Customer Reviews

Birdland 1

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

 

 

This is one of the seminal bop recordings. Simply put, it doesn't get better than this. Too bad the poorly-edited version here seems to be the only way to get at these performances right now. There's much debate about these live recordings. The identity of the trumpeter is in dispute: the records, whatever they are, are said to indicate Fats Navarro, and to my ears that sounds right. But Fats was about two weeks from death if we accept the official recording date of June 1950, and was reportedly in extremely poor health by then. Some discographies thus move the date back to 1949 and the location to the Royal Roost. But this becomes impossible for other logistical reasons. This release claims the recording dates are May of 1950--would Navarro have been well enough to sound that good even then? The short on it is there's no date and no location and no personnel that satisfies any one theory about when and where these sizzling performances came. There's even disagreement about the drummer (Roy Haynes? Art Blakey?). The only other fact agreed on is the smoking piano player is Bud Powell, who is never short of amazing.

In the days of vinyl, Columbia released much of what's on here under the title "One Night At Birdland." That remastering, poor as it was, was better than this CD. As the reviewer CrimeFictionBuff below me notes, the music has skips in spots, skips that were not present on the Columbia version. As for the sound quality, it was about as bad on that earlier release, though even here I recall a warmer presence and more bass on at least some of the numbers. But poor sound is what you have to put up with when listening to many Bird recordings made my enthusiastic amateurs in clubs, so Parker aficionados generally should be used to this caliber of sound.

What's inexcusable is a bizarre mastering glitch in the middle of the second version of Wahoo (based on Perdido). In the middle of Bud's solo, we start to hear the ending where Bird and Fats (or whoever is on trumpet) are trading fours, superimposed. In other words, we're listening to two parts of the recording simultaneously. The drumming, already busy, becomes a real mess at this point, and the whole thing turns unlistenable. This error was not on the Columbia release, nor have I ever heard it on anthology albums that excerpt this recording, so the blame has to lie at the feet of this label, Ember, which I've never heard of before. Other strange glitches include the fact that the coda is cut off of Round Midnight--again, this isn't so in the Columbia vinyl version. Also, a rather amusing performance of Embraceable You included in the Columbia set has been omitted here. It features a stunning Bird solo and a vocal by a woman (whose name escapes me) who is drunk as Ted Turner at a Christmas party and terribly out of tune.

The music that is included here is amazing, and that is why, despite all these production issues, I'm giving this release four stars. Actually the album itself gets about two stars while the musical value would rate an infinite number of stars. Bud Powell was never more inspired (and considering his consistently high level of playing, this is quite a compliment), Bird simply soars with passion, rarely falling back on a stock phrase or cliche, and the trumpeter, whoever he is, is the best horn partner Bird ever had outside of Dizzy. The atmosphere throughout is electric--one can understand with club playing like this how Bebop took the world by storm while simultaneously puzzling and shocking the older generations. Most of all, though, the band here is tight and cohesive--they're really listening to each other, unlike the quintet in the more famous and better-known Jazz At Massey Hall album, where I feel the soloists just let loose with long strings of not-very-inspired playing. This and not that album represent the apex of Bird in the live quintet setting.

One wonders, though, why there aren't other, better issues of this material. Does Columbia still own the recordings from the vinyl version? If so, can a Phil Schapp-type person restore them? I have a feeling the masters have decayed and poor quality bootlegs may be all that remain--sad indeed. So this is worth owning, but at the same time, here's hoping a better release someday comes along, if that's possible.

This has claim to being the greatest recorded Bebop. Bud Powell is an inferno here. This is a cheap edition with some glitches, but the music is there. A must.

"Charlie Parker at Birdland, Vol. 1" contains one of three essential Charlie Parker concerts now available on CD.

Actually, this 2-CD set contains two different Parker concerts. The first sixteen tracks on disc one are from what is perhaps the first concert ever recorded at Birdland, on February 14, 1950, and while the playing is quite good, the sound quality is simply awful, so awful I doubt I'll be listening to these sixteen tracks very often. The sound is so distorted, it appears that you're listening through a large funnel, and on some tracks you can actually hear audience members talking through the music.

But the last four tracks on disc one and all nine tracks on disc two are the reason to pounce on this extraordinary 2-CD set. These thirteen tracks are taken from a concert at Birdland recorded on May 15/16, 1950 (though an earlier Columbia release set the date as June 30 of that same year). The personnel on these thirteen tracks includes 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 sound quality of these thirteen tracks, while decidedly superior to that of the first sixteen tracks on disc one, is still not nearly as clear or bright or present (or free of technical glitches) as that of two other essential Parker concerts, the May 15, 1953 Massey Hall Concert (with Parker, Gillespie, Powell, Mingus & Roach), and the Sept 29, 1947 Carnegie Hall concert (with CP, Gillespie, John Lewis, Al McKibbon, and Joe Harris).

But the music making at the May 1950 Birdland concert is at least as stunning as that of the Massey Hall and Carnegie Hall concerts. For one thing--and it 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, and 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 on the 4-CD box set, "Charlie Parker: The Complete Live Performances on Savoy." And the sound quality of the 1953 Massey Hall concert on the Jazz Factory's "Complete Jazz at Massey Hall" is suprisingly clear, bright and present--without a doubt the best sound quality of the three concerts.

Still, we have five quintet pieces from Carnegie that are among Parker's greatest live performances. We have seven quintet pieces from Massey, only five of which could be considered indispensible (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). But we have thirteen quintet pieces from Birdland, and even though three are incomplete, and one is marred by a serious technical glitch, and even though the sound quality is clearly inferior, this is by far the longest concert of the three, and it includes not only the sizzling side of Bird ("Dizzy Atmosphere," "A Night in Tunisia," "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.

Some might argue that there is a fourth essential Parker concert on CD: the 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 1950.

All of which is to say, while there are numerous Parker concerts I enjoy listening to (such as 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 concerts at Massey or Carnegie or Birdland.

One last thing: though there have been other releases of the May 1950 concert at Birdland, as of this writing (Oct 2008) virtually all of them are now unavailable, except for two: this one, and a 4-CD Proper Box set devoted to the work of Bud Powell, "Tempus Fugue-It," which contains only five of the quintet pieces from Birdland: "Round Midnight," "The Street Beat," "Out of Nowhere," "Ornithology," and "I'll Remember April." It should be noted, however, that the sound quality of the Proper Box is not only surprisingly good (though still not nearly as good as that of the Carnegie or Massey concerts), but highly preferable to the sound quality of the 2-CD set under review here. The problem for some Parker collectors may be that you have to buy 4 CDs featuring another (albeit masterful) artist to get these five Parker pieces from Birdland. Another problem is that while "Tempus Fugue-It" contains only five pieces from this essential concert, "Charlie Parker at Birdland, Vol.1" contains thirteen. My solution: get both. And don't wait until this 2-CD set disappears; pounce.
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UPDATE: As of Janauary 2011, "Charlie Parker at Birdland, Vol.1" is now largely unavailable. But the good news is that it has been replaced by a much better 2-CD issue, "Complete Live at Birdland," an import from RLR Records, which not only has far superior sound to that of the set under review here (without the technical glitches), but also contains fifteen quintet pieces from the May 1950 Birdland concert, all but one of which are simply amazing, as well as the same sixteen pieces from the February 1950 Birdland concert, also with far superior sound, allowing us to hear (as "Charlie Parker at Birdland, Vol.1" does not) the true brilliance of the playing at the February concert. There's also a bonus track on RLR's "Complete Live at Birdland," a wonderful piece from a radio broadcast at Birdland, in May or June of 1953, "Dance of the Infidels"; it's the only extant recording of Bird and Bud collaborating on this particular Powell original, and, as such, it is priceless. But the fifteen quintet pieces from the May 1950 Birdland concert are the reason to pounce on this extraordinary RLR 2-CD set, before it disappears.