Who is your favorite keyboard player?

[caesar]

Nicky Hopkins is one of my favorites.

 

[Johnny Vinyl]

Chuck Leavell

 

[JackD201]

Chick Corea (Fusion counts in this subforum right?)

 

[DonH50]

My wife.

Hard to pick after that and I have not heard many recent ones. Chick Corea, McCoy Tyner, Keith Emerson come to mind, then all the earlier jazz pianists...

Arturo Sandoval just because he also plays trumpet and we once had an hour-plus phone conversation way after midnight... What a nice guy!!! He also plays the same horn I do (made by the same guy, Flip Oakes).

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

Well you didn't put that in past tense and sadly, Bill Evans is dead. I'll take Herbie Hancock.

Tim

 

[jtinn]

Jimmy Smith and his Hammond B-3 Organ

 

[asiufy]

Tony Banks, from Genesis.


alexandre

 

[prerich]

Jimmy McGriff and Twinkie Clark....B3.

 

[Bruce B]

Bruce Hornsby

 

[microstrip]

I will nominate someone I was listening recently - Rick Wakeman. And the chosen album was my more than 30 years old copy of the The Six Wives of Henry VIII.

 

[Bill Hart]

Alll good players. I walked into a private event years ago, and a guy was playing a grand piano. Looked closely, it was Chick.
If you like kick-ass old school B-3 playing, there's a guy named Red Young out of Texas who I saw not so long ago with Eric Burdon. Red was amazing. Really able to use the instrument fully.

 

[jazdoc]

Can't name just one...

Art Tatum
Benny Green
Oscar Peterson
Oliver Jones
Sonny Clark

 

[JackD201]

Nat King Cole ---> underrated as a pianist

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

Nat King Cole ---> underrated as a pianist

Under-utilized as a pianist. Some guys, well you just wish they couldn't sing so well. I'd love it there were more of Nat's playing on records. I'd love it if more of Vince Gill's guitar playing was managing to get recorded too. But both of those guys, in their very different genres, are great singers, so it's not all bad.

Tim

 

[caesar]

Those of you into the Blues, Otis Spann is one of the greats. Even when he was not soloing, his interplay with other musicians is jaw dropping and goose bump raising.

 

[jazdoc]

Under-utilized as a pianist. Some guys, well you just wish they couldn't sing so well. I'd love it there were more of Nat's playing on records. I'd love it if more of Vince Gill's guitar playing was managing to get recorded too. But both of those guys, in their very different genres, are great singers, so it's not all bad.

Tim

+1