Search - Charlie Parker :: Charlie the Bird Parker: Portrait

For the price, you just can't do better.

Rob G. | Indianapolis, IN United States | 11/13/2003

(5 out of 5 stars)

"I'm a pretty big Charlie Parker fan and have long been frustrated by the dizzying labyrinth of CD issues of Parker material. I saw this on a sales flyer and intrigued by the price (and after finding this set locally even cheaper,) decided to chance it even though I really couldn't find any information about this set anywhere and have been burned by inferior "low budget" Parker releases in the past. So, what is this set? Well, it's more or less all the master takes Parker played on from 1944-the early 50s. There are two pre-1944 sides and it seems to get a little patchy after 1950, but it seems like most everything between those years is here. In addition to studio performances, there are couple of the officially recorded live sessions (such as the Savoy and some JATP performances).What's missing? Alternate takes are the major omission. As someone who was frustrated by Denon's straight reissues of the old Savoy LPs with alternates and masters thrown in haphazardly, I'm not missing these much at all. The serious Parker fan or student might wish to track down the Complete Savoy and Dial box, but for most of the rest of us, the masters are what we're after. There's also a master or two missing here and there. Mostly these are more minor tracks ("Visa" springs to mind.) Sloppy, yes, and frustrating considering the average disc is 55 minutes long, so space wasn't an issue.Also missing are amateur live recordings to which I say good riddance. Too many of these recordings are of fidelity that make listening a chore and are incomplete clips of nothing more than Parker soloing. Students of the saxophone may find these interesting, but I do not.Sound quality wise, this set is comparable to older CD versions of this material. I haven't heard the newest Master sets from Verve and Savoy, so I don't know what kind of sonic improvements are out there currently, but the Savoy and Verve sides on this set sound compirable to my older CDs of the same material. The only really questionable sound comes from the Dial sessions. These masters have not aged well and the producer of this set decided to roll off the highs pretty severly to compencate for the noise. It's not enough to totally ruin the expirence, but personally I'd rather have the high end even if it is noisy.Having experienced past attempts to synthesize stereo from mono recordings, I shuddered when I read on the box that these recordings had "been enhanced to virtual stereo." Fortunately, the effect of this processing, if indeed it's anything more than empty hype, is negligible as I could not detect any stereo effect or unusual processing on these tracks when compared to other releases of the same material. Sound quality varies from track to track, as it does on every other release of this material, but at least they didn't ruin it with added reverb and filtering.You may be asking how this set is so inexpensive when the Savoy and Dial set I've mentioned above costs much more. Well, first off, let's be honest here, this set looks as cheap as it is. The CD packaging and the included booklet (which actually includes a decent overview of Parker's life) look very generic. Surprisingly, each CD features basic session information with (mostly)correct dates and lineups, but above and beyond that, there's not much. Personally, I don't care as I'd rather just get the music than pay extra for fancy packaging.The other factor that comes in to play is this set is from Germany. European law is much more realistic when it comes to the life of copyrights. In other words, these recordings are all public domain in Germany, which means this label can put together tracks from various companies and release this set so cheaply because there are no licensing fees to pay.So what's the downside? Aside from the cheap packaging, this set jumps all over the place chronologically. It almost seems unfair to complain, as they are giving so much for so little, but it's a little frustrating that a pretty much complete timeline of Parker's records is here, but the individual discs are arranged so strangely. At least the sessions are kept together, so if you want to hear all the recordings made on a particular date, you don't have to switch discs.I know I've spent a lot of time discussing what, at this price, is really a no brain purchase, but if you're like me and just want to know what you're getting into, now you should know. If you're just starting with Parker, this set could be a bit overwhelming, and I might recommend Rhino's excellent 2-cd "Yardbird Suite". Honestly though, for nearly the same price, this set offers so much more, I just can't see passing this up."