"At the Birth of Bop" this week on Night Lights

[ghost of miles]

In honor of Bird's impending birthday:

This week on Night Lights it's "At the Birth of Bop." Several years ago an amazing audio find came to light--a June 1945 Town Hall concert in New York City featuring Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, and Max Roach--the rising stars of the then-revolutionary new music bebop--accompanied by Al Haig on piano and Curley Russell on bass. The performance, captured in sound that's stellar by the era's standards, has recently been issued by Uptown Records, and in it we hear the raw vitality of bebop's emerging canon. Chronologically, this is the first live and/or studio recording to feature a group made up solely of young musicians fluent in the musical language of bop. Parker and Gillespie blaze through seminal titles such as "Groovin' High," "Hot House," and "A Night in Tunisia." We'll also hear two Parker/Gillespie studio sides from earlier that year.

The New York Times recently wrote about this release; you can read the article on our Jazz News of Note page.

"At the Birth of Bop" airs Saturday, Aug. 27 on WFIU at 11:05 p.m (9:05 California time, 12:05 NYC time). You can listen live, or you can wait until Monday afternoon, when the program will be posted in the Night Lights archives.

You guys should check out this live Bird-Diz stuff... it's the real deal.

Next week: "Sonnymoon: Thelonious Monk and Sonny Rollins."

[ghost of miles]

This program is now archived.