Search - Charlie Parker :: Complete Savoy & Dial Sessions

Essential jazz history at a phenomenal price

Steve Frazier | Seattle | 10/21/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Presumably if you are reading this review you already know who Charlie Parker is (one of the great innovators in the history of jazz), but you are wondering whether you should splash out for a complete set of his Savoy & Jazz recordings -- and also whether if this is *the* set you should order. I highly recommend it.



Just to clarify what this is, it is the complete studio recording sessions that Charlie Parker did for a group of small record labels in the 40's such as Savoy, Guild, Mercury, Dial, Clef, Norgran...generally these have come to be known as the Savoy and Dial recording sessions. These cuts contain the music that made Charlie Parker a legend and, indeed, changed the course of jazz music. They also contain work of a number of other masters like Dizzy Gillespie and Miles Davis; many of these recordings were originally with other musicians as the leaders of the sessions but they have come to be treasured because of the work of Charlie Parker on them.



This is a "complete" set of the recordings, meaning that it not only contains the "master" recordings that were released to the public but also the alternate takes. Alternate takes are often complete takes that were judged not quite as good as the version that released...or they may be false starts, takes plagued with a few errors, or takes with small technical problems. At any case, these alternates give you a chance to hear Bird and his sidemen working through numbers, perfecting approaches, and trying out different improvisations.



In the days of the LP record or even CD player these "complete" sets were a chore; you would put on a disc and then hear multiple versions of a the same song in a row. However, if you digitize your music, it's relatively simple to put together complete or "edited" playlists to your liking...therefore I think these Complete sets are even a greater value than they used to be.



In recent years there has been quite a bit of growth in the availability of classic American jazz, blues and roots music coming out of Europe. Though not an expert, it's my understanding that copyrights expire after 50 years outside the U.S. and therefore a bunch of folks in Europe are in the business of re-issuing old US music at cut-rate prices..and the label that produces this (Definitive) is one of those.



[You may spot some customer reviews on this site criticizing this practice, but from what I can tell it appears to be legal, and results from entrepreneurs taking an opportunity of variations in legal regimes around the world. Without lengthening the debate, I would also note that the ethical issues around these recordings could be discussed at length -- for example, many of the beboppers' original recordings were simply new melody lines put on top of chord changes from the pop tunes of the day, and no licenses fees were paid, for example, when Bird recorded "Donna Lee" on the chord changes of "Indiana" or "KoKo" on the changes from "Cherokee." In fact, there is at least one recorded instance of a recording engineer stopping a session in the middle when the musicians stray too close to a copyright-protected melody line. In any case, the law appears to be that the original rights owners, and their corporate descendants, have had 50 years to profit from these songs on 78, LP, 45, 8-track, cassette and CD. It seems to me that the Europeans would not have a shot at the market if the US labels who owned the rights improved thier packaging/labeling/pricing of these reissues; in any case, as a consumer I appear to have a choice of how I spend my money and I voted for this version.]



The great thing about this set is it's a nicely put together set of these complete recordings at a phenomenal price; you really can afford to buy this set for a little more than a price of Savoy and Dial masters; you get the alternate takes for not much more additional money.



Considering the source material, the sound quality of this release is excellent. I contain several versions of a number of these tracks and these rank as good or better as any of the others that I own.



This is an 8-set with the CD's packaged in two four-packs. The tracks are arranged with the masters at the beginning of each CD and all the alternates at the end of each CD (so you don't have to listen to multiple versions of a song if you don't want to). Each CD also contains a very clear explanation of the sessions for each recording -- with the personnel, dates, record label, and recording master numbers clearly delineated. A very nice touch is the fact that there is a large book in the set that contains all the session and track listings, and then two smaller listings included in the two CD packs. The booklet also contains a serviceable bigoraphy of Charlie Parker, which any purchaser of this set likely doesn't need.



All in all this is amazing music, a great package, and an amazing value."

Amazing music, mediocre packaging

MilesTrane21 | 05/06/2007

(4 out of 5 stars)

"The music is wonderful. Bird is amazing, playing some of the most brilliant jazz ever heard. Most people buying this already know this, however. Unfortunately, in shipping the discs get displaced easily and their are several scratches on my CD's. If you clean the cd's and use an up-to-date CD player they have little-to-no effect, but if you use an old cd player or import them onto your computer they can come up. Fortunately, it didn't effect many songs, so it's not too annoying, but it did provide some inconvenience. 5 stars for the music - 3 stars for the packaging."