By Michael Ullman

“Ornithology: The Best of Bird” might better be described as the best of Bird on Savoy.

Charlie Parker,  Ornithology: The Best of Bird (Savoy CD, also available on LP)

On July 30, 1953, Charlie Parker, characteristically late, entered a New York studio to record a session for Verve that was later deemed a disaster. The problem is, to us, obvious. Gil Evans, who had been writing for the adventurous Claude Thornhill orchestra and also famously for the Miles Davis nonet, arranged a group of Cole Porter songs, including “In the Still of the Night”. His small band included a French horn, oboe, and bassoon, and he had them play relatively complex harmonies while a corny sounding mixed choir sang the lyrics. (Imagine Stravinsky arranging for Perry Como.) I bring this up because of what Charlie Parker accomplishes in this unpromising setting. The first takes barely get going: the choir sings at a different tempo from the band. Thanks to the engineering, drummer Max Roach is barely audible to listeners, and maybe to the choir. The drummer doesn’t seem to grace those singers with a downbeat. Yet later, something marvelous happens. After another comically flawed theme statement, Parker decides to play anyway. A flood of marvelously shaped and articulated phrases come out of his horn. It’s a whirlwind of notes, I am tempted to say, except that Bird’s intelligent control is everywhere evident. He must have known that the take was unusable. Nonetheless he played at the highest level  —  just for the joy of making music. Each subsequent solo was different, and each equally thrilling.

A friend heard Parker in the saxophonist’s latter years. He said that, unlike the sweaty, rocking character played by Forest Whitaker in the 1998 film Bird, Parker always looked self-contained. He was a “watcher.” my friend said. Parker seemed to be sizing up the audience even as marvelously virtuosic, radically inventive phrases seemed to spill out of his horn by themselves. I hear the same elegance and ease on the live version of “Confirmation” included in this selection of Savoy recordings.  Parker may occasionally tie sidemen into knots, but he seems serene and his music stuns and cheers. He was, everyone admits, musically intimidating. Parker’s trumpeter, Howard McGhee, said he couldn’t wait to get to the gig and then couldn’t wait to get off the stage. You got it, someone would say, but Bird seemed already to have played everything there was to play.

Ornithology: The Best of Bird might better be described as the best of Bird on Savoy.  In a more expansive “Best of” collection, I would have included the “Yardbird Suite” and “Night in Tunisia” recorded for Dial and perhaps the “Just Friends” from his string session produced by Norman Granz’s Clef label.  This new Savoy collection begins with that improbable masterpiece “Koko”, based on the 64 bar tune “Cherokee”. It was made at the tail end of a legendary, seemingly cursed, session on November 26, 1945. The pianist didn’t show up, Parker evidently had trouble with his saxophone. Miles Davis was to be trumpet player, replaced on “Koko” by Dizzy Gillespie, who also offered a few chords on piano when they were needed. The story is that youthful Miles couldn’t hack the introduction required by Parker on “Koko”. (Some, incidentally, have argued that it is indeed Miles on “Koko”.) On the first take, not included here, the band starts to play the melody of “Cherokee” and is whistled to a stop. Allegedly Savoy didn’t want to pay royalties for the recognizable tune. Another reason might be that there wasn’t time for both a theme statement and improvisations. Instead the issued recording goes straight to Parker’s amazing solo. A bonus is drummer Roach’s solo.

Portrait of Charlie Parker at the Three Deuces, New York, N.Y. Photo: William P. Gottlieb.

The Best of Bird contains two other numbers from November 26.  “Now’s the Time” is an instantly memorable blues that has been recorded at least 300 times since this initial session. The trumpet player here is definitely Davis and to my ears he sounds nothing like the virtuoso ripping through the introduction to “Koko”. It’s audacious of me, but I find his solo, though his slow wave of a vibrato suggests his future sound, intent on being what was meant to be intense.  There’s a palpable let down after Davis finishes and yields awkwardly to an under-recorded bass solo. The third number from this date included here is “Billie’s Bounce”. Miles’s solo here is memorable. The collection moves on with another Parker masterpiece, “Parker’s Mood”, a quartet date that is almost beyond criticism. (Some listeners dislike John Lewis’s piano solo.) As for Parker’s contributions, we can only be thankful. His solo became a staple of vocalese when King Pleasure recorded his version in 1953. It’s a delight no matter how many times one has heard it.

The last five numbers on this collection are live performances. In his notes, Ashley Kahn argues that we have lost the ability to “know how intense and challenging Bird’s music was in its day…how scary it once was.”  I find that kind of statement greatly exaggerated. Certainly the live audiences at the Royal Roost, Carnegie Hall (!), and Massey Hall don’t sound as if they are scared — and they kept coming back. My older friends who saw Parker live still seemed to be glowing when they talked about it. Parker takes a long solo on the Carnegie Hall “Confirmation”, and the crowd is audibly appreciative. (We can even hear a few whistles.) There are three numbers selected from live broadcasts at the Royal Roost. The famous Symphony Sid Torin introduces Parker’s “Ornithology,” amusingly, as “his original thing.” Al Haig is the brilliant pianist at the Roost; he always seems a little far from the mike. Bird is sublime as usual, and Kenny Dorham, who plays trumpet on “Groovin’ High” and on the way uptempo “Anthropology” is (forgive me!) a better fit with the Parker quintet than was Miles Davis. Parker draws on one of his pet figures in mid-solo on “Anthropology”: he holds a note and then quotes from the New Orleans classic “High Society”. Milt Jackson solos here, as does the underrated tenor saxophonist Lucky Thompson.

The collection ends with “Salt Peanuts” from the famous Massey Hall concert (May 15, 1953). Parker introduces the tune as composed by “my worthy constituent, Dizzy Gillespie.”  As Gillespie yells in the background, the crowd reacts exuberantly, as well they might. Mingus owned the tapes and issued the concert on his Debut label with a new bass part overdubbed in places. (Both the original tapes and the altered versions were part of Charles Mingus: The Complete Debut Recordings.) The “Salt Peanuts” found here is the original version, which is to me the proper choice. Another collector may have issued a different set of the best Charlie Parker. No matter. Listening to these familiar tracks, I am once again blown away his every phrase.

For over 30 years, Michael Ullman has written a bimonthly jazz column for Fanfare Magazine, for which he also reviews classical music. He has emeritus status at Tufts University, where for 45 years he taught in the English and Music Departments, specializing in modernist writers and nonfiction writing in English, and jazz and blues history in music. He studied classical clarinet. The author or co-author of two books on jazz, he has written on jazz and classical music for the Atlantic Monthly, New Republic, High Fidelity, Stereophile, Boston Phoenix, Boston Globe, and other venues. He plays piano badly.