OK, so this vinyl album is NOT the reissue of something recorded last century. Instead, Craft Recordings has put together a “greatest hits” of the inventor of modern jazz, alto saxist Charlie Parker, who with the other gents on this release, started a brand new sound of music that still influences just about every musician playing in front of a microphone.
The other members of Bebop’s Mount Rushmore, namely Dizzy Gillespie/tp, Bud Powell/p, Miles Davis/tp, Max Roach/dr, Kenny Clarke/dr, Duke Jordan/p, Fats Navarro/tp, are all mixed and matched here in both studio and “live” recordings, making you feel that you’re right there in New York, just after WWII. There’s the classic blues “Now’s The Time”, wild and tricky lines of “Ko-Ko” and “Donna Lee” and easy swing of “Billie’s Bounce”, with Parker’s alto crying out on “Parker’s Mood”. The horns sizzle on “Groovin’ High”, “Ornithology” and “Anthropology” from a Royal Roost remote recording, while a Carnegie Hall gig has Bird confident on “Confirmation” while a 1953 gig at Massey Hall has him and Diz having a hoot of a time on “Salt Peanuts”. Realizing in retrospect that he died at the age of 34, it seems startling how much he accomplished in his wake. If you’ve never experienced the Nike heat seeking missile of Charlie Parker, as the song says, now’s the time.