The right hand is a horn. That's the trick with Bud Powell — Harlem, 1924, and by the time he's recording he's playing lines you'd swear came out of a saxophone bell, long and fast and breathing in the wrong places on purpose. The left hand isn't accompanying him. It's jabbing. Two notes, a shell of a chord, just enough to say where the bar is, and then out of the way again.
Which means the trio room is doing more work than you'd think. Somebody has to hold the bottom of that music, and it's the bass player, walking it, and the drummer riding the cymbal while the snare drops little bombs. Listen for the bass on the trio sides — steady as a hallway clock while the piano's off doing something else entirely. First takes, a lot of them. They kept what happened.
His younger brother Richie played piano too — same house, two pianists, which can't have made for quiet Sundays. He ended up with Clifford Brown and Max Roach.
Otis, Birdland's bandstand was tight enough that the piano lid was practically over the drum kit — nowhere for that left hand to hide, and the bass player standing close enough to feel the jabs. Rooms like that make a trio listen.