This is an excerpt of a longer performance. It's just Parker and the rhythm
section on all three numbers -- these were the Bird features on this date. Also
in the band were Howard McGhee, Tommy Turk, Coleman Hawkins, Sonny Criss, and Kenny
Hagood. According to Norman Granz, Parker was absent for much of the show and turned
up near the end. An anonymous author reviewing the concert for Down Beat
was critical of Parker:
Complete disappointment of the evening was the performance -- or non-performance
-- of Charlie Parker, who came on late in the session to a screaming stomping ovation
and then blew virtually nothing but clinkers and meaningless, disconnected passages
that sounded as though they had tumbled from a dream -- almost completely alien
to the architectural structure of the compositions attempted... It was hardly the
talents of the Charlie Parker of Dizzy Gillespie, Earl Hines, or Jay McShann days.
("Bird a Floperoo: Hawk Still Tops," Down Beat, December 15, 1948, page 7)
Parker does sound lost much of the time. Apparently earlier in the day he got away
from his chaperones and when he was found by Teddy Edwards he was in no shape to
play. Granz and others did what they could to sober him up, but Parker's performance
is definitely off. Mark Toomey wonders whether the themes Parker quotes during his solo
on "Ornithology" -- "The Man on the Flying Trapeze" and "Show Me the Way to Go
Home" -- indicate that he was perhaps aware of his predicament.
This "Jazz at the Philharmonic" tour ran from early November (November 6 at Carnegie
Hall) through early December (December 11 at Mosque Theatre, New Ark NJ). Many of
the shows were on the west coast -- Seattle, Portland, Long Beach, San Diego, Los
Angeles, Oakland, and San Francisco -- but the tour also stopped in Detroit, St.
Louis, Salt Lake City, Kansas City, Chicago, and Pittsburgh.
Thanks to Wasaburo Miura, Chieo Yamada, Leif Bo Petersen, John Griffin, Bruno
Leicht, and Mark Toomey for help with this session.
|