Smith & Co

It’s generally accepted that Bird was at his peak during the years he recorded for Savoy, certainly this was the period that he exerted the greatest impact on jazz, and jazz musicians, so the larger part of this collective comes from those years, leading up to his last session in September 1948. “Lover Man” is possibly still Parker’s most misconstrued recording, done in Los Angeles for Dial Records in July 1946, seen as the worst and the greatest recording of his career, depending on the side of the fence one sits. He was in a great deal of distress when he recorded it, strung out from a lack of his needed heroine, some refer to the sheer beauty of his pain, whilst Parker himself hated the recording so much, he wanted the masters tapes burnt. The “Charlie Parker with Strings” album is only represented by one track on this selection. Although by far the best selling title during his lifetime, it was thought important to show how beautiful and skilful Parker’s playing was, but it was also decided that these recordings didn’t fit the “bebop” definition as wholly as his work with smaller jazz ensembles.

The early part of Miles Davis’ recording career was dominated by his inclusion in Charlie Parker’s line up, and so they share a great number of bebop’s finest moments. It was decided not to repeat those selections made on the Charlie Parker CD in the same series, although Davis’ contribution to these tracks should not be underestimated. Instead we have chosen to take a more daring route through Davis’ bebop years. The 1957 Capitol album “The Birth Of Cool” is featured in full – a record that was complied by Capitol retrospectively from Davis’ sessions for them in 1949 and 1950, when they had signed him as a bebop act. Whilst the eventual release reflected the most important move that Davis made towards his own independence, and sent signals towards what he would fully form into “cool jazz” in the mid 1950’s, the recordings sit comfortably amongst the bebop idiom. The second disc is more audacious, as it highlights the direction that Miles Davis took bebop music in the early 1950’s, when it was all but proclaimed dead. Davis, and his invited guests, eventually invented “hard bop”, which had its routes so firmly set in bebop tradition that his early 1950’s recordings deserve to be examined. Indeed the recordings Miles Davis made for “Prestige” in the first half of the 1950’s are seen by many, as his greatest triumph.

The very first date regarded as a “bebop” recording session was for Coleman Hawkins on February 16, 1944, wanting to play the music that he heard, he decided to get in “some of the cat’s that are playing it”. The recognised spokesman for bebop was Dizzy Gillespie, and “Woody For You” was improvised there and then on that recording date. Dizzy’s musical partnership with Charlie Parker was the bedrock of the bebop scene, and is well represented, and when presented with choices of a track recorded at different times with different line ups, this compilation has leaned towards recordings including Diz and Bird. Indeed two significant recording dates are given in full – firstly the concert at Carnegie Hall on September 29th, 1947 (billed as Dizzy And His Orchestra and Ella Fitzgerald), which overnight made bebop a respectable musical form and June 6th, 1950 when bebop was all but dead, Norman Granz reunited Dizzy and Bird for their final recording date together.
Like Parker, indeed pre-Parker, Gillespie recorded with strings. Whilst his solos bring a bebop element to the recordings, we have not included any tracks, as it was judged that there were better examples of true bebop.

Seen by many as the greatest trumpet virtuoso of his time, Clifford didn’t live long enough to be defined by any other form of jazz than bebop. Although bebop was over in the eyes of the purists by the time of his death in June 1956, his entire recording career had only spanned (with the exception of playing trumpet for Chris Powell And The Five Blue Flames in 1952) the three years from his first recording session in June 1953. This recording span can be divided up into two halves, the first for Blue Note records and the second for EmArcy, although his output was more substantial for the latter label, which he joined in August 1954. We have divided the tracks amongst the two labels accordingly, concentrating on his instrumental work, and ignoring the favoured populist sessions with Dinah Washington, Sarah Vaughan and Helen Mirrell on vocals. Also, we have not included any recordings from the Clifford Brown with Strings sessions of January 1955. One last note, we have included his final performance in his home town of Philadelphia, recorded only two hours before the fatal car crash that deprived jazz of such a gifted performer.

With a couple of omissions of tracks that Monk committed to tape more than once in the same sessions, this bebop compilation serves as a complete anthology of his recorded output between 1947 and 1954. Monk spent the first part of that period recording for Blue Note, where he produced his ground breaking “Genius Of Modern Music” album, and then in 1952 he moved to the Prestige label. Also omitted were the two tracks recorded in July 1948 with Kenny Hagood on vocal, as we decided to stick firmly to Monk’s instrumental genius. Also, for the sake of including several shorter tracks, the giant “Friday The Thirteenth” (ten and a half minutes worth) recorded on the (Friday) November 13th 1953 date was left out, as well as “I’ll Follow You” from his last date for Blue Note on May 30th, 1952, “Locomotive” from the May 11th, 1954 date, and “Blue Monk” from September 22nd date of that same year.