Chasin' The Bird

Lots of good stuff here..including the famed Birdland sessions from 1950-51. The lesser known air shots are fascinating to listen to as well. One of Proper's best compilations.A must for all Bird fans!

"Chasin the Bird," a 4 CD set from Proper Box, contains two of three essential Charlie Parker concerts now available on CD, including what is arguably the greatest concert Bird ever recorded.Actually, this 4-CD set contains quite a number of other live concert recordings of Bird as well. On disc one, there are twelve early tracks from Los Angeles in 1945 and 1946, with Parker playing with Jay McShann and his Orchestra, Dizzie Gillespie and His Bebop Six, and the Charlie Parker Quintet (including Miles Davis). On disc two, there are eighteen tracks from the Royal Roost in 1948, all of them featuring the Charlie Parker All Stars (with Miles Davis on ten of these tracks). Disc four offers five tracks from Carnegie Hall in 1949 with Bird in a quintet featuring Red Rodney on trumpet, as well as four tracks from Birdland in March of 1951, featuring a quintet with Parker, Dizzy and Bud Powell, and there are also five tracks from the Rockland Palace Ballroom in September 1952, five tracks from Birdland in November of 1951, and one track from Birdland in August of 1954, as well as one TV performance from Channel 5 in New York in February of 1952.But the five tracks on disc one and eleven tracks on disc three are the reason to pounce on this extraordinary 4-CD set. The five tracks on disc one are taken from the legendary concert at Carnegie Hall on September 29, 1947, with Bird on ts, Dizzy on t, John Lewis on piano, Al McKibbon on bass, Joe Harris on drums. The playing here is absolutely stunning, and it is clearly one of three essential Charlie Parker concerts available on CD.The eleven tracks on disc three (all of which are five, six, seven and in some instances, nine minutes long) are taken from a concert at Birdland recorded on May 17, 1950 (an earlier Columbia release set the date as June 30 of that same year). The personnel of all but one of these eleven tracks features Parker on alto, the incomparable Bud Powell on piano, Curley Russell on bass, Art Blakey on drums, and what appears to be Fats Navarro on trumpet (there is some dispute as to whether Navarro would have been well enough to participate, as he died within weeks of this concert, on July 7, 1950). The other track ("Cool Blues/52nd Street Theme") features Bird and Fats, with Walter Bishop Jr on piano, Tommy Potter on bass, and Roy Haynes on drums. And, as with the 1947 Carnegie Hall tracks, everything here is beyond amazing.The sound quality of these eleven tracks is not as clear or bright or present as that of the 1947 Carnegie Hall concert on disc one, or that of the third essential Parker concert, the May 15, 1953 Massey Hall Concert (with Parker, Gillespie, Powell, Mingus & Roach), which is available on the Jazz Factory's "Complete Jazz at Massey Hall," in surprisingly good sound--without a doubt the best sound quality of the three concerts.But the music making at the May 1950 Birdland concert is at least as stunning as that of the legendary Massey Hall and Carnegie Hall concerts. For one thing--and it is a huge thing--Bud Powell is on fire at Birdland. His inventiveness here is at least the equal of Parker's. Which is to say, it is among the most masterful, the most intricate, the most engaging in the history of jazz. Indeed, it is Powell's playing, in particular, that keeps me coming back again and again to the Birdland concert--or maybe it's the way in which Powell and Parker and Navarro seem to be feeding off one another; all three are on fire, all three are playing at the very peak of their powers, so that you feel immersed in the brilliance of the invention as it surrounds you on all three sides, alto sax, trumpet, and piano.By contrast, the Massey and Carnegie concerts are principally about the brilliance of two musicians: Dizzy and Bird, even though Powell himself is present at Massey Hall. Don't get me wrong, Bud P in 1953 (or 1950) is almost always brilliant, and his playing at Massey Hall is clearly exceptional, but it is in the trio pieces at Massey (with Mingus and Roach) where Powell really shines.At Carnegie Hall, the piano is very poorly miked, so much so you barely hear John Lewis at all. Which leaves a gap, or a hole, in a song like "Confirmation," where you're listening through the inaudible piano solo, waiting for the real music making to return. Otherwise, the remastering of the 1947 Carnegie Hall concert is particularly