Verve/UMe Announces Never Before Released
Charlie Parker Sessions on
Unheard Bird: The Unissued Takes
Two-Disc Set, Available July 1, Released for
Verve's 60th Anniversary Celebration
Discovering previously unheard
music is a consistent hope for serious jazz fans. Finding unreleased
music from legends, especially those who departed far too early with
their legacies incomplete, is a true joy; one of those legends whose
every note leads to an adventure of innovation is the immortal
Charlie "Bird" Parker. On
July 1, Verve/UMe brings a thrill to jazz lovers worldwide with the release of
Unheard Bird: The Unissued Takes, a comprehensive two-disc set featuring a cornucopia of previously unknown music--
58 never listed studio takes
from Charlie Parker. The set was co-produced by Phil Schaap, the
eminent jazz historian who is currently Curator at Jazz At Lincoln
Center and the foremost expert on Ornithology.
"These previously unknown takes
are a blockbuster," Schaap says, "providing heretofore-unheard Bird
improvisations, and in high fidelity." Discovered in a cache of
materials owned by a former associate of Norman Granz, the founder of
Verve Records and visionary producer of these sessions, the newly
discovered takes allow the listener inside the private domain between
Parker and Granz as they developed some of the most important music in
jazz. In his highly detailed liner notes, Schaap provides overview,
session-by-session history and track-by-track analysis, further
illuminating the creative process of Bird's genius.
Originally issued on Mercury
and Clef, but ultimately housed on Verve, the Parker/Granz studio
collaborations were well-designed and thoughtfully conceived to display
Bird's unparalleled talents in a variety of contexts. These included
Parker's four to six piece ensembles (both working and pick-up groups);
Latin Jazz efforts, some of which were labeled "South of the Border;"
the orchestral Charlie Parker including his masterpieces with strings;
standard Big Band; and Parker's prescient view of the Third Stream.
Unheard Bird
touches on all of these, including a couple of brief false starts on
"If I Should Lose You" that were not included in the remarkable 2015
companion set,
Charlie Parker With Strings: Deluxe Edition.
From the Latin side, there are
five tracks with Parker as the featured soloist with Machito and his
Orchestra; and 13 "South of the Border" tracks that feature a rhythm
section of Walter Bishop, Teddy Kotick and Roy Haynes or Max Roach,
along with Jose Mangual and Luis Miranda on bongos and congas,
respectively, and joined on a pair by trumpeter Benny Harris. As a bonus
we hear snippets of studio chatter, including Bird discussing tempo; on
"Tico Tico" he asks studio guests to quiet down lest they ruin the
session.
There is a fascinating set of
ten tracks from a Cole Porter project that was never completed due to
Bird's illness and untimely passing. Featuring a Big Band that included
such heavyweights as Oscar Peterson, Freddie Green, Flip Phillips and
Ray Brown, Bird digs into three Porter classics - "Night and Day," "What
Is This Thing Called Love" and "Almost Like Being in Love," with
brilliant results. More than half of the package features Bird in the
small group hardcore bop settings for which he was best known. This
features a reuniting of Parker's quintet, referred to as The Golden Era
BeBop Five, the only Granz-produced recordings by this ensemble. These
14 tracks feature Kenny Dorham, Al Haig, Tommy Potter and Max Roach.
They are joined for four more by trombonist Tommy Turk and Carlos Vidal
on conga.
Dizzy Gillespie--Bird's
co-conspirator in the Bebop movement--joins Bird for ten tracks, along
with Thelonious Monk, Curley Russell and Buddy Rich. The all-Parker
program includes complete run-throughs of "An Oscar for Treadwell,"
"Bloomdido" and "Mohawk." A quartet setting brings Hank Jones, Ray Brown
and Buddy Rich to the bandstand for explorations of the beautiful
Raye/DePaul gem "Star Eyes" and Bird's "Blues (Fast)."
To round out the new, 69-track
set, included are the songs' master takes. (The mismatched math--58
unreleased takes plus 20 master takes somehow equaling 69--is due to the
producers combining some of the shorter takes for this release.)
Spanning the years 1949-1952,
Unheard Bird: The Unissued Takes
displays the immortal master of the alto saxophone Charlie Parker at
the peak maturity of his prodigious talents. Accompanied by so many of
the era's giants, and allowed the time, space and support to produce art
at its highest level, this set is a monumental addition to a legacy of
artistry that is breathtaking in its scope and majesty. With Phil
Schaap's erudite and perceptive delineation of the ways and means by
which this artistry was achieved, and his portrait of the era in which
it all took place,
Unheard Bird: The Unissued Takes is an essential addition to the library of all serious fans of jazz.
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