleck, Ben Folds, Bon Jovi, Cat Stevens, Dixie Chicks, Hammock, India.Arie, Jason Mraz, Jessica Simpson, Jim Brickman, John Mayer, Keith Urban, Lambchop, LeAnn Rimes, Linda Eder, Linda Rondstadt, Ron Sexsmith, Spoon, Steve Earle, Yo La Tango, ...And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead, and many others), and violinist David Davidson (Bruce Springsteen, Clay Aiken, Collective Soul, Don McLean, Faith Hill, Howie Day, Indigo Girls, John Mayer, John Tesh, John Williams, Kristin Chenoweth, Martha Wainwright, Melissa Manchester, Michael Crawford, Randy Travis, Switchfoot, Train, Trey Anastasio, and many others). Guitarist Paul Brannon plays on Well You Needn't.

Produced by Chuck Dodson
Recorded September 2009 at Wildwood Studio in Franklin (Nashville) Tennessee
Recording session engineered by Brendan Harkin
Edited, mixed and mastered by Chuck Dodson
The piano was a Yamaha C-7 FD11
Photography by Thomas Petillo and Eric Overacker
Graphic design by Mary Candyce Sanders

Track List:
1. Trio Improv (2:55)
2. Nowhere Man (3:28)
3. Someone To Watch Over Me (4:47)
4. Piano and Cello Improv (3:22)
5. Don't Blame Me (4:20)
6. Piano and Cello Improv (1:22)
7. My Foolish Heart (3:20)
8. Well You Needn't (3:37)
9. Wichita Lineman (3:29)
10. Piano Improv (4:31)
11. Piano and Cello Improv (2:03)
12. You Are Too Beautiful (5:17)
13. Piano Improv "Blues" (3:28)
14. Don't Dream It's Over (5:45)
15. Your Song (7:38)

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From Another Star

"A brilliant pianist, a virtuoso..." ~Scott Yanow

Walter Norris (b. Dec 27, 1931) is one of the world's greatest improvising pianists. He has made an effort to merge jazz improvisation with the technical fluency, compositional methods and intense discipline of classical music. Walter is as often compared to classical artists (Ravel, Bartok, Rachmaninov, etc.) as he is to jazz artists (Art Tatum, Earl Hines, Bud Powell, etc.).

From Another Star is the last studio recording made by Walter Norris. When it was made, Norris was without the support of a record company and, as a result, only 1000 copies were manufactured. Those were distributed to friends and a few stores, mostly in Europe and in New York. For this reason, it has remained extremely rare.

Many believe this album to be Norris' masterwork. The late critic, Whitney Balliett (The New Yorker) said, after hearing it in October 2004, "In many ways, I think Walter may be unparalleled at this particular time. Well, for all time. I can't think of anybody in the past that does the things that he does.

The Gallery@404B is honored to offer this historic recording.

"Without any doubt, Walter Norris is one of the most important solo pianists in the second half of the twentieth century." ~Jorg Engels

Walter Norris - a documentary (DVD)