Charlie Parker: A Studio Chronicle 1940-1948
by: Charlie Parker
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Music : Charlie Parker: A Studio Chronicle 1940-1948 |
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Rating: - * Superior sound to \"Savoy and Dial Master Takes\" ... I'll leave it to Phil Schaap to judge the discographical merits of this JSP edition and its likeliest competition - the more prominently marketed "The Complete Savoy and Dial Master Takes" [hereafter: CSDMT]. But based on A/B comparisons on three tracks from different periods, I'd say this is the one to get. On "Shaw Nuff", the difference is night-and-day. CSMDT sounds almost like a second-generation dub comapared to the JSP edition - where the bass is more three-dimensional, the horns brighter, the cymbals [gasp!] audible. On "Now's The Time" and "Klactoveesedstene", CSDMT is actually the brighter sounding - but not, in my opinion, to its advantage. Listening on my garden-variety headphones, the auditory fatigue factor was dramatically higher. As for value: given JSP's lower price, you can consider the early works of variable interest collected on Discs 1 and 2 as freebies. Rating:  - * best set out there? ... JSP is known throughout the music collector world for having the highest in sound quality (for a relatively small label devoted only to reissues, box sets etc). This set includes all of the master takes Bird appeared on on the Savoy, Dial, Guild, Bel-Tone, and Comet labels, during the years 1944-48, plus a disc containing most of his pre-bop recordings, including demos, some of which are very rare (though not very interesting in my opinion). The main stuff, '44-'48, is some of the most important music recorded ever, and consequently it's not hard to come by- what makes this set unique is the combination of price, quality, and completeness. This set can be compared with "The Complete Savoy & Dial Master Takes", which has only 3 discs and costs about $50. Granted, the sound quality on that professional reissue set is noticeably superior, but JSP is nearly there and like I said, better than MOST. You could also compare this set to the similarly-priced Proper box set, "Boss Bird", four discs covering the same ground, with highly inferior sound quality- and it's a little more expensive! For one who's never dug Charlie Parker, I'd get a single disc, like "The Legendary Dial Masters vol. 1" or even a general comp like his volume of the "Ken Burns' Jazz" series. If you find yourself a total Parker freak, the step after that would be "The Complete Savoy and Dial Studio Recordings" which coves the same ground, with highest quality of all, plus every known alternate take, demo, etc- 8 discs, $80, and increasingly harder to come by. OR, if you'd prefer to spend $25 to get pretty much the same thing (minus alt takes and a little sound), this box set will definitely do. Rating: - * Tom Pethic ... Bird was the greatest altoist, period. These are some rare sides with Bird with a vocalist...Bird Lives Rating: - * Sounds Great ... I own both the Complete Dial and Savoy recordings, and the sound on this set blows both of those away. As another reviewer pointed out, the first disc contains a bit of hiss, but other than that, this is the best sounding CP I have heard. Combine that with the quality of Bird's playing on these tracks, and you can't beat it. There is such joy, emotion, and straight up fire in his playing it is easy to see how Bird burst on the scene and forever changed jazz (and for that matter American) music. Rating: - * Bravo Mr Kendall ... JSP, run by an eccentric British jazz fanatic called Ted Kendall, has a habit of turning out box sets of older jazz recordings that put the big companies to shame. Having put out the best available set of Hot Fives, Kendall turns his attention to the second most important jazz recordings of all time - the Savoy and Dial sessions of Charlie Parker. I am totally new to bebop, having cut my teeth on Coltrane and Miles Davis. This box set is like the New Testament of jazz - Charlie Parker and his compatriots had discovered a radically new way of playing jazz, bebop, in a series of low budget recordings that mark the Anno Domini of postwar music. The centrepiece is the legendary Ko Ko session of November 1945 - with the war over, the ban on recording was lifted, and Parker could reveal his discoveries to the world. Ko Ko itself is possibly one of the three most important jazz cuts of all time (along with West End Blues and Body and Soul) - a dazzling improvisation entirely on chord changes, with no reference to the original melody ("Cherokee", by Paul Whiteman) at all! JSP has seen fit to include excellent editions of all the Savoy and Dial master takes - that's right, ALL of them (although there has been some discussion over the fact that alternate takes have been substituted in some cases - presumably because Kendall prefers the alternates). The box also constitutes a studio archaeology - because fully two discs of the five contain material from BEFORE the epoch-making Ko Ko session. It includes, too, the notorious "Lover Man" session of 1946, when Parker was strung out, drunk out of his mind, and had to be held up to the mike - a slurred solo of genuine pain, unthinkable from the swing era. This is the real deal - cheap, well packaged and well transferred - if you are starting out in bebop you cannot do better. |
The real joy of the set, however, is nine NBA playoff games presented as they were originally broadcast and almost in their entirety. They last about 90-100 minutes with TV introductions and post-game interviews, but minus halftime, commercials, and some slower moments. The games include such absolute classics as the game in which rookie Magic Johnson started at center in place of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and the 1987 "baby hook" game against the Boston Celtics. If you're used to watching current NBA games you might be tempted to just skip to the end, but it's surprisingly rewarding to watch the game develop, to watch the game's superstars strut their stuff (or see a couple of 1972 reserves named Phil Jackson and Pat Riley), and to observe how radically the sport has changed over the years. Variable picture quality and technical glitches are unavoidable (even the 2002 game looks washed out), but this is the first time complete or nearly complete NBA games have been available in the home-video era, and they probably still look better than the VHS tapes you've been saving over the years. Yes, it'd be easy to argue about which games from the Lakers' long history should have been included, and the highlight videos don't have a ton of replay value, but the NBA Dynasty series is a major milestone in archived sports. --David Horiuchi