appealing.Still, we have seven quintet pieces from Massey in 1953, only five of which could be considered indispensable (of the remaining two, "All the Things You Are" is a bit of a mess, and "52nd Street Theme" is less than 45 seconds long). And on this one box set, "Chasin the Bird," we have five quintet pieces from Carnegie in 1947 that are among Parker's greatest live performances. And we also have eleven quintet pieces from Birdland in May of 1950 (one with different personnel, as noted above), and even though the sound quality is somewhat inferior, this is by far the longest concert of the three, including not only the sizzling side of Bird ("Dizzy Atmosphere," "Ornithology"), but also the stunning, lyrical beauty of his playing ("Round Midnight," "Out of Nowhere," "I'll Remember April"), captured live in a way I have heard on no other recording. I might even go so far as to say that the overall brilliance of the Birdland concert surpasses that of both the Carnegie and Massey concerts, even though the latter two are landmark performances in the history of jazz.Some might argue that there is a fourth essential Parker concert on CD: the somewhat recently unearthed recording of the June 22, 1945 concert at Town Hall (with CP, Gillespie, Don Byas, Al Haig, Curley Russell, Max Roach & Sid Catlett). And while the playing at Town Hall is indeed brilliant (and while the recording itself has major historical significance), I don't think it's nearly as compelling, nor as essential, as the playing at Massey Hall in 1953, Carnegie Hall in 1947, or Birdland in May of 1950.All of which is to say, while there are numerous Parker concerts I enjoy listening to (such as the Birdland concert in February of 1950, the Royal Roost concerts in 1948 & 1949, the amazing pick-up concert in Chicago on October 23, 1950, as well as the seminal 1945 Town Hall concert), I don't think I could do without the 1953 Massey or 1947 Carnegie or May 1950 Birdland concerts.One last thing: though there have been other releases of the May 1950 concert at Birdland, as of this writing (January 2011) virtually all of them are now unavailable, except for two: this one, and a 2-CD import from RLR Records, "Complete Live at Birdland," which contains fifteen tracks from the 1950 Birdland concert. "Chasin the Bird" contains eleven, but one of these eleven is actually two as configured on the other set. Which means that there are three tracks from the 1950 Birdland concert missing from "Chasin the Bird," which are included on "Complete Live at Birdland": "A Night in Tunisia," "Embraceable You," and an additional take of "52nd Street Theme." Of these three, the last is less than two minutes long, and "Embraceable You" is a bit of a clunker--Parker is at his lyrical best, but the vocalist, Little Jimmy Scott, is just awful, so awful one hopes he was drunk when he recorded this. So that leaves only one essential track: "A Night in Tunisia," which is missing from "Chasin the Bird," but present on "Complete Live at Birdland." (There is also a 4-CD Proper Box set devoted to the work of Bud Powell, "Tempus Fugue-It," but it contains five--and only five--of the quintet pieces from the May 1950 Birdland concert: "Round Midnight," "The Street Beat," "Out of Nowhere," "Ornithology," and "I'll Remember April.")In choosing between "Chasin the Bird" and "Complete Live at Birdland," the sound quality of the May 1950 concert is fairly comparable on the two sets, and (as of this writing) so is the price, which means that the decision boils down to the additional material. "Chasin the Bird" clearly has the edge in this department, unless you already have much of this other (often wonderful) work, as almost all of it is available on other CDs (I already had, for instance, that second essential Parker concert, the 1947 Carnegie Hall concert, on the 4-CD box set, "The Complete Live Performances on Savoy," which also contains all of the eighteen Roost recordings on disc two of "Chasin the Bird"). By contrast, "Complete Live at Birdland" has its own wonders, and (as of this writing) all of them are unavailabe on any other CD: sixteen tracks from a February 1950 Birdland concert, on which Bird is often electric, and one track from a 1953 radio broadcast from Birdland, on which Bird and Bud Powell are just brilliant. These are the only extant recordings of this material available on CD, and, as such, they make this 2-CD set particularly attractive.My solution: get both. But whether you choose "Chasin the Bird" or "Complete Live at Birdland," don't wait until these two extraordinary sets disappear; pounce.

This 4-disc box set is a magnificent survey of Charlie Parker's concert work, from his apprenticeship in Jay McShann's big band to his Bird-with-Strings final days. Scrupulously edited by scholar Brian Priestly, at a bargain price, and well-remastered, this is (almost) all the live Parker you will ever need. And if you want to know why CP stopped the musical world dead in its tracks, you will want to hear it. Because of variable audio quality, and the fact that these sides lack the polish and perfection of Bird's studio work, I would recommend this primarily to die-hard fans; but if you want to hear Parker playing with a mad, wild abandon comparble only to Jackson Pollock dancing on the canvas or Jack Kerouac in full flight as his fingers whiz over the keys of his Underwood, these snap-shots of the greatest saxophonist ever in concert are essential.Parker's innovations are of course so firmly embedded in our musical culture, that they have lost their ability to shock as they did in 1945. However, Parker in the studio and Parker on the bandstand were two very different animals. In the studio, his solos were the product of much rehearsal and many takes, with great attention paid to structure and cramming as much information as possible into the confines of a 3 minute 78 piece of shellac. Live, Parker was a tightrope walker without a net, a bomb-thrower, a man who seemingly could do the impossible. Musician's testimony, from Dexter Gordon to Miles Davis to Sonny Rollins, all tell the same story when remembering Parker on the stand: our jaws dropped, we put our instruments away, went into hiding and practiced for a year, we became junkies and destroyed our lives emulating Bird, just to touch the hem of his garment. Hearing Parker live, stretching out, you hear why; rhythmically reckless, harmonically out there, the orderly blues player on the studio sides before an audience sounds not just like the most advanced musican of his day, but also a harbinger of things to come -- more than once listening to this box I thought I was hearing Eric Dolphy or Ornette Coleman, only playing at superhuman speeds.These recordings, more than the (great) studio works show Bird the Promethean bringer of fire, playing at length as though bar-lines didn't exist. Disc One highlights include late '45-early '46 LA shows with Diz and Miles respectively, and a rare appearance by the reclusive piano great Joe Albany. Sound here is terrific, and Parker plays like a man possessed, it's his Picasso/Desmoisselles d'Avignon moment, where you can tell the audience is in shock and he knows the world is his oyster, before the Fall. Also included is the quintet material from Carnegie Hall '47 with Diz, negating the need to buy the Blue Note resissue. Disc Two summarizes his '47-'48 dates as a leader at the Royal Roost, again in pretty good sound, with first Miles (cocksure and fleet, in the process of launching the Birth of the Cool) and then with Kenny Dorham; again the sound is good, and Bird is at a healthy peak. The Savoy releases of this material has a lot of dead and rote spots, this is a spot-on best-of, again negating the need for that collection.Disc Three is the cream of the set: Birdland '50, with Fats Navarro, Bud Powell, Art Blakey. Blakey is over-miked, Navarro is often off-mike, it's the weakest audio of the set, but this may be some of the most outrageous playing of Parker's career. Like the infamous Massey Hall gig with Bird, Mingus, Powell, Roach and Diz, no-one was talking to each other (Powell and Navarro were feuding, Parker and Powell weren't speaking, and to boot, Navarro was apparently near death, though to hear him play you would not know it); I'm guessing the backstage tension fueled rather than dampened everyone's creativity. This material has been out of print for years, and it's a revelation, worth the price of the set.Disc Four covers Bird's final half-decade, includes 5 cuts from Birdland '49 with a smoking Red Rodney on trumpet, a tremendous Powell-Diz reunion at Birdland in '51, 3 cuts with the Modern Jazz Quartet from '52 and 4 burning cuts from the legendary Rockland Palace gig. This was Parker's most erratic phase, and the editors have cherry-picked the cream of the years of Bird's collapse.This is a tremendous survey, because the 10 million extant Parker bootlegs are such a dicey phenomenon -- recordings of entire gigs tend to have drop-outs, dead spots, uninspired bits outweighing the good stuff, tinny sound that after three cuts gets wearing, sidemen who are boring, unwelcome voice-overs from Symphony Sid; this box, for a mere 24.00 bucks, negates those issues by including only the choicest material, and plenty of variety. The only other live Parker you'll ever need are the '45 Town Hall date on Uptown, and the aptly named Greatest Jazz Concert Ever, Massey Hall '53 on OJC. The absence of a fifth star is only for audiophiles (though in previous incarnations, much of this stuff has sounded far worse than here); for the rest of us, this is a 6-star recording.

Great cd, Charlie Parker Chasin' the bird. Essential to any Charlie Parker Collection. Great buy. Good Value can't go wrong for the price. Sound quality was Just fine to me. Glad I made the purchase.

This group of CD's has a wide range of material, more varied than I've heard before and the settings help you appreciate his genius.

What a tragedy. The likes of Brubeck had superb sound engineers at their same time period live recordings, and the greatest of them all had his wife plonking a very basic portable tape recorder in front of a speaker. I'm no Hi end audiophile, but the sound quality really is ecreable. I can't listen to it on my CD walkman, nor my powerful hi fi. When you have the likes of Navarro and Powell doing great work as well, it's even worse.Missed opportunity doesn't cover it by half.