Left Alone — Mal Waldron (Bethlehem, 1959) Artwork

Deep in the Stacks: Your Daily Jazz LP Podcast

Every day, Danny from Kissa Kissa -- the Japanese-style jazz vinyl bar in Crown Heights, Brooklyn -- pulls one album from the stacks and tells you who made it, why it matters, and what to listen for. Three minutes, one record you need to hear. Calendar-driven picks tied to recording dates and artist birthdays, plus deep cuts from the Kissa Kissa collection.

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Deep in the Stacks: Your Daily Jazz LP Podcast

Left Alone — Mal Waldron (Bethlehem, 1959)

April 21, 2026 • Episode 11

0:00 | 3:27

Deep in the Stacks, Episode 11: A farewell letter written in real time, by the last pianist to sit beside Billie Holiday.

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SPEAKER_01 0:00

Billie Holliday co-wrote a song with her pianist, then died before she could ever record it. That pianist was Mal Waldron, and the song was called Left Alone. Waldron had been Holliday's accompanist for her final two years from 1957 until her death in July of 1959. Just weeks before she passed, Waldron took a trio into a New York studio and cut an album around that unrecorded tune, a record that would become both a memorial and a statement of purpose. This is Deep in the Stacks, today's album, Left Alone by Mal Waldron. The album is almost entirely a trio record, Waldron on piano, Julian Ewell on bass, Al Dreery's on drums, Spare and Unadorned, recorded. February 24, 1959 for Bethlehem Records. Five tracks of Waldron's insistent, repeating phrase pianism, originals like Catwalk and Minor Pulation, alongside Sonny Rollins' Aero Jin and the standard You Don't Know What Love Is, a tune deeply associated with Holiday. The exception is the title track, where Alto saxophonist Jackie McLean joins the session and adds a single raw voice to the arrangement. Then the album closes with something you almost never hear on a jazz record, a short spoken interview between Waldron and producer Teddy Charles, where Waldron remembers Holiday in his own words. No dramatization, no embellishment, just a musician talking about someone he lost. Left Alone and Catwalk were pulled as a single, and both sides received four-star reviews from Billboard. But the title track is what endured as Waldron's signature composition, a melody he returned to across decades in duo settings, solo concerts, and a full revisitation album with Archie Schepp years later. Start with Catwalk, the trio stretching out without the weight of the dedication hanging over them. Then go to the title track where McLean's alto enters. This is the composition. Holiday helped write but never sang on tape. Waldron and McLean carry the melody between them. What you're hearing is a song that exists only because one musician decided to finish what another couldn't. At over eight minutes, it's the longest piece on the record, and the one where Waldron's hypnotic style comes through most clearly. Left Alone, by Mal Waldron. A farewell letter written in real time by the last pianist to sit beside Billy Holliday. I'm Danny from Kissa Kissa in Brooklyn. Go put on a record. We'll see you tomorrow.