Search - Charlie Parker :: At Cafe Society Downtown & Birdland

Bird on Fire!

Christopher Forbes | Brooklyn,, NY | 06/06/2003

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Charlie Parker?s is the quintessential jazz tragedy. Immensely gifted and immensely self destructive, Parker?s spark burned bright for a little over 14 years before being snuffed out by drugs and hard living at the age of 35. This has made for some dramatic jazz legends and romanticizing about Bird, that in a sense makes it hard to appreciate his true genius outside of the hype. Also, the fact that so much of his wildly improvised music was confined to three-minute cuts in the studio, makes it hard to realize the spark and fire of Parker live. So anything that documents the saxophonist live is to be treasured. These recordings were done live at the Cafe Society in downtown New York, and at Birdland on 52nd St. They are extremely important documents of this time in jazz history. Bird almost always played well, particularly when he was clean. But in front of an audience, he was truly amazing. The fluency of his lines never cease to amaze a listener. And there is a fire, an edge to the playing that was missing in his many imitators, and indeed is still missing in neo-bop to this day. Listening to Parker play live is as exciting and revolutionary as listening to anything by more avant-garde musicians, because at heart, Bird WAS avant-garde. Bird?s back up bands on these discs are varied, but include many of the usual suspects, Miles, Dizzy, Bud Powell, Red Rodney, Max Roach. The only down side is that often, the sound is so primitive that, other than Bird himself, you can?t hear much else on the disc, particularly the bass and drums. There has been an extraordinary effort on the part of the producers to right this imbalance, but be warned....this is not high fidelity by any stretch of the imagination. Still, if you are a jazz fan, this will not matter, as you will want as much live Parker as you can get your hands on. This is as good as any live set I?ve heard of Bird, and as such, highly recommended."