Piano out of tune on recording

[Allen Wright]

Bill,

I've heard countless jazz recordings where the piano is badly, sometimes
egregiously, out of tune. Especially older recordings. I'm sure that the
budgets and priorities were unfortunately different for jazz as opposed to
most classical recordings. And probably most jazz pianists were pretty
accustomed to encountering out-of-tune pianos in their usual playing
environments as well, and so perhaps didn't (or couldn't afford to?) make a
stink about it. I have a Donald Byrd album that the tuning is amazingly,
distractingly awful on...

So I guess at least some jazz players were being forced to experiment with
unintentionally non-equal temperaments, but not ones you would probably call
historic. "A-historic"? Prehistoric might be a better term.

Allen Wright
Oberlin Conservatory