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NEW, NEVER HEARD, DIZZY & BIRD FROM UPTOWN


JSngry

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At the moment, this CD is ranked NUMBER FOUR (that's right--not 400 or 4,000, but number 4) in sales on Amazon. This has to be some sort of record for a jazz recording of any kind, let alone a 60-year old one. I guess it helps to be mentioned in the NY Times. :P

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Looking at the traycard of the disc I have a question about "Salt Peanuts" - is that Max or Big Sid? Liners say the later, but Symphony Sid only announces Big Sid *after* "Salt Peanuts" - however, I thought I did hear a change in drumming styles right from the beginning of "Salt Peanuts", so...

I think it's Max on "Salt Peanuts". My guess is Sid came out for "Hot House" & got such a big hand that he stayed on to finsih the set w/the brief "52nd Street Theme". The crowd wouldn't let him go, he needed to go, the set was probably about over anyway, so somebody probably said, "Just finish up, it's just a few more minutes", and he agreed.

That still gives him two tunes as per the tray card, just not the two it says.

Thanks for weighing in! Sid (Big Sid, that is) would have been a bad mo-fo to pull all the stuff on "Peanuts" - but then "Hot House" is proof enough that he *was* a bad mo-fo...

From what Symphony Sid says, though, I rather think Sid was gone before 52nd Street Theme was played - but we'll probably never know...

Well, I wrote that before reading Ira Gitler's liner notes, and I see that he reaches the same conlcusion as to what probably happened, fwiw...

Here's a couple of additional things -

[*] Although the tray card does indeed credit Catlett on "tracks 5 and 6", maybe they meant songs 5 & 6, since Track 1 is just the introductory chatter.

I recognized this confusion the minute I popped the disc in and read the data on the booklet and tray card... "Don Byas, ts (track 1 only)". Of course, they meant track 2 (song 1).

Anyway, just crossin' the t's and dottin' the i's regarding this little detail, since this hadn't been more fully discussed- there's NO way I'm going to complain about anything related to the release of this material. This CD causes me to laugh and cry. Unbelieveable.

Thinking back to an earlier comment here (by Jim S, I believe) about how relatively "new" these guys were at the time, I get a kick out of hearing Torin pronounce Dizzy's last name as "Jillespie".

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Thinking back to an earlier comment here (by Jim S, I believe) about how relatively "new" these guys were at the time, I get a kick out of hearing Torin pronounce Dizzy's last name as "Jillespie".

Although, oddly, inconsistantly. Other times he pronounces it correctly.

Maybe he wasn't sure and was just hedging his bets.

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After the NYT piece, this has been a nutso day for me. Unfortunately I didn't make a dime.  :(

Why's that Chuck?

Just answering questions but not selling discs?

That settles it: I'll have to buy mine from you...

(I've tried locally, but haven't found it.)

PM to follow...

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Finally picked this up a few weeks ago. (from chuck, excellent service).

Its excellent!

I'm by no means a collector or expert on Parker (I have all the dials, much of the savoys a few verves and various live stuff)

I was a bit intimidated by this, being no expert and thinking there are plenty of other recordings of Parker I should get (I've got very little Gillespie either).

Shouldn't have worried, the sound is great and the music is exceptional. Definitely not to be missed and given the labour of love involved its a cause to support.

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Congrats on this getting an "A" review in the new Entertainment Weekly!  :tup

Saw that review also. Actually it got an A-. Wayne Shorter's new CD got an A. (Feels like I'm back in high school). I haven't heard it, but there's no way it could be better than the Diz/Bird Uptown.

I guess in the long run it's irrelevant - the mention and publicity is the main thing. How many 50+ year old jazz performances get a mention in the NY Times and Entertainment Weekly during the same week? Congratulations.

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The plaudits continue to roll in, this from Chris Sheridan writing in Jazz Review (UK) this month:

"Uptown Records has exhumed another priceless treasure...This concert recording is the best aural evidence (so far) of the legendary Three Deuces band that Gillespie and Parker led in the spring of 1945....indeed the only evidence aside from incomplete recordings of "Sweet Georgia Brown" and "Blue n Boogie" on Media7/Masters of Jazz MJCD-113...."

And then he adds this zinger:

"Presumably, the pirates in Andorra are already cloning it as they did with Uptwon's important Charles Mingus CD of his West Coast recordings"

Incidentally, Jazz Review has had to cut back from 12 to 6 issues, further evidence that intelligent, historically informed writing about jazz is too good for this world.

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Haven't paged through the thread to see, so if this is redundant:

http://villagevoice.com/music/0532,davis3,66646,22.html

Unsuspected Treasure

Dizzy Gillespie flies, Charlie Parker races, Symphony Sid jives, and you are there

by Francis Davis

August 5th, 2005 4:27 PM

Dizzy Gillespie—Charlie Parker

Town Hall, New York City, June 22, 1945

Uptown

A CD whose most obvious selling point is its very existence, Town Hall, New York City, June 22, 1945 gives us Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie fresh from the 3 Deuces and full of vim at the dawn of bebop, almost a decade before Massey Hall.

No one even suspected this 40-minute set had been recorded until the professional-quality, unlabeled acetates circuitously found their way to Uptown's Bob Sunenblick. Despite needle hiss, the sound is vivid—Max Roach's bass drum rips through your woofer. (Bassist Curley Russell, alas, is as much a rumor as he was on contemporaneous studio recordings.) Symphony Sid's jive-ass announcements create a you-are-there aura, Al Haig's piano solos are little lyrical adventures, and though sitters-in Don Byas and Sid Catlett are out of their idiom, they're not enough to deter Parker and Gillespie from their artful games of double dare. Dizzy spends most of his choruses in the stratosphere; Parker spends his racing around bar lines as if they weren't there. The average length of the tunes is about seven minutes, roughly double that of the era's commercially issued sides, and you know you're in for a ride when the slowest tempo is "Groovin' High." With Coltrane at the Half Note in '65 and Monk at Carnegie Hall in '57 coming in the next few months, to say nothing of Miles at the Cellar Door in '70 and Sonny Rollins in Boston soon after 9-11, this is shaping up as a year of archaeological finds. But nothing figures to top this.

Edited by Lazaro Vega
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I agree with Francis, as I understand his