About ten years ago How My Heart Sings, a biography of jazz pianist Bill Evans, contained a story by English jazz fan and promoter, Brian Hennessy, about his first encounter with Evans, in spring 1962 in New York.
…. The Village Vanguard was offering the Bill Evans Trio that week and, not long after checking into the hotel, I took a cab to Greenwich Village. On arrival outside the Vanguard, I observed a long queue waiting to get in and soon discovered that it mostly consisted of Irish Americans who were there to hear the main act of the evening, the Clancy Brothers. To them, the Bill Evans Trio was merely an interval filler. After the Clancys first set, the audience evaporated (the beer was cheaper around the corner) but huddled around the piano in what appeared to be a state of worship were a dozen studious devotees….