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Hey maybe Bley did more recordings with Bird than we know about.   (Though I doubt it.) 

Presumably the finding aid is only local and not integrated with the online catalog. It's possible that physical processing is also largely incomplete.

Exactly. There's a reason that Booker Ervin exists. I don't want Booker to sound like Joe Henderson - they're different players that operate effectively in different contexts. It's worth mentioning that a ton of our knowledge about Grant is based on his recordings. Firsthand accounts are sparse. Grant's career mostly coincides with an era when amplifiers were not designed to compete with the (often) punishing volume levels of modern jazz. This dude was playing with organs in loud clubs.  It may not be immediately evident if you don't have firsthand, experiential knowledge of playing guitar on stage, but you can't simply turn an amplifier up. There are certain gestures and registers that will invariably project better in a loud room. I can more or less guarantee that Grant's style played better in live environments than the approach favored by many of his contemporaries. He's comparable in this way to someone like Buddy Guy, who often sounds pinched and thin on records but who has probably destroyed every single room he ever played. For reference: there's all that talk about how Wes played with the Coltrane band. I can absolutely understand why this might be the case. Wes's harmonic vocabulary was surpassing, but he also figured out how how to solo with octaves in an era when people hadn't yet developed a facility with that technique. I can't imagine too many other players who were able to play over Elvin in an era before good live sound and freely available gain/distortion options. 

More info from the listing just below.  I can't yet locate the detailed finding aid online; that might be on site only.  if anyone is in Ottawa... Bley's daughter died a few years ago. General note: Dub copies of Bley recordings are not described in this series. While many dubs are simply direct copies of described recordings, the boxes for some (particularly audio reels) often contain additional information on the recording, including song titles (and changes thereto), composer credits, editing and mixing decisions, and commentaries on the performances and on technical aspects of the recording. The existence of dubs with significant textual information is noted in the relevant descriptions. Arrangement note: Hide detail The series contains the following sub-series: MUS 297/E1 Live Recordings of Paul Bley and Related Records; MUS 297/E2 Studio Recordings of Paul Bley and Related Records; MUS 297/E3 Combined Studio and Live Recordings of Paul Bley and Related Records; MUS 297/E4 Other Records Concerning Paul Bley Recordings. In cases where the place of recording is not known, but there are no indications of a live audience, the recording has been described in MUS 297/E2. MUS 297/E3 contains: individual recordings that include both live and studio performances; and recordings, which while individually are either live or studio, are related to larger projects that combined both studio and live recordings. Related records found with a recording are described with that recording, and other related records are described in sub-series MUS 297/E4. The recordings in each sub-series are arranged according to the date of Bley's performance, which is generally (but not always) the same as the date of creation., Sound recordings pertaining to Sun Ra's St Louis Blues: Solo Piano, IAI 37.38.58, are described as part of MUS 297/E1 because of their integral connection with the unmixed masters and unmixed copies of the Bley-Sun Ra performances at Axis-in-Soho, July 1977, which are also described in MUS 297/E1.   The Rights info isn't the greatest.  if you click on the Access tab, you can see what there is.  Everything that is a sound recording is either Restricted, or Open for consultation but no copying.    Sound recordings [Consultation18 Restricted] File MUS 297/E1,97 is subject to access restrictions. Sound recording [T10W1] 109--146 [Consultation 95 Open, no copying]   One would have to ask them for more details,but the material would likely be considered under copyright and heirs would have to be consulted.   Bley-Sun Ra performances at Axis-in-Soho, July 1977??? the overall listing says that there is material from roughly 1953 to 2000, but details don't appear online.

And at the Village Vanguard May 21-26.