Charlie Parker

Parker's own favorite record, by his repeated testimony. The jazz world largely disagreed at the time, hearing the string arrangements as commercial compromise, a softening of the bebop revolution. History has been kinder. What Parker does over these cushioned backdrops is astonishing: the alto tone purified to its most singing essence, the phrasing relaxed but never lazy, the melodic invention as rich as anything on the Savoy or Dial sessions.

"Just Friends" is the masterpiece. Parker enters after a brief orchestral introduction and delivers one of the most perfect improvised melodies in recorded jazz. Every note placed with the certainty of a composed line, every phrase breathing naturally despite the underlying technical complexity. Ray Brown and Buddy Rich provide a rhythm section of extraordinary discretion, anchoring without intruding.

Mitch Miller on oboe (yes, that Mitch Miller) provides a warm timbral counterweight to Parker's alto on the first session. The second session, arranged by Joe Lipman, is slightly more conventional but no less beautifully played. This was Parker's best-selling record during his lifetime, and he was right to be proud of it.

The reunion record. By 1950, Parker and Gillespie had not worked together regularly in four years, and the jazz world had moved on in ways that made their partnership seem historical rather than current. Norman Granz brought them back together in the studio, and the results are incandescent. Whatever personal tensions existed between the two men, the musical connection was undiminished.

The June 1950 session is the centerpiece, and the presence of Thelonious Monk on piano adds a third genius to an already extraordinary lineup. Monk's comping is sparse and angular, nothing like the smooth support of Al Haig or Duke Jordan on earlier Parker dates. "Leap Frog" and "Relaxin' with Lee" are played at ferocious tempos, Parker and Gillespie trading phrases with the telepathic ease of musicians who invented a language together.

The 1949 tracks, with Kenny Dorham on trumpet and Carlos Vidal on bongos adding an Afro-Cuban flavor to "Visa," have a different character from the 1950 reunion: a smaller, leaner bebop group without Gillespie's presence. Buddy Rich, a swing drummer by instinct, drives the 1950 session with a power that sometimes overwhelms the subtlety of the music, but the front line is so strong that it hardly matters. This is the essential Parker-Gillespie document outside the Savoy and Guild sessions of 1945.

Parker's Latin experiments, gathered from sessions spanning four years. The small group tracks with Walter Bishop Jr., Teddy Kotick, and Roy Haynes are the core of the album: Parker's bebop vocabulary set against Afro-Cuban rhythms supplied by José Mangual on bongos and Luis Miranda on congas. "My Little Suede Shoes" became one of Parker's most popular compositions, a deceptively simple melody that swings with an irresistible lightness.

The Machito tracks are more ambitious and less consistent. Parker soloing over a full Afro-Cuban orchestra is a thrilling concept, and when it works, as on "No Noise," the results are electrifying. But the arrangements sometimes push the alto saxophone into a supporting role, and the ensemble balance is not always ideal. Mario Bauzá's band was among the finest in Latin music, and the sheer rhythmic power of the orchestra occasionally leaves Parker searching for space.

The compilation draws from multiple sessions, so the sound quality varies and the sequencing feels arbitrary. But the best tracks here are essential: "My Little Suede Shoes," "Tico Tico," and the Machito collaborations represent a Parker who was still reaching outward, still curious, still finding new contexts for his art in the last years of his life.

The second volume of Parker's string recordings, compiled from material left over from the first album's sessions and from later dates. The quality is remarkably consistent with the first volume. Parker's approach to the string format had matured: where the first album sometimes found him negotiating with the arrangements, here he floats above them with total authority.

The standard repertoire is broader on this second collection, and Parker's interpretations of "Temptation," "Autumn in New York," and "Stella by Starlight" rank with the finest readings these songs have received in any idiom. The arrangements by Joe Lipman and Jimmy Carroll are discreet and professional, staying out of Parker's way while providing enough harmonic interest to keep the backdrops from becoming wallpaper.

The album sold well on Clef, confirming that the with-strings format had found a permanent audience. For listeners who find the Savoy and Dial sessions too intense or too raw, these recordings offer the most accessible entry point to Parker's art. The alto tone is gorgeous throughout, and the ballad performances in particular reveal a lyrical depth that the up-tempo bop records only hint at.

The self-titled Clef LP draws from two small-group sessions recorded six months apart, and both are magnificent. This is Parker in his most natural setting: alto saxophone with piano, bass, and drums, no frills, no strings, no big band arrangements. The quartet format leaves nowhere to hide, and Parker sounds liberated by the exposure.

Side A, from the July 1953 session, is the last truly great Parker studio date. Al Haig and Percy Heath provide immaculate support, and Max Roach is at his most conversational. "Chi Chi" and "Now's the Time" (a different take from the famous Savoy version) are played with a maturity and ease that the earlier recordings, for all their fire, could not match. Parker at thirty-two sounds like a man who has internalized everything and can now play from a place of total confidence.

Side B, from December 1952 with Hank Jones on piano, is equally strong. Jones brings a different sensibility from Haig, slightly more harmonically adventurous, and Parker responds with some of his most searching improvisations. Teddy Kotick's bass is rock-solid throughout. If you want to hear what Charlie Parker sounded like in his final productive years, stripped of every external element, this is the record.

