The Best of the Complete Live Performances on Savoy recaptures the remarkable
Charlie Parker in the late '40s leading his superb ensembles in an historic engagement over Labor Day weekend in 1948 at the Royal Roost. This distillation is a single volume of a four-CD Savoy reissue which in a way samples the total picture of the performances which ran for about four months -- from December 1948 to March 1949. The CD also includes the actual "live" radio broadcasts which were presided over by Sid Torin and feature a young
Miles Davis,
Kenny Dorham, the great
Max Roach,
Al Haig,
Milt Jackson, and
Lucky Thompson, among others. Just think, the admission was just 90 cents! Among its many exceptional offerings, this assessment documents many of
Parker's greatest performances, each featuring a network of melodic formulas that have been combined to create solos. His solos are often related to the original themes in unexpected and sometime ingenious ways (i.e., "Groovin' High,""Chasin' the Bird" -- which is the very last evidence of the working quintet with both
Davis and
Roach -- "Salt Peanuts," and "52nd Street Theme"). With "Anthropology,"
Parker ups the ante with a very fast tempo and 96 bars of invention. This is the latest in a magnificent body of jazz works reissued by Savoy, and its depth and omniscience in the purely musical sense is exceptional. ~ Paula Edelstein