Charlie Parker Quintet

This second installment in the Classics Charlie Parker chronology contains quite a number of Bird's best-loved and most respected recordings. The first 12 tracks, recorded in New York for the Dial label in October and November of 1947, are all masterpieces of modern music, with the ballads, especially "Embraceable You," constituting some of Parker's very best recorded work. This is the classic 1947 quintet with Miles Davis, Duke Jordan, Tommy Potter, and Max Roach. Even if his personal life was characteristically chaotic, 1947 was a good year for Charlie Parker's music. It was in November 1947 that this band hit the road to play the El Sino Club on St. Antoine Boulevard in Detroit. Unfortunately, Bird got really snockered and couldn't perform, so the El Sino management canceled the gig. Bird ultimately destroyed his saxophone by throwing it out of a hotel window onto the street below. (A tragic and disturbing image!) Back in New York, the band – now a sextet with the addition of trombonist J.J. Johnson – made six more sides for Dial on December 17, 1947.

With jazz – lite and trite, near and drear, pretentious and tendentious – seemingly on the increase, the reissue of five “classic” Parker Verve albums (even in truncated form) is to be welcomed. Newcomers (if any exist) to his latter-day recordings as well as devotees (still alive) will find much to enjoy in this Avid compilation.

Charlie Parker Quintet & Sextet - Bird In Boston: Live At The Hi-Hat 1953-1954 (2016) {2CD Fresh Sound Records}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 666 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 331 Mb
Full Artwork @ 600 dpi (jpg) -> 228 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 1953-54, 2016 Fresh Sound Records | FSR-CD 911 | 24bit Digitally Remastered
Jazz / Bebop / Bop / Saxophone

For over two decades, the Hi-Hat Club occupied a choice location among the jazz clubs of Boston’s South End district, at the corner of Columbus and Massachusetts Avenue. After the end of World War II, lesser luminaries took over the band-stand, and after a while entertainment practically stopped altogether. Dave Coleman, a jazz promoter, had taken over management of the club in 1949. Through Coleman’s personal initiative, the Hi-Hat enjoyed its most successful years, and by 1951 it was the only club featuring a consistent policy of presenting modern jazz.

Musicians like to observe that for all his notoriety as the wellspring of bebop, Charlie "Bird" Parker's music was loaded with the blues. Swedish Schnapps is as good a place as any to make that connection with Parker's music, including as it does two of his most enduring bop heads based on the blues, "Au Privave" and "Blues For Alice." While you wouldn't mistake either composition for a Muddy Waters tune, both relate Bird's off-kilter accents and serpentine melodicism at walking tempos that let you hear what's actually going by, instead of leaving you astonished but bemused. To really drive the point home, there's "K.C. Blues," which finds the altoist at his hollerin' best, and "Lover Man," certainly one of the bluesiest 32-bar standards around.

On May 15, 1953, five of jazz's most influential musicians - Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Charles Mingus, Max Roach and Bud Powell - met at Massey Hall in Toronto for their first and only known recording as a quintet. Although only a small audience had the opportunity to experience this historic evening in person, it was captured on tape. The resulting album, The Quintet: Jazz at Massey Hall, became one of the genre's most important and acclaimed releases.

This four-CD box set contains all of the recordings Charlie Parker made for the Savoy label and it is overflowing with gems and an almost countless number of alternate takes. Bird was one of the most important jazzmen of all time and nearly every note he recorded (in the studios if not live) is well worth hearing. This box starts off with his sideman date with Tiny Grimes in 1944, contains Parker's famous "Ko Ko" session of 1945 (with a young Miles Davis on trumpet and highlighted by "Now's the Time" and "Billie's Bounce"), and continues through his 1947-1948 quintet sessions with a more mature Miles Davis; either Bud Powell, John Lewis, or Duke Jordan on piano; bassists Tommy Potter, Curly Russell, or Nelson Boyd; and drummer Max Roach. Together they recorded such classics as "Donna Lee," "Chasin' the Bird," "Milestones," and "Parker's Mood." Every scrap that the great altoist cut for Savoy is in this box.

This CD released for the first time the soundtrack of two of Charlie Parker's appearances on television. Some of the music and talking is trivial and loose but a few of the performances are quite unique and Bird is heard with a variety of intriguing groups. From 1949 Parker plays a fine version of "Lover" and helps trumpeter Shorty Sherock on "I Can't Get Started" but is drowned out by Sidney Bechet on an uptempo blues. From 1952 Bird gets featured on "Anthropology" and participates in a "Bop vs. Dixieland" blues with trumpeters Max Kaminsky and Miles Davis, trombonists Kai Winding and Will Bradley and clarinetist Joe Marsala; everyone gets to solo. This interesting CD concludes with Bird in fine form in 1954 with a quintet that also includes trumpeter Herb Pomeroy, material not available elsewhere.