Customer Reviews

After Hours

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

In 1941 a young man named, Jerry Newman brought a portable recorder to the legendary jazz club in Harlem called Minton's. What he recorded is little short of priceless. Cut in May of 1941 this music features, among others, electric guitar pioneer Charlie Christian, Dizzy Gillespie then a young trumpeter just beginning to emerge from Roy Eldridge's shadow, the cool toned tenor of Don Byas, a young drummer who was radically altering the approach of jazz drummers named Kenny Clarke, and a little known house pianst named Thelonious Monk. There are two reasons this music is so vital. First, the performances are outstanding. Christian is transcendant in his soloing. His lines are crisp, and swing hard as anyone, and for this listener THE reason to pick up this disc. He is afforded the opprotunity to really stretch out and dig into the music that the standard three minute record of the day simply could not allow, just listen to "Swing to Bop" and "Up on Teddy's Hill". Gillespie is in a transitional phase of his playing, only just beginning to come into his own, but one hears glimpses of his greatness on "Kerouac". Monk is identified as the pianist on "Swing to Bop" and "Stomping at the Savoy". One has to strain to listen even as he solos as the piano is very soft, most likely far from the mic, but one hears enough to tell his playing is still stride based and displays little of his trademark style. These performances of Monk and Gillespie at such a stage gives the fan a perspective of just how young they were, and how far they would come. The second reason to pick this cd up is for it's historical value. At the time this music was very much underground and ignored by nearly everyone outside of the musicians and a small base of dedicated fans. This recording gives us the briefest glimpse of the music that would become "be-bop" in it's infancy, and is an indespencable historical document. The sound quality is suprisingly high considering the source materials are the discs mr. Newman cut on his portable, and then listened to countless times. While not in the catagory of audiophile quality, there is very little audible analog hiss, and most of the musicians (save the rhythm section, which is muffled thorughout) come through loud and clear. This disc is a must for fans of bop, Christian, Gillespie, and fans looking to fill holes in the development of jazz styles, I recommend it highly.

Those of you more observant than I will have already deduced that this is NOT a collaboration between Charlie Christian and Dizzy Gillespie, with Monk thrown in for good measure. It is part Charlie Christian album (tracks 1-5) and part Dizzy Gillespie album (6-9) with Monk playing on TWO of the Christian tracks, and not very noticeably (or even audibly) on either of them. The recording quality is adequate, about how you'd expect a live 1941 jazz club recording to sound; doesn't ruin the album, but is hard to ignore at times. Plenty of great music here, far ahead of its time, and especially a fascinating showcase for Christian away from his more (relatively) conventional work with Benny Goodman, and in the final year of his too-short life. This is the sound of bebop being born, and worth it for that alone, but if you were expecting an all-star session like I was, you've been warned.

Recorded in 1941 at Monroe's Uptown House and Teddy Hill's Minton's Playhouse, this recording is considered to be the first and one of the only recodings of the early transistion to Bop. If you do not know there was a recording lockout in the early to mid 40s and only V discs were made. These were big name artists and bands. The transitional music that was going on in the clubs was pretty much left unrecorded. It was only because a private collector, Jerry Newman, brought his own recording device to these clubs that these recordings even exist. Before these were even put to LP originally, Jerry Newman played the discs he made over and over. That accounts for why the sound quality is not quite perfect. Bebop didn't happen overnight but there is no recorded history of it. But this recording does exist and speaks out for the rare talent Charlie Christian had. He helped make the path along with others like Dizzy for the creation of Bebop. This does not deserve anything but 5 stars. This recording is a rare piece of history. Big bands didn't call for long uninterupted solos like were allowed to be performed here on this CD. Minton's was also a jam place for among others Parker. BOP WOULD HAVE NEVER EXISTED IF IT WERE NOT FOR JAM SESSIONS LIKE THIS. AGAIN I SAY THIS IS A HISTORIC RECORDING. NOTHING ELSE LIKE THIS WAS RECORDED IN THE EARLY TO MID 40S. THIS IS THE EARLIEST BEBOP.
No one played like Charlie in the early 40s. His and Dizzy's talent shine on this disc.
Hope this is helpful,
Norman W. Nonnweiler.

