The first of two volumes in celebration of legendary saxophonist Charlie Parker's 100th birthday, here remastering his landmark recordings for the Dial label on the US West Coast between 1946-47, performing with jazz greats including Miles Davis, Lucky Thompson, Erroll Garner, Barney Kessel, Red Calender, JJ Johson, Max Roach, &c. for some of Parker's best known and essential compositions.
Label: ezz-thetics by Hat Hut Records Ltd Catalog ID: ezz-thetics 1111 Squidco Product Code: 29380
Format: CD Condition: New Released: 2020 Country: Switzerland Packaging: Cardboard Gatefold CD Master by Peter Pfister. Tracks 1-4 recorded at Radio Recorders Studios, in Hollywood, California, on March 28th, 1946.
Tracks 5-6 recorded at C.P MacGregor Studio, in Hollywood, California, on February 19th, 1947.
Tracks 7 recorded at C.P MacGregor Studio, in Hollywood, California, February 26th, 1947.
Tracks 8-13 recorded at WOR Studios, in New York City, New York, on October 28th, 1947.
Tracks 14-19 recorded at WOR Studios, in New York City, New York, on November 4th, 1947.
Tracks 20-24 recorded at WOR Studios, in New York City, New York, on December 17th, 1947.
"Despite the time we have had for deep and extensive examination of his life and music since his passing in 1955, in many ways Charlie Parker remains an oxymoron - an unknown entity of mythic proportions. Years of research and analysis have not yet provided the curious listener with a truly satisfying under- standing of all of the parameters of his intensely complicated albeit brief life; speculation, search- ing for an explanation of both his creative genius and his self-destructive decisions, still fuels much of our awareness of the man and his art.
So permit me to indulge in my own speculation concerning a future of which he was deprived, to imagine if Parker had lived beyond a meager 35 years, to allow him a more reasonable life-span and place him in a musical/historical context that in reality evolved under the powerful influence of what he had done, and theorize what might have been.
Suppose we provided Parker with just five more years, postponing his demise until the end of 1960. In August of that year he would have turned 40, sta- tistically speaking still only half a normal lifetime, which reminds us that his position as the primary figure in establishing bebop - the Dial and Savoy recordings - amazingly was achieved while he was just in his late 20s. While various bop practi- tioners continued to sustain the style after 1955, there were already ambitious developments emerging that would supplant bebop as the "new music" of jazz. So the important question we must confront is, would Parker have remained in the bebop idiom, refining, if not fundamentally altering, the music which he helped invent, somewhat along the lines of Thelonious Monk's brilliant but stylistically consistent post-1960 career? Or would these newer alternatives have seduced him into exploring different musical vistas?
Relying on the evidence of his Verve years (which - not counting the Jazz at the Philharmonic concerts which were released on Norman Granz's Mercury, Clef, and ultimately Verve labels starting in 1946 - spanned late '47 to '55), there is nothing to indicate a substantial expansion of Parker's conceptual perspective, despite the opportunity to record with strings, big bands, and latin ensembles. If anything, notwithstanding the high quality of a few studio performances, the Verve recordings display a stylistic entrenchment rather than any potential growth. (Although we must keep in mind that recordings in this era, in part due to label and marketing pressures, can be deceptive as to the actual mindset of creative artists.) Would the possibility of increased commercial success based upon shrewd marketing (requiring simplification) of the bebop brand and Parker's own expanding legend have satisfied his needs at this point in his life? If so, then what we have is a dead end to our speculation of his imaginary future.
One clue we do have to the contrary is the famous report of Parker's unfulfilled desire to study advanced harmony and composition with the adventurous classical composers Edgard Varèse and Stefan Wolpe. In his book On the Music of Stefan Wolpe (Pendragon Press), Austin Clarkson relates that clarinetist Tony Scott introduced Parker to Wolpe, who also worked with jazz figures George Russell, John Carisi, Eddie Sauter, and Eric Dolphy. Varèse, meanwhile, in 1957 collaborated on a never-to-be-completed project with Teo Macero, Hall Overton, and others (including, according to some accounts, Charles Mingus), but previously, in 1954, told Bird biographer Robert Reisner of Parker's request for lessons. Parker's death in 1955 prevented these provocative liaisons.
Parker's role in the birth of bebop was, beyond instrumental virtuosity and sheer exuberance, to provide a challenging new perspective on harmonic and rhythmic complexity. If in the 1950s he was feeling limited by even this level of complexity and sought access to newer, ever more expansive systems of harmonic relationships, an additional five years of life would have put him directly on the path of those developments leading to the jazz revolutions of the 1960s. For example, in 1954 and '55 Mingus was already recording chamber music-influenced small groups with his initial Jazz Workshops; even earlier, in 1952 and '53 Teddy Charles and Hall Overton had ventured into areas of polytonality and formal reorganization. Cecil Taylor made his first recording in 1956 with Steve Lacy in the quartet, even as George Russell was developing his Lydian harmonic system. Ornette Coleman was freeing the soloist's harmonic responsibilities in a post-bop context beginning with his 1958 Contemporary sessions. And in 1960, Eric Dolphy recorded the first three albums under his own name (and a fourth with fellow reedman Ken McIntyre), that same year participating in Gunther Schuller's Third Stream explorations.
Even in one's wildest imagination, it's impossible to conjure up what Charlie Parker might have sounded like in a beyond-bop harmonic context alongside Cecil Taylor (although Taylor's subsequent altoist Jimmy Lyons may be the closest we have to an actual approximation), or negotiating the atonal environment of Schuller's scores. It's enough to speculate on the possibility that this is the direction he would have gone. In that case, he would have influenced the evolution of jazz in the '60s just as he did in the 1940s. It's our loss that we'll never know what it would have sounded like."-Art Lange, Chicago, May 2020
"In 1953 for my 18th birthday my father presented me a small turntable with an integrated loudspeaker to play singles and 10-inch LPs. In addition I got a Charlie Parker 10-inch LP on Jazztone with the California Dial sessions and others. Hearing Parker was my introduction to modern jazz, and his music sounds amazing to this day. Recently I went back to these recordings and discovered that August 29th, 2020 is Parker's 100th Birthday, which created the idea to work on a pair of Remastered/Revisited CDs for this event. I presented the idea to Bernhard "Benne" Vischer, also about my age, and he reacted within two minutes that he would support the project."-Werner X. Uehlinger, Basel, May 2020