{"id":28709,"date":"2024-12-12T05:30:52","date_gmt":"2024-12-12T10:30:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=28709"},"modified":"2024-12-12T11:08:54","modified_gmt":"2024-12-12T16:08:54","slug":"album-review-charlie-parker-the-long-lost-bird-live-afro-cubop-recordings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2024\/12\/12\/album-review-charlie-parker-the-long-lost-bird-live-afro-cubop-recordings\/","title":{"rendered":"Album Review: Charlie Parker \u2013 The Long Lost Bird Live Afro-Cubop Recordings!"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"For anyone who appreciates Charlie Parker, most any recordings will be worthwhile. This 2LP set from RockBeat Records is no different. So rather than extol its obvious virtues (i.e. it\u2019s Charlie Parker already!) and\/or note standard caveats (i.e. the sound quality varies), instead I\u2019ll endeavor to note the sources of the tracks so that interested parties can sort out if they have these tracks already, or not. Charlie Parker has been comped so extensively that redundancy among releases is all but inevitable. My source for the research below is jazzdisco.org<\/a>; any errors one might find here are more likely to me mine than theirs, though anything\u2019s possible. — bk<\/strong><\/p>\n

Gillespie\u2019s \u201cDizzy Atmosphere\u201d was first recorded by Bird in February 1945 as a member of Dizzy\u2019s Sextet; that same year Gillespie\u2019s BeBop Six (again with Parker) recorded the tune. A third Gillespie recording (this time with his Quintet) dates from \u201847. Parker\u2019s earliest recording of the song under his own name is a March 1948 session; they waxed it a second time in July of that year. In February 1950 Parker\u2019s Sextet played it at Birdland, and that was recorded. The final recorded instance of Bird playing \u201cDizzy Atmosphere\u201d dates form May 1950 at the Renaissance Ballroom; that radio broadcast is documented on this set.<\/p>\n

\u201cA Night in Tunisia\u201d figured into many sessions for Gillespie and with Parker\u2019s bands. The earliest dates from July 1945; the version on this collection should be credited to the Dizzy Gillespie Quintet, as they performed it at Carnegie Hall in 1947. Another Gillespie composition, \u201cGroovin\u2019 High\u201d was recorded many times; the recording here is from the same Carnegie Hall performance as \u201cA Night in Tunisia.\u201d \u201cConfirmation\u201d followed at that same set; the tape ran out during the song.<\/p>\n

\u201cLament for the Congo\u201d is among the rarer tracks on this set. It dates from a 1950 session featuring an unidentified Afro-Cuban Band (the personnel is noted on the album sleeve). It\u2019s the only known Bird recording of the song, and has apparently only been released (\u201cunofficially\u201d) once before, on Bird on the Road<\/i> from a small, ultra-low-budget label called Jazz Showcase. It\u2019s one of very few cuts on the set that actually fit the definition of \u201cAfro-Cubop\u201d recordings. Equally rare, \u201cMambo Fortunato\u201d is from the same source, where it\u2019s noted simply as \u201cMambo.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dizzy\u2019s \u201cSalt Peanuts\u201d was recorded many times with Parker, and Bird kept the tune in his bag with his own groups. The recording here is chronologically at least the sixth (and next-to-last) recording of it with Parker leading his group.<\/p>\n

The entirety of Side Three features a set recorded at Municipal Arena in Kansas City, Missouri on July 22, 1951. The band is in fact Woody Herman and His Orchestra, a sixteen-piece outfit with Parker on alto and Herman on alto, clarinet and of course conducting. The set was released in 1972 as Bird With the Herd<\/i> on Alamac, a tiny label that exploited copyright loopholes, specializing in airchecks and reissues of radio transcription discs. Other than a 1996 reissue on CD and cassette, it seems to have been unavailable ever since (until now). The Alamac release featured nine tracks; the five here (\u201ctwo readings of \u201cLeo the Lion,\u201d plus one each of \u201cCuban Holiday,\u201d \u201cLemon Drop\u201d and \u201cThe Goof and I\u201d) are presented in the same sequence as the original, with songs that were played in between and among the set left off.<\/p>\n

The fourth side of this collection presents six tunes from a 1954 date in Portland Oregon, at that city\u2019s Civic Auditorium. The band on this date is Stan Kenton and His Orchestra with Charlie Parker. The listings at jazzdisco.org, suggest that only the first three tunes on the program \u2013 \u201cNight and Day,\u201d \u201cMy Funny Valentine\u201d and \u201cCherokee\u201d \u2013 have seen release prior to now, on a 1981 Italian release, Kenton and Bird. But the discogs.com listing for that record lists all six of the tunes \u2013 albeit in different order \u2013 as being included on that record\u2019s second side.<\/p>\n

Lending additional weight to this fine (if randomly odds \u2018n\u2019 ends) collection are a pair of brief liner notes. One dates from 2015 and is written by noted Bird fan, the late Keith Emerson. The other slightly longer essay comes from Cory Weeds, jazz historian and archivist extraordinaire. The set was released in 2015, but only on CD; for Record Store Day 2023 The Long Lost Bird Live Afro-Cubop Recordings!<\/i> received its first vinyl release (with different cover art), on 180-gram.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For anyone who appreciates Charlie Parker, most any recordings will be worthwhile. This 2LP set from RockBeat Records is no different. So rather than extol its obvious virtues (i.e. it\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":28710,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,40,42,49,65,73],"tags":[495],"class_list":["post-28709","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-compilation","category-instrumental","category-jazz","category-new-release","category-review","category-vinyl","tag-charlie-parker","cat-19-id","cat-40-id","cat-42-id","cat-49-id","cat-65-id","cat-73-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28709","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28709"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28709\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28713,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28709\/revisions\/28713"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28710"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28709"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28709"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28709"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}