Philly’s Orrin Evans is up for a Grammy for ‘Walk A Mile In My Shoe’

Look closely at the pair of children’s shoes on the cover of Orrin Evans and the Captain Black Big Band’s Grammy-nominated new album, Walk a Mile in My Shoe.

One is larger than the other. Evans was born with neurofibromatosis, a condition that caused a malformation in his left foot and required five operations by the time he was 8.

Now, as Evans approaches his 50th birthday in April, the acclaimed Philadelphia jazz pianist who will lead a 13-member band at the Kimmel Center’s Perelman Theater on Friday, often walks with a cane and says eventual amputation is “inevitable.”

Walk a Mile in My Shoe isn’t focused on the feet of the restlessly creative, always adventurous musician who has released 30 albums, including five with the Captain Black Big Band, since making his auspicious debut with The Trio in 1995.

Rather, it’s a song cycle about walking through the world with pride, a testimony to Evans’ ecumenical taste and ability to act as connective tissue between the diverse group of musicians he brings together as a collective whole.

Evans’ latest Grammy nomination is his third in the Large Jazz Ensemble category for a Captain Black album, and first for an album he’s released on his own label, Imani.

The invigorating album features vocals from Philly singers Bilal, Paul Jost, and Joanna Pascale, plus longtime Rolling Stones backup singer and 20 Feet from Stardom star Lisa Fischer. All but Fischer will join Evans and the swinging ensemble, which includes trombone player Robin Eubanks, trumpeter Duane Eubanks, organist Luke Carlos O’Reilly, and drummer Mark Whitfield Jr. at the Perelman on Friday.

The album’s title, and its reference to his medical condition — “the same one the Elephant Man had, though mine only affects my foot and leg,” he said — gives Evans an avenue to make some of the most personal music of his career.

“The shoe is an entry point. The album is really just a way for me to let people know who I am,” Evans said, sitting in the living room of the West Oak Lane home where he lives with his wife, Dawn, one morning this week.

Behind him was a portrait of his late father, Don Evans, smoking a pipe. The elder Evans was a playwright who collaborated with the Modern Jazz Quartet’s John Lewis. Captain Black was his favorite tobacco brand.

Also hanging on the walls are African masks and posters for New York productions of his father’s plays Mahalia and One Monkey Don’t Stop No Show.

Gil Evans’ (no relation) 1960 album Out of the Cool is on the turntable. Covers of LPs by Diana Ross, Aretha Franklin, Willow Smith, and Prince are on display. The coasters on the dining room table have photos of Whitney Houston, James Brown, and Dorothy Dandridge.

Evans loosens up by playing bits of John Coltrane’s “Giant Steps” and “Countdown” while an Inquirer photographer takes photos of him at his piano, which traveled across the Delaware from the house he grew up in Trenton, before moving to Mount Airy with his mother, opera singer Frances Gooding, when he was 11, after his parents’ divorce.

His Philadelphia story began before that, when his family would drive to Roxborough on Saturdays to buy custom shoes at a Ridge Avenue shop owned by a shoemaker he remembers as Mr. Ike. Growing up with supportive parents in an artistic household, Evans says he didn’t feel like an outsider due to his medical condition.

“Never. It was because of the way I was raised. I felt special.” He laughs. “As a younger person, I thought it was weird to not have two different feet.”

In Philly, Evans felt the influence of his saxophonist uncle, Ellsworth Gooding, and studied at Settlement Music School and the Girard Academic Music Program before graduating from Martin Luther King Jr. High School.

While studying at Rutgers University with Philly pianist Kenny Barron, he got a taste for the behind-the-scenes music business, booking acts at the Blue Moon Jazz Cafe in Philly’s Bourse building while still a teenager. There he met vocalist Pascale, who sings “Sunday in New York,” penned by late Philly Pops leader Peter Nero, on Walk a Mile.

After spending five years on and off in New York, he moved back to Philadelphia in 1998, where he was mentored at Ortlieb’s in Northern Liberties by pianist Sid Simmons and organ player Trudi Pitts. He also learned from revered Philly sax men Bootsie Barnes and Larry McKenna.

He plays regularly at Chris’ Jazz Cafe and South, keeps his own Steinway at Solar Myth, and was out the night before this interview checking out Cellar Dog, the new Center City jazz club.

He teamed with renowned Philly players like Christian McBride on The Evolution of Oneself in 2016 and Kevin Eubanks and Kurt Rosewinkel on #knowingishalfthebattle, also from 2016.

Evans, who’s on the cover of this month’s Downbeat magazine, also regularly treks up and down the New Jersey Turnpike, careful to keep himself visible in New York, where the Captain Black band has had a long residency at the jazz club Smoke.

“When we moved back here in 1998, I made it a point to not become a ‘Philly musician,’” he said, meaning he didn’t want to be identified with the city’s rich jazz history but under the radar elsewhere.

“Sometime we Philly musicians get comfortable here, and expect something to happen without putting in the work. You have to be proactive. You can’t just sit back and wait for everything to come. Once you get the ball, you need to keep dribbling.”

In 2018, Evans joined esteemed jazz trio the Bad Plus, replacing departing pianist Ethan Iverson. He stayed with the band for two widely praised albums, but early in the pandemic began to feel the need to move on, particularly after the deaths of his hero McCoy Tyner, trumpeter Wallace Roney (just days after recording together), and Barnes.

“I needed to get back,” he said. “It was like I was losing myself. I was losing time. I appreciate the time I spent in the band. But I realized you’ve got to be true to yourself.”

This March, Evans felt an urgent need to make Walk a Mile in My Shoe.

Smoke Sessions, the label that Evans has been recording for since 2014’s Liberation Blues, thought time was too short to release the album this year in time for Grammy nomination consideration.

Evans, a meticulous planner who has several unannounced Philly shows in the works, felt otherwise. “I don’t think like ‘Let’s do it next year.’ I gotta do it now,” he said.

So he went ahead with the project on his own Imani label. Remarkably, the entirety of Walk a Mile was recorded in one day, with Evans not listing himself as producer but instead crediting The Village.

That includes Jost — whom Evans likens to Tony Bennett and Mel Torme — opening the album with a riveting take on Chris Whitley’s “Dislocation Blues.” Fischer soars on Harold Arlen and Johnny Mercer’s “Blues in the Night” and Stevie Wonder’s “Overjoyed.” And Bilal is luminescent on “All That I Am” and Marvin Gaye’s “Save the Children.”

“Somebody needs to give me a job as a creative director,” said Evans, joking about his ability to pull a team of diverse players into action in a short period of time.

That knack goes back to his upbringing, Evans said, when his parents had an open-door policy with actors, artists, and musicians gathering in their home in Trenton. “There was a real sense of community. I never knew who was going to be at the house.”

“I came from people who were leaders, but they wanted to create other leaders. There are leaders who create followers because they need to be the only ones shining. But for me, if I’m creating more people to shine, I’m creating more light for the world.”

Orrin Evans and the Captain Black Big Band at the Perelman Theater at the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts at 7:30 p.m. Nov. 29. $39. ensembleartsphilly.org.