A posthumous compilation of Clef singles from January, March, and August 1951, and one of the finest single-disc Parker collections ever assembled. The programming is superb: a mixture of small-group originals and standard performances that captures the full range of Parker's art in his early Norman Granz period. "Au Privave" and "She Rote" are classic Parker compositions, blues-based and endlessly inventive.

The personnel reads like a who's who of early 1950s jazz. Miles Davis appears on several tracks, still finding his own voice but already possessed of that distinctive, fragile tone. Red Rodney, Parker's regular trumpeter during this period, is heard on others. The rhythm sections shift between sessions, but the standard is uniformly high: John Lewis, Walter Bishop Jr., and Tony Aless each bring something different to the piano chair, while Max Roach and Roy Haynes trade off on drums.

Gil Evans contributed arrangements for selected tracks, a connection that would bear more famous fruit in Evans's later work with Miles Davis. Charles Mingus appears on bass for at least one session. The sound quality is excellent by early-1950s standards, and the LP programming creates a coherent listening experience from what were originally scattered single releases. Released the same year Parker died, The Magnificent serves as an unintentional memorial to his art at its most polished and accessible.

A posthumous compilation released on Verve in 1956, mixing big band tracks with quartet performances. The results are uneven but intermittently brilliant. The big band arrangements by Joe Lipman are competent but anonymous: they give Parker adequate support without ever challenging or inspiring him. Bill Harris's trombone is a welcome presence on the ensemble tracks, adding weight and character to the brass section.

The quartet tracks, with Hank Jones or Al Haig on piano and Max Roach on drums, are stronger. Parker sounds relaxed and inventive, and the intimate setting allows the nuances of his phrasing to come through. "Night and Day" itself receives an elegant reading: Parker takes Cole Porter's melody at a medium tempo and spins variations that honor the song's sophistication while adding his own harmonic complexity.

This is not a great album in the way that the Savoy sessions or Charlie Parker with Strings are great. It is a compilation assembled after Parker's death from leftover material, and it sounds like one: the transitions between big band and small group are jarring, the programming has no narrative arc. But the individual performances contain enough brilliance to justify the record's existence, and for collectors completing a Parker discography, the big band tracks are found nowhere else in this configuration.

Late Parker, stripped of everything: no strings, no big band, no Latin percussion, no Dizzy. Just the alto and a rhythm section, which is where the whole story started and where it was always strongest. These two quartet dates from December 1952 and July 1953 were collected after his death as Now's the Time, also issued as The Genius of Charlie Parker #3, and they are the best sustained small-group studio playing of his final years. The remake of "Now's the Time," the blues he first cut for Savoy in 1945, has a settled authority the original couldn't have: the young man's discovery has become the older man's vocabulary.

Max Roach holds the drum chair across both sessions, and the continuity matters. The December date has Hank Jones and Teddy Kotick, the July date Al Haig and Percy Heath, and both rhythm sections play with the alert restraint that backing Parker demanded. "Confirmation" gets its definitive studio reading here. "Chi-Chi" and "Cosmic Rays" show the late-period writing was still sharp, and the standards, "The Song Is You" and "I Remember You," get melodic embellishment that nobody has improved on since. The session tapes kept the alternate takes, and hearing Parker build a different solo on the same changes, take after take, is its own education.

The Penguin Guide gave this its top rating and it deserves it. If the Verve years are usually remembered for the strings and the big productions, this is the corrective: proof that to the end, the deepest Parker was four musicians in a room playing the blues. Essential, and the right place to start with late Bird.

Two 1951 quintet dates, two completely different bands, one ridiculous concentration of classics. The January 17 session has Miles Davis back in the trumpet chair with Walter Bishop Jr., Teddy Kotick, and Max Roach, and it produced "Au Privave," "K.C. Blues," "She Rote," and a "Star Eyes" that became the standard reading of the tune. The August 8 session swaps in Red Rodney, John Lewis, Ray Brown, and Kenny Clarke and delivers "Si Si," the Charlie Shavers title tune, and "Blues for Alice," the blues line with the descending changes that jazz students have been sweating over ever since.

The fine print matters with this one: the master takes first appeared on The Magnificent Charlie Parker in 1955, reviewed above, and Verve issued Swedish Schnapps in 1958 as volume 8 of the Genius of Charlie Parker series, with alternate takes added. So as an LP it's a repackage, and that's the only thing keeping it from five stars. As a listening program it's arguably the better presentation: the quintet material gets its own room, and the alternates of "Au Privave" and "She Rote" show how differently Parker could attack the same tune minutes apart. The January date was the same day Miles cut his first session as a Prestige leader across town. Nobody involved seemed to treat any of this as historic. It was Tuesday.

If you already own The Magnificent Charlie Parker you have the master takes. But if you want the definitive single-disc look at Parker's 1951 quintets, with the alternates that turn a great record into a seminar, this is the one. The playing is five stars all day. The packaging history costs it half a step.