Charlie Parker & Dizzy Gillespie - The Town Hall Concert 1945
This is one of the true treasures in all of music. I have the CD edition of Bird and Dizzy's 1947 Carneige Hall performance and the 1953 Quintet of the Year show with Max Roah, Charles Mingus and Bud Powell, and while the latter is a true favorie of mine I was absolutely blown away when a hitherto unknown recording from Town Hall in June 22 1945 was found in the most unlikely place and subsequuently remastered for CD. The story, as far as the find of this long lost gem and its release is concerned is almost as interesting as the music itself. It begins with Bob Suthenblick, a medical doctor and music collector.whose love for bebop and its off-shoots made him invest in a small record company. So practicioning MD by day, and releasing records by long forgoten jazz stars of the '40s and '50s by night. Uptown Records soon became home for new live recordings and even some studio ones (recorded by Van Gelder in New Jersey nontheless) by people like Frank Wess and Jonny Coles; Budd Johnson w. Phil Woods, Philly Joe Jones Dameronia Ft. Johnny Griffin, Charlie Rouse/Red Roney, Tommy Flanagan,and even more forgotten alumini like J.R. Monterose. He also started researching and release previously unreleased live concert when he could locate a good, long lost tape in pristine quality. This part of the Uptown catalouge included unreleased concerts by Pepper Adams (w. Hank Jones, Louise Hayes and Kenny Wheeler),Sonny Clark, Charles Mingus, Grant Green as well as more obscure artists like Dodo Mamarosa, There were also a few Charlie Parker volumes on the label (e.g. the 1948 Dixieland vs. Bebop show and the other 1953 Montreal concert).
The call of a lifetime
What's amazing about this concert, other than the absolutely brilliant music of course, is what a job the recording engineer did. As I said it was done before the invention of tape, and recorded on seven acetates. Remember the engineers had to change the disc about every 7-8 minutes, yet this set was without gaps or dropouts, managed to record the entire concert without hiccups and sounded better than some recordings of the '50s. There's no question that this was a professional job, recorded on two side-by-side cutting machines and most likely recorded for radio broadcast. It however never did appear on radio as some Bird historian, not least someone like Phil Schapp, would undoubtedly be familiar with the broadcast. Maybe Bird, Dizzy or the producers were not happy with the concert, after all this was the NEW music at the time, a music that a lot of people thought were just noise. Who knows, but we can all thank our lucky stars that in 2005 the concert was finally released in pristine quality for all the millions of fans all over the world.
The Concert
As far as I know there are three professionally recorded complete Bird and Diz concerts available (I'm not talking about Birdland airchecks and the likes), The Town Hall concert of 1945 is for me their strongest meeting between these two giants in a live setting. The Carneige Hall concert of '47 was just a guest set that barely ran 25 minutes and 1953's Quintet Of The Year, while still being one of my favorite records, feel like there was enormous tension up on that scene, not least between Dizzy and Bird who at that time had a little animosity towards eachother (and then you add Mingus bass overdub to that). You can literally feel much of the audience perplexing reaction to this fast, extremely complex music and new sounds, at the same time as you can hear the musician's joy of being on stage at Town Hall and performing their new music. They didn't in the least pander to audience, there are no standards or evergreens like "Embracable You",, it was all their own compositions in breakneck speed which at the time hadn't even been out on 78s. A wonderful take on "Night in Tunisia" still bears the original title "Interude" causing Symphony Sid some confusion.
A funny incident takes place right at the start of the concert. The show is about to start and Simphony Sid, obviously nervous, announces to the crowd that Charlie Parker has not yet arrived. Nontheless the group dives headfirst into the first composition of the night, the blistering fast "Bebop". Don Byas stands in for Bird and takes the first solo, and while it's good, he is really aking to go home to practice after Bird suddenly appear and takes the second sax solo after Dizzy's unbelivably high-register monster choruses. Many recordings of this era is of historical value for anyone who wish to study Bird and Diz, as more often than not you can almost only hear the high register instruments of the horns. Here, and throughout, the quintet s really what we hear on the recording. Max Roach drums sounds just as excellent as on the records of the day. Matter of fact I would argue that his playng of the trap set sounds even better than many of the Bird records on Savoy and Dial. He is playing agressively fast, never missing a beat, plays excitingly with constant fills and really plays of the rest of the group. Same can be said for the very underrated Al Haig and the competent Curley Russel.
Next up is "Interlude",better known as "Night in Tunisia" and wow what a performance it is, Parker takes the lead after a short Roach introduction and Al Haig's comping behind him is really something. P, A blistering solo by Bird stretches out the theme and back intoo all imaginable directions, playing several chorus without ever losing the main theme. And Dizzy is doing even stronger on this version, the high notes he would reach on his trumlet was out of this world and fun fact - this was way before he started using his bended horn that has sine become his trademark as the goatee, clean suits and glasses was the BeBop outfit of the day in the '40s.
Throughout the night Al Haig really impresses me, Originally a member of Dizzy Gillespie's quintet for about two years, and then joined the quintet of Parker with Miles, Tommy Potter and Roach in December 1948 (an incident that strained Bird's and Miles' relationship even more as Miles constantly tried to convince him that ohn Lewis was the best fit). So the aircheck you hear above is from December 18, perhaps a day before or perhaps even the day that Miles just left the bandstand and the group never to return again. Al Haig does a fantastic job throughout these set, really listening to what especially Roach and bassist Curley Russel is doing and he has a style that is unmistakable hs own. Al Haig sort of disappeared from the jazz scene, and at one time in the '60s was playing a coctail painist. He had a really interesting life and one of his wifes (he was married three times) wrote a book about her and experience with Haig as a man ad a musician called "Death Of a Bebop Wife", Al Haig sure was underrated and the Town Hall concert excellently gives an example of that.
The crowd pleaser "Salt Peanuts" is included and is as good as expected, but it's Max Roach who steals the show with an immaculate and precise drum solo (you can hear the crowd go WILD). Speaking of drum solos the only slight dissapointment during this 40 minutes set is that Symphony Sid Torin insists on the band giving up the drum chair to Big Sidney Catlett for "Hot House" since he was playing with in another group set appear late that night. Problem is that he's not a BeBop drummer at all and sounds out of place despite obviously being a talented drummer. Dizzy take some amazing high notes on the trumpet, Birds solo doesn't stop at brilliant and on top of that and Al Haigh does a wonderful job of saving the situation. But just compare Sidney Catlett's percusssion discussion with Roach's on the previous track and you can clearly see that he is misplaced here. And while we are criticizising, Symphony Sid is more annoying than usual here. But this is of course extreme nitpick and this finally getting released is a not only a historic document but it's also one of the absolute best examples of BeBop in concert ever released. This CD could have been titled "The Birth Of The Bebop" and it wouldn't be an overstatement.
Links and more reading
Charlie Parker & Dizzy Gillespie - Town Hall City Concert, June 22, 1965
Purchase the complete 40 minutes album in your choice of high qualiity download or on CD.
Kaplan, F. "The Birth of Bebop, Captured on Disc" (2005) The New York Times.
Very informative piece on how this recording made it to the public sphere.
Disussion of Al Haig, "Death Of a Bebop Wife" and more
Very interesting read on Al Haig's ex-wife, her life with the bebop pianist and her book.
Bo Petersen Leif's Bird Chronology
Danish Jazz scholar Leif Bo Petersen has spent many years reseraching and compiling Birds sessionography and life. This well of information is now available on Peter Losin's equally excelent Charlie Parker / Miles Davis database
Comments
Post a Comment