The second of two volumes in celebration of legendary saxophonist Charlie Parker's 100th birthday, here remastering his landmark recordings for the Savoy label in New York City between 1945-48, performing with jazz greats including Bud Powell, Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, John Lewis, Curley Russel, Max Roach, &c. for some of be-bop's finest and best known compositions.
Label: ezz-thetics by Hat Hut Records Ltd Catalog ID: ezz-thetics 1112 Squidco Product Code: 29381
Format: CD Condition: New Released: 2020 Country: Switzerland Packaging: Cardboard Gatefold CD Master by Peter Pfister. Tracks 1-4 recorded at WOR Studios, in New York City, New York, on November 26th, 1945.
Tracks 5-7 recorded at Harry Smith Studios, in New York City, New York, on May 8th, 1947.
Tracks 8-11 recorded at United Sound Studios, in Detroit, Michigan, on December 21st, 1947.
Tracks 12-15 recorded at at Harry Smith Studios, New York City, New York, on September 18th, 1948.
Tracks 16-18 recorded at Harry Smith Studios, New York City, New York, on September 24th, 1948.
Tracks 19-23 recorded at Carnegie Hall, in New York City, New York, on September 29th, 1947.
"'Bird was like a bright burning star. If he lived to 90 he couldn't have upset the scene much more, could he?' (Red Callender, quoted in Ira Gitler's book Swing to Bop [Oxford University Press])
In celebrating the 100th anniversary of his birth, we naturally recognize Charlie Parker as the prime progenitor of bebop, the revolutionary "new music" of the 1940s. Yet by acknowledging his status as an historical icon in this way, we ironically threaten to isolate his achievement in a distant era, to soften the shock and dilute the substance of his music as the product of a time and circumstances that we no longer identify with. What if, instead, we focus on the rhetorical element of Callender's question? If Parker had lived beyond 1955, would he have continued to innovate, to challenge the conventions of the moment, to upset the scene?
Of course, we are free to speculate on the future of Parker's music had he lived another five, ten, even twenty or thirty years. Consider, thirty more years would have placed him in 1985, at just age 65, certainly within the realm of possibility had he not self-destructed. How would the creative genius of bebop have responded to the freeing implications of Ornette Coleman's music? The electrified jazz-rock hybrid of '70s fusion? Or the gradual but validated interaction of modern classical and improvisational genres? Given his ability to transform Tin Pan Alley songs into anthems of spontaneous recomposition, would he have been similarly attracted to the pop music of Michael Jackson or the Beatles? Is it ridiculous to imagine him wanting to jam with Jimi Hendrix or Prince, as his former sideman Miles Davis did?
In his book A Jazz Retrospect (Crescendo Publishing), British critic Max Harrison gave us the brilliant analogy, "The most urgent of the Dial and especially the Savoy improvisations remind us of the grimacing clay figures the Aztecs used to bury with their dead: a great deal of anguish is expressed in a small space." Similarly, the pianist/singer Mose Allison once said "Bird to me was a blues player caught in the age of anxiety." These comments about anguish and anxiety may reflect upon the personal demons Parker wrestled with in his various addictions, but they also represent the musical struggle between control and ecstasy at Parker's extreme level of genius - a level of infinite complexity rarely encountered in "ordinary" artists. Yet Harrison, among others, has pointed out that the sources of the Savoy repertory in particular are relatively simple and conservative - the largest number of pieces are based on the characteristic blues format, next "I Got Rhythm" changes, and the remainder on several other popular songs - personalized by Parker's intricate, quirky, engaging new themes (or "heads") and intensified by his simultaneous formal ingenuity and emotional impulse.
The blues by nature are fueled by emotion; the evidence that Parker was a consummate blues player, and that so many of his greatest performances created an elaborate transformation of the basic blues format, give his music a timeless quality that transcends the historical/stylistic limitations of the bebop era, and speaks a common language to artists closer to our own experience. Further, pieces like "Bird Gets the Worm" and "Merry-go-Round," which leap directly into dazzling improvi sation without benefit of opening themes, although based on set chord patterns, infer a sense of conceptual expressionist freedom later amplified by Ornette Coleman. But perhaps a deeper parallel exists with Eric Dolphy.
Dolphy's abbreviated career, like Parker's, and their relative ages (one 36, the other 35) are only superficial connections. Rather, like him, his creative edge was the product of brilliantly extended harmonic and rhythmic ideas in a structured context that resulted in a dynamic, dramatic statement. They shared a passionate audacity in their manner of soloing, akin to jumping out of an airplane without a parachute. Yet our perspective of Dolphy shifted depending on the context he was heard in, without changing his point of view; when playing in John Coltrane's group the chord-based albeit ambiguously chromatic quality of his solos contrasted with the more extravagant playing of the leader, as opposed to the radical implications of the same approach in Charles Mingus' more conservative ensemble. Would we have had the same reaction to post-bop, "modern" Parker in different settings?
A revealing artefact that bridges an assumed stylistic generational gap is the 1960 Candid album Newport Rebels, with an ad hoc ensemble put together by Mingus to protest the perceived commercialism by the jazz festival of the same name. Here trumpeter Roy Eldridge and drummer Jo Jones, both nine years older than Bird, share the stage with Mingus, trombonist Jimmy Knepper, and Dolphy. Dolphy and Eldridge might seem incompatible, but they find common ground in the program of standards and blues - Eldridge actually the more adventurous and intense, pushing the expressive tonal envelope in ways reminiscent, in hindsight, of both Rex Stewart and Lester Bowie, and Dolphy emphasizing his own idiosyncratic connection to the blues. One can easily imagine a 40-year-old Parker fitting into this company, not sounding like the Bird of 1947 but investigating new possibilities in a music continually renewed by artists willing to take a risk. 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