Charlie Parker - Charlie Parker: A Studio Chronicle 1940-1948

best set out there?

JSP is known throughout the music collector world for having the highest in sound quality (for a relatively small label devoted only to reissues, box sets etc). This set includes all of the master takes Bird appeared on on the Savoy, Dial, Guild, Bel-Tone, and Comet labels, during the years 1944-48, plus a disc containing most of his pre-bop recordings, including demos, some of which are very rare (though not very interesting in my opinion). The main stuff, '44-'48, is some of the most important music recorded ever, and consequently it's not hard to come by- what makes this set unique is the combination of price, quality, and completeness. This set can be compared with "The Complete Savoy & Dial Master Takes", which has only 3 discs and costs about $50. Granted, the sound quality on that professional reissue set is noticeably superior, but JSP is nearly there and like I said, better than MOST. You could also compare this set to the similarly-priced Proper box set, "Boss Bird", four discs covering the same ground, with highly inferior sound quality- and it's a little more expensive! For one who's never dug Charlie Parker, I'd get a single disc, like "The Legendary Dial Masters vol. 1" or even a general comp like his volume of the "Ken Burns' Jazz" series. If you find yourself a total Parker freak, the step after that would be "The Complete Savoy and Dial Studio Recordings" which coves the same ground, with highest quality of all, plus every known alternate take, demo, etc- 8 discs, $80, and increasingly harder to come by. OR, if you'd prefer to spend $25 to get pretty much the same thing (minus alt takes and a little sound), this box set will definitely do. April 13, 2007

Tom Pethic

Bird was the greatest altoist, period. These are some rare sides with Bird with a vocalist...Bird Lives January 31, 2007

Sounds Great

I own both the Complete Dial and Savoy recordings, and the sound on this set blows both of those away. As another reviewer pointed out, the first disc contains a bit of hiss, but other than that, this is the best sounding CP I have heard.

Combine that with the quality of Bird's playing on these tracks, and you can't beat it. There is such joy, emotion, and straight up fire in his playing it is easy to see how Bird burst on the scene and forever changed jazz (and for that matter American) music. December 1, 2005

Bravo Mr Kendall

JSP, run by an eccentric British jazz fanatic called Ted Kendall, has a habit of turning out box sets of older jazz recordings that put the big companies to shame.

Having put out the best available set of Hot Fives, Kendall turns his attention to the second most important jazz recordings of all time - the Savoy and Dial sessions of Charlie Parker.

I am totally new to bebop, having cut my teeth on Coltrane and Miles Davis. This box set is like the New Testament of jazz - Charlie Parker and his compatriots had discovered a radically new way of playing jazz, bebop, in a series of low budget recordings that mark the Anno Domini of postwar music.

The centrepiece is the legendary Ko Ko session of November 1945 - with the war over, the ban on recording was lifted, and Parker could reveal his discoveries to the world. Ko Ko itself is possibly one of the three most important jazz cuts of all time (along with West End Blues and Body and Soul) - a dazzling improvisation entirely on chord changes, with no reference to the original melody ("Cherokee", by Paul Whiteman) at all!

JSP has seen fit to include excellent editions of all the Savoy and Dial master takes - that's right, ALL of them (although there has been some discussion over the fact that alternate takes have been substituted in some cases - presumably because Kendall prefers the alternates). The box also constitutes a studio archaeology - because fully two discs of the five contain material from BEFORE the epoch-making Ko Ko session. It includes, too, the notorious "Lover Man" session of 1946, when Parker was strung out, drunk out of his mind, and had to be held up to the mike - a slurred solo of genuine pain, unthinkable from the swing era.

This is the real deal - cheap, well packaged and well transferred - if you are starting out in bebop you cannot do better. November 20, 2005

Charlie Parker: The Dictionary of Jazz

Charlie Parker was the most influential improvising soloists in jazz, and a central figure in the development of bop in the 1940s. A legendary figure in his own lifetime, he was idolized by those who worked with him, and he inspired a generation of jazz performers and composers.

Parker was born Aug. 20, 1920, in Kansas City, Mo., and came to music while in junior high school. In the late '30s he jobbed around the city, honing his technique and tone. He first recorded with the Jay McShann orchestra in between 1940 and 1942. The early 1940 radio transcriptions and the later commercial sessions for Decca show Parker pushing at the edges of the swing parameters with an explosive gift for unexpected phrasing and twists.

His progress over the next two years was striking but largely undocumented, due to a recording ban imposed by the musicians union. By the time he resumed recording in 1944-'45, his dazzling improvisations at breakneck tempos ("Ko Ko," "Donna Lee," "Shaw Nuff") astonished young jazz players as profoundly as they threatened veteran ones, thus setting the new against the old and triggering the first major internecine musical controversy in jazz history.

But the battle deepened into a cultural as well as a musical war as Parker's penchant for hard drugs and hard living further defined bebop as an outlaw music with an implied lifestyle that many chose to follow.

The definitive recordings of Parker's career were made for Savoy between 1945 and '48 ("Now's the Time," "Thriving Of A Riff," "Billie's Bounce"), and for Dial from 1946-'47 ("Ornithology," "A Night In Tunsia," "Lover Man," "Scrapple From The Apple"). They sold poorly but were as profoundly influential to young post war players as Armstrong's Hot Sevens and early big band sides had been to musicians of the '30s. Even during his most innovating period Parker remained something of a mystery figure to the general public. His picture never even appeared on Down Beat's cover during his lifetime.

The third major chapter of Parker's work began in 1948, when Norman Granz began recording him in different contexts with a view toward taking his music to a wider audience. By now his major innovations were over and his repertoire had narrowed to small number of staples. But an album with string accompaniment produced a mother lode of brilliant new Parker solos that would be his last major work. He died in 1955 at the age of 35 of a combination of drug related medical problems.

In 1955, Parker was elected by the Readers to the Down Beat Hall of Fame, just following his death.

The Studio Chronicle 1940-1948 is a five-disc box set from the British label JSP detailing what producer Ted Kendall considers to be THE essential studio recordings of saxophonist Charlie Parker. Included here are not only the innovative bebop sides that made Parker a living legend, but also the early Kansas City swing recordings he appeared on while playing with the Jay McShann Orchestra. The result is a studio history of Parker's development from a struggling farm kid turned musician to the most important figure in jazz history next to Louis Armstrong. Given that these recordings are widely available, the real attraction here is the faithful-to-the-original remastered sound, the historically enlightening liner notes, and the overarching critical aesthetic that these are the Bird cuts to check out. Also, given that the tracks are presented with few repeats on discs in chronological order makes this better listening than Atlantic's Complete Savoy and Dial Studio Recordings 1944-1948. Oddly though, the only place Kendall delineates what labels these tracks were originally released on - mostly Dial and Savoy - is in the track listing and there only by label numbers. Despite this confusing omission, Kendall has produced a superb collection that illuminates more than it overlooks.

This Truly dictionary of jazz in 5 CD's shows that CHARLIE PARKER'S MUSIC is magical music. It is irresistible music. Listen to it once and you will never stop.
His music sometimes begins to flow into your head, suddenly, during daily life. Once this happens, his music will sound in your head for good.

DRIFTING ON A REED...BIRD GETS THE WORM...LESTER LEAPS IN...

You just can't stop it.

September 11, 2005

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