Not only does this CD show the earliest intimations of what became bebop, but it gives one a sense of very young musicians as laid back as possible while still jousting with colleagues soon to be giants. It's like watching young lion cubs who don't yet know they're own strength. Christian shows he was capable of things no one else of the period had thought of for the guitar. His technique is impressive, clean, and velvety, perhaps even a little shy, but had he lived (he died in 1942)he would have emerged among the greatest innovators of modern jazz.

This is the 4th release version I have seen for this historic session. It is indeed recorded at Minton's playhouse in Harlem in 1941, but the personel on the album can be missleading. The original release that I ever heard was on the Laserlight label and it had 2 recording sessions. The first was this one with Charlie, and the other was with Dizzy Gillespie. After doing some research, and I could be wrong folks, but the trumpet player on the Charlie Christian recording at Minton's Playhouse was Joe Guy. An unpopular trumpeter during and after that pops up in the jazz history books next to Charlie Christian. Thelonius Monk is indeed on piano, Don Byas on the cool sounding tenor sax, and Kenny Clarke on the drums. Whether it is Dizzy on the trumpet or not really doesn't matter to the music lover because the playing is outstanding no matter what. I bought this session on CD in Europe last year and it is more extended than what is shown here...I would say 2 extra songs, about 15 minutes of exta music. This is probably the earliest hard-bob recording, and it does represent a big part of jazz history. If there was no Charlie Christian, and if this live gig was never recorded...who knows how jazz would have evolved. I've said enough, buy it and enjoy it!

A jazz follower sent me a note inquiring if the two prominently featured Columbia collections of Charlie with Benny Goodman are really the best available. I'd agree that the aforementioned two albums have too many tunes, with excessively polished and even formulaic arrangements, and of course drastically truncated solo time for Christian. You get a taste of Christian, but that's about all. Your imagination pretty much has to fill in the rest based on admittedly very limited evidence.

Christian's after-hours sessions at Minton's are storied, if unevenly documented on record. But even if Charlie isn't laying down blistering choruses in life-like audio and in the company of Diz and Monk, there's a lot more evidence of the "real" Charlie Christian on this recording than on the commercial Columbia dates. As a musician, I'm more interested in "content" than audio quality, and there's enough meat on this album to make it perhaps the only essential recording for a collector, musician, or guitarist who wants to hear more than 4-8 bar snippets played by the putative "Father of Jazz Electric Guitar" (seems to me that Les Paul deserves serious consideration as well, but sadly many listeners simply are unaware of his jazz chops. Simply picking up the first JATP recording from 1944 (on Jasmine Records), which features Les and Nat Cole, should rectify that misunderstanding in a hurry.

Christian also plays some genuinely heated choruses on this album, swinging with imagination, passion, and the technique to express his ideas. Whether the trumpet player is Diz or Joe Guy is a tough call because of the scarcity of Joe Guy recordings (he's probably better known as the notoriously exploitive character and addict he's made out to be in the Billie Holiday autobiography (primarily authored by William Dufty). The player on the recording has technique but a "hotter" sound played with more "artifacts" (semi-growls and Eldridge or Shavers-like vibrato) than you might associate with Diz, even before the bebop revolution.

No matter. There's enough of Christian to make this recording (which has been resurrected throughout the years with a number of different titles) the one to own.

Would-be defenders of "what is and isn't jazz" often relegate distorted guitar to rock'n'roll and fusion (i.e., it doesn't belong in jazz), but here, on a "bootleg" from 1941, we hear Christian jamming after hours (and after his discretely mannered recording sessions with Benny Goodman) and turning his amp up to utilize all the timbral possibilities. If reedmen, brass, and even piano players incorporated the "ugly" sounds into their personal voices as jazz musicians in even the earliest age of jazz, and Charlie, the FATHER of modern jazz guitar as a style, was doing it with Monk and Diz, then . . ., well, you surely understand.

Some of the best jazz guitar ever played