Phineas Newborn, Jr. is on my top-five list of greatest jazz pianists of all time. But his career was spotty, largely it appears due to a severe emotional reaction to criticism that he was all technique and no soul. So what? The technique is phenomenal and the soul is there too, if sometimes a bit hidden. But jazz pianists tend to reveal themselves through their playing styles and Newborn appears to have been as a person a good deal like his playing; a bold front–dig those  fast-tempo parallel improvisations,  two octaves apart which requires great ambidexterity—masking a recessive emotional side that will surface at surprising times. To continue this little exercise for a moment: Oscar Petersen is possessed of a voraciousness that is seen both in his extraodinary playing and his extraordinary weight; Art Tatum is trapped in a lush, inventive and sometimes heartbreaking search for a world he can barely see; and Thelonious Monk is just plain off his rocker. Newborn took criticism too seriously and it ate away at him. Taking a page from the Charlie Parker playbook, he wound up in Camarillo State Hospital in California, playing only erratically from the late 60s to the end of his too short life (he died in 1989, broke and mostly forgotten). Above is a Phineas appearance on an early 60s TV show called ‘Jazz Scene USA’, with Oscar Brown Jr. playing the role of Dick Cavett. It’s been colorized which is a real treat–you’re there with them in the studio and not in black-and-white video-land. I love every note Phineas ever played–his touch, his exuberant invention and, yes, his emotions which are on full display below in his classic album with strings ‘While My Lady Sleeps.’