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Is this Charlie Parker?


shnaggletooth

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I posted this on the Hoffman forums, but I'll cross-forum-post it here on the possibility that some extra ears can help crack the mystery.

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I have some 78-speed acetate discs, home-made I guess, of various Charlie Parker private recordings that have since been made commercially available. However, at least one of the discs contains recordings of "I'll Remember April" and "Sweet Georgia Brown" that don't sound like anything I can find on the various Parker CDs. So I'm not sure if this is even Charlie Parker or not. Maybe someone here can figure this out. Here's an "I'll Remember April", and the alto solo is around the 3:05 mark. And here's the flip-side, a version of "Sweet Georgia Brown".

Edited by shnaggletooth
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I'm inclined to say not Bird, but in that case it's a Bird imitator who is way further along than most in terms of tone and enunciation. Still, there are enough moments where the "not-Birdness" is obvious.

I do like those changes ot April though. Can't say that I've ever heard those exact substitutions.

"amateur" is too strong for me. The trumpet player is still struggling some, but the rhythm section is pretty much solid in a "local" kind of way. Drums & bass in aprticular sound like they're seasoned more than just a teense.

That quote of "You're In the Army Now" towards the end of SGB suggests maybe a jam session between some army players & civillians, or something like that.

An interesting find overall, imo, even if it's not Bird.

Not Bird---and the piano sounds out of tune.

Maybe it's Eric Dolphy at the Five Spot?

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I'm inclined to say not Bird, but in that case it's a Bird imitator who is way further along than most in terms of tone and enunciation. Still, there are enough moments where the "not-Birdness" is obvious.

I do like those changes ot April though. Can't say that I've ever heard those exact substitutions.

"amateur" is too strong for me. The trumpet player is still struggling some, but the rhythm section is pretty much solid in a "local" kind of way. Drums & bass in aprticular sound like they're seasoned more than just a teense.

That quote of "You're In the Army Now" towards the end of SGB suggests maybe a jam session between some army players & civillians, or something like that.

An interesting find overall, imo, even if it's not Bird.

Not Bird---and the piano sounds out of tune.

Maybe it's Eric Dolphy at the Five Spot?

Thanks for the feedback, people. I was hoping that I'd stumbled upon the Great Unknown Lost Charlie Parker Recordings. What I have are apparently bootleg discs, all identical 12" red acetate National discs, cut at 78 rpm, with identical handwriting on the labels. These must have circulated among Bird fanatics in the 50's and early 60's, and I guess the two above recordings that comprise one of the discs must have been mistaken for Bird (though I'll still hold out slim hope that maybe it really is him). Or maybe it's just me who's mistaking that one disc for Bird -- the person who made the discs might have known exactly who, what, where, and when but was just too lazy to annotate the label fully. All the other discs contain some of the recordings that eventually ended up on the Philology series. I picture a group of NYC beatniks spinning these platters at one of their get togethers. Or maybe Art Pepper listening to them in his rundown apartment while recovering from a near-overdose.

Edited by shnaggletooth
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