Customer Reviews

Washington Concerts

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Bird with The Orchestra. The first eight tunes of the CD were originally issued on LP in 1982 on the short-lived Elektra Musician label.Washington DC,February 22,1953,Club Kavakos: Bird meets The Orchestra, a band including Jack Nimitz,the Swope brothers and Jack Holliday.Bird,who missed an engagement in this town shortly before this date, also missed the rehearsals for this concert, and I'm sure the fifteen members of the band were afraid of the night to come. The result is amazing: maybe Charlie Parker's best live performance.Bill Potts,who wrote the arrangements for the show,and who was frightened too, remembers Bird appearing on the scene,carrying a plastic alto saxophone.And it was pure magic.Bird played at his highest level,all through the tunes,including some he maybe never played before.These eight tracks (1 to 8) have always been some of my favorite ones by Bird,since they were issued some twenty years ago.
But to complete this CD, we now can listen to 35 more minutes of unissued music by Bird.Tracks 9 to 14 come from other concerts in Washington: tracks 9 to 12 were recorded at the Howard Theater on March 8,1953, with a trio composed of Jack Holliday,Franklin Skeete and Max Roach,while tracks 13 and 14 were taped at the same place,October 18,1952,with among others,Don Lamond,Zoot Sims,Charlie Byrd,Kay Winding and Earl Swope.Bird's playing is absolutely crazy on the March 1953 date.This CD shows Bird in top form,playing like mad.The remastering of the music is great.This reissue is due to Blue Note Records,and I hope the remaining items of the Elektra Musician label will be reissued too, mostly the great Dizzy Gillespie concert with The Orchestra,recorded the day after Parker's death, or the outstanding Lennie Tristano's "New York improvisations",taped at Tristano's home.

This recording destroyed me. Imagine this... Bird just shows up with his horn at a concert one night in Washington -- and the rest is pure magic! This side, in my opinion, is the best Bird I've ever heard. Bird was clean, sober, and in RARE form. This recording has floated around for almost 20 years on tape, and I'm glad they finally remastered and reissued this thing of beauty... and I LOVE IT, LOVE IT, LOVE IT! A trillion stars!

Charlie Parker is phenomenal on these live concerts recorded in Washington, DC in 1952 and 1953 by Bill Potts, himself an icon of the Washington jazz scene, nay the national jazz scene. Potts' liner notes alone are worth the price of this album - colorful, entertaining and extremely enlightening. The icing on the cake is the recorded interview with Red Rodney, who played with Parker's quintet for three years. This album is historic! It blew me away! Thanks go to Bill Potts for having the forethought in his youth to record and preserve these incredible performances, and the good grace to share them with the rest of us.

I am so glad they finally reissued this masterpiece onto CD. The first eight tunes are with a big band (1953), and the remaining six have been added from previous recording dates with small combos (1952-53). The arrangements for the big band are fantastic, and even though Bird missed all the rehearsals, and on the night of the concert had no music or any idea of the key changes, he still blazed through with remarkable brilliance, weaving extraordinary musical lines in and out of the ensemble, creating some of the most memorable jazz you'll ever hear. Bird's playing on this CD is so thrilling and so wonderful that it has become one of my all time favorite Parker recordings. Enjoy!

This is the first CD featuring Charlie Parker that I've listened to where the sound quality of the recording is equal to the brilliance of Bird's playing. Thankfully, many of his performances have been released on CD where the source of the recordings is from a vinyl LP, cleaned up to sound as good as possible & I've enjoyed many of these...BUT, on this collection recorded live in 1952-53 the sound quality is SUPERB...as if the master was recorded in the 60's or later!!! As much as I've enjoyed the "Yardbird Suite: The Ultimate Collection" which I also recommend, this CD was a revelation to me as to just how brilliant and ahead of his time Bird was on the saxophone. Tracks 1-8 are gorgeous masterpieces that sound beautiful & are well recorded, and on tracks 9-14 Bird at times pushes the limits of the sax in a similar fashion to John Coltrane in his last few years(1965-67). Although John Coltrane would ultimately become the greatest saxophonist of all, truly, after listening to these Washington concerts Charlie Parker was indeed the original or first genius of the saxophone and I cannot recommend this disc more highly. Happy listening :-)

I can only add to the chorus of praise for this CD. Charlie Parker's live recordings differ from even his best studio work in a number of ways:1)obviously, the solos are longer, displaying his amazing fluency and inventiveness;2)he tended to take more risks than in the studio, which is not hard to understand;3)he gave free play to his musical sense of humor--for example, stringing together, in lightning succession and with total musical plausibility, quotes from "What Is This Thing Called Love", "You Don't Know What Love Is", and "Love for Sale".Also such delights as parodies of popular songs old and new, military marches, the "Looney Tunes" theme song, etc. etc. The man apparently had total recall of every piece of music he had ever heard, and was able to turn it to his purposes at will.

Turning to this recording in particular, it's true that at this stage in his career CP often relied pretty heavily on stringing together solos from his huge store of pet runs and personal cliches. But what pet runs,what cliches, and what stringing together! I have listened to a lot of Bird over the years, but I found myself gasping at the speed, drive, and diamond-perfect articulation of his playing. Just as a piece of saxophone playing, it is breathtaking. If one were to compare this with the recently discovered and issued 1945 concert with Dizzy Gillespie, the kindest thing one could say is that there IS no comparison. At the 1945 concert he appears to have been having an off night, while here he is in very rare form. The only thing to be said in favor of the older concert is that the sound is better, but he comes through pretty clearly on this CD--certainly clearly enough to amaze and delight anyone whose interest is primarily in the astounding music. This recording is a permanent treasure of American music.

This is the first CD featuring Charlie Parker that I've listened to where the sound quality of the recording is equal to the brilliance of Bird's playing. Thankfully, many of his performances have been released on CD where the source of the recordings is from a vinyl LP, cleaned up to sound as good as possible & I've enjoyed many of these...BUT, on this collection recorded live in 1952-53 the sound quality is SUPERB...as if the master was recorded in the 60's or later!!! As much as I've enjoyed the "Yardbird Suite: The Ultimate Collection" which I also recommend, this CD was a revelation to me as to just how brilliant and ahead of his time Bird was on the saxophone. Tracks 1-8 are gorgeous masterpieces that sound beautiful & are well recorded, and on tracks 9-14 Bird at times pushes the limits of the sax in a similar fashion to John Coltrane in his last few years(1965-67). Although John Coltrane would ultimately become the greatest saxophonist of all, truly, after listening to these Washington concerts Charlie Parker was indeed the original or first genius of the saxophone and I cannot recommend this disc more highly. Happy listening :-)

I am a Charlie Parker collector, and this concert makes my collection shine even more. I'm still looooooking for some more "bird". Anybody know where i can find or excavate "One night at Birdland"????????

All I can say is "The washington concerts" is awsome, there's even an interview with red rodney....