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Charlie Parker: At Birdland 1950 Revisited

by Stefano Merighi
Il 1950 per Charlie Parker è un anno di cambiamenti. Dopo lo scioglimento del quintetto aureo con Miles Davis e Max Roach, le formazioni diventano più effimere, occasionali, almeno fino al sodalizio con Red Rodney. Norman Granz sta per trascinare Parker nella fortunata formula con gli archi, nel frattempo c'è l'impegno di una lunga e tormentata tournèe nel sud del paese. In questo contesto, le registrazioni preservate al Birdland di New York del giugno di quell'anno, possiedono un'aura ...
Continue ReadingPhil Schaap: Talking Technology and More

by Marshall D Katzman
This article was transcribed from a March 21, 2021 interview on the Mister Radio Podcast . Marshall Katzman: You're listening to Mister Radio, and I'm your host, Marshall. Today's guest has won six Grammy Awards and eight Grammy nominations, including an award for Best Album Notes for Bird, the complete Charlie Parker on Verve. Frank Foster has called him a walking jazz history book. Early in his career, he managed the Basie alumni band, The Countsmen, and for ...
Continue ReadingCharlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Bud Powell, Charles Mingus, Max Roach: Hot House: The Complete Jazz at Massey Hall Recordings

by Richard J Salvucci
This is the stuff of legend, one for the ages. It all started here; the greatest jazz concert of all time. How many times has the Massey Hall Concert (Toronto, 1953) been described that way? For the average All About Jazz reader, Massey Hall happened before he or she was born. Besides, there were other famous jazz concerts such as The Carnival of Swing (Randall's Island, NY, 1938), Benny Goodman's 1938 Carnegie Hall Concert (that remained unreleased until 1958), Gene ...
Continue ReadingDizzy Gillespie & Charlie Parker: Live Revisited

by Chris May
The first six tracks on this album, which were recorded at New York City's Town Hall on June 22, 1945, are amongst the most exciting in the jazz compendium. Not only because of their intrinsic artistic merit but also because they mark one of the first, if not the first, occasion the vanguard of the bop revolution emerged from the basements of 52nd Street, equipped with a fully formed manifestation of the new music, on to a stage bigger than ...
Continue ReadingCharlie Parker: At Birdland 1950 Revisited

by Chris May
When it comes to live recordings of Charlie Parker, Jazz At Massey Hall, from a concert in Toronto in May 1953, has been widely considered the slam-dunk number one ever since Charles Mingus released it on his Debut label in 1956. Forensicists might favour the 7-CD The Complete Dean Benedetti Recordings Of Charlie Parker (Mosaic, 1990), but for most people, Massey Hall takes pole position. There have, however, been challengers for the top spot. Prominent among them ...
Continue ReadingVarious Artists: The Birth of Bop

by Richard J Salvucci
Someone famously called jazz the sound of surprise, but all too often, what is on offer is the dull hum of routine. Or something like that. This historic reissue is, however, anything but routine. This is not the first time that Teddy Reig's Savoy sides have been reissued (was he also the mysterious Buck Ram listed as producing one track?), but Craft Recordings took a lot of trouble to produce this very fine selection. If a listener were, ...
Continue ReadingBebop, Beats, and the Drive of Beat Literature

by Arthur R George
"Mulberry-eyed girls in black stockings, Smelling vaguely of mint jelly and last night's bongo drummer... fling their arrow legs / To the heavens / Losing their doubts in the beat" of San Francisco nights, announced poet Bob Kaufman's Bagel Shop Jazz." (Solitudes Crowded with Loneliness, New Directions Publishing, 1965; Collected Poems of Bob Kaufman, City Lights, 2019) Angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night,.. floating across the tops of cities ...
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