Customer Reviews

Groovin High

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
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In the mid-late 40's Dizzy put together a big band to play the new music which he, Charlie Parker, and others had pioneered a few years earlier. This album is less than 40 minutes long, and the sound quality is typical of recordings from that period, but each tune is a winner and the band puts in really tight performances, sometimes at breakneck tempos. Classics like "Salt Peanuts" mix Dizzy's goofy humor with virtuosic performances.

This CD may be short on quantity, but not on quality! Highly recommended.

It's 1955 and Dizzy Gillespie's big band are at their absolute peak! Listening to this record makes me wonder why there ever became such a thing as jazz snobbery. This music doesn't sound like the domain for snobs. In fact it showcases jazz in a crucial and innovative place. Here we are in this place where swing and be-bop have long ago cross polinated eachother (one needed to have the other anyway:we all know in what way",you've got Dizzy whose at once both a great intellectual musician as well as being able to make it move. And here you have him playing with these...well nowadays you'd have to call them all stars such as Dexter Gordon,Milt Jackson,Charlie Parker,Cozy Cole,Sonny Stitt,Kenny Clarke...the list goes on like that and BIM BAM BOOM you've got big band be-bop! At this point Dizzy was demonstrating not merely the ability and virtuosity of the players in his circle but also that,as he indicated that be-bop had within it the same catchiness and dancibility as swing;that is wasn't "that far out" to paraphrase what was said of him in Jazz : A Film By Ken Burns. Either way you look at it this song is filled with his standards,making it something of a greatest hits album in it's own right. The title song,"Dizzy Atmosphere","Salt Peanuts",'Hot House","Oop Bop Sh' Bam",One Bass Hit"-they're all here and in the versions everyone first heard them in with the original personel.Yeah it's a collection of singles as almost every long player in any genre of the mid 1950's was but it really does sound like one hugely inspired session when it all boils down to it. The horn section does get really involved on "Things To Come";there are a lot of cooks in the kitchen in that area in this song but,it's also alive and therefore so lively it doesn't sound intimating at all in the end. In way way the heavy dissonence created in this song mildy anticipates the free jazz movement a several years following this. The great part of this album is not only it's great playing and liveliness but how different subgenres of jazz slide from one to the other during this time. A key point in musical history and something to get you up out of your seat while your marvelling.

I agree with the other reviews here, this is an album of great BEBOP music, but you should also check out the CD issue Shaw Nuff, which includes all these songs, as well as a few others. I have that CD and the sound is as good as these excellent SAVOY issued CDs. And if you like this music, be sure to get Verve's reissue of Bird & Diz that has the famous re-recordings of Diz with Charlie (the bird) Parker.

`Groovin' High' is a pretty good place to go if you want to try Dizzy's music for the first time. For some reason this version has more songs on it than other CD's of the same name and makes for a great selection of tracks. There is a small essay inside as well which puts the music into greater context. If you're new to Jazz then some of this will take some listening to, but once you get a feel for it every nuance and tone comes shining though. Dizzy is a recognised master of his art and the music on offer here goes some way to showing you why that was. In addition you also hear the musicianship of Milt Jackson (one of the first Jazz performers I ever heard) and Charlie Parker who is also revered in Jazz circles. This is a solid Jazz album and well worth considering.

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Fresh, alive. Especially Jealousie. Dizzy puts this mesmerizing latin number into a bit of a tailspin.You feel like you are in eye of this storm of a fiery Latin piece that you get caught up in the swirl of passion that is Jealousie. Only one other rendition of Jealousie has ever been recorded that can be said to be as innovative and daring. And that which employed a full orchestra of trumpeteers, cellists, violinist and latin percussions. The artists escapes my memory but I would dearly love for someone to tell me who they were. There were many recordings of Jealousie over time and this yet to be identified version stands on as high a pedestal as good ol' Dizzy's.