Music: Keyboard Kid

Erroll Garner is a chunky Negro pianist whose happiest ambition is "to get that listener's foot tapping." One of the best jazz pianists around, he seldom has any trouble doing it. In Greenwich Village's smoky Cafe Society last week, he was succeeding brilliantly.

A pianist who likes to take things easy, he cocked his head, grunted snatches of This Can't Be Love and Body and Soul in a voice that has more soul than body. Nobody cared about that. It was what was going on at the keyboard that counted. Garner sometimes plays with a relaxed but rollicking bounce, his right hand dallying attractively behind the foot-tapping beat of his left. Other times he just gets slow and dreamy, playing around the melody a lot of quiet chords that have just enough bite to keep the customers awake; but this harmonic fabric makes many another jazz thumper sound either flat or fussy. Says he: "I just play what I feel. Suddenly I hit a groove that moves me, and then I take off. I don't worry about how it'll come out."

At 30, Garner has little to worry about: he made close to $100,000 last year by taking off in his own groove. Pittsburgh-born, he started at the piano when he was three, playing by ear the music he heard on the phonograph. At seven, he turned pro, played piano with an outfit called the Candy Kids on a Pittsburgh radio station. He has played with bands, but now settles for a trio ("Three's a crowd, three's enough").

A bachelor, Garner has a Manhattan apartment as well as a house in suburban White Plains, but not a piano. He putters occasionally with golf. A good part of the time, "I just sleep." He still cannot read a note of music. "It's a gift," Pianist Garner says. "The good Lord gave it to me and I'm trying to develop it."