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I'm Christopher Lighten, this is Open Source.

The afterlife of an artistic legend is the thread running through this hour's musical conversation.

The artist in question is the one-off and self-taught jazz pianist, Errol Garner.

He arrived from Pittsburgh on 52nd Street in New York as jazz was being retooled in the 1940s.

He made one of the all-time best-selling jazz concert albums in the 50s,

toward the world in the 60s and died in the 70s.

40 some years later, respect for Errol Garner is going deeper.

It was always safe to say he was a jazz genius, but is it enough?

The cultural historian Robin D. G. Kelly at UCLA is the biographer of another piano giant,

felonious monk.

Around the Garner legacy, Robin Kelly has been engaging eminent players in today's music

in a series of podcasts with the likes of Vijay Iyer, Chick Korea, Jason Moran,

and Helen Song, all pianists, and the drummer Terry Lynn Carrington.

Robin begins each time with the question, who is Errol Garner to you?

Errol Garner is the truth.

I don't know how it was to say it.

I mean, couldn't read music but played better than anybody.

It's a rediscovery.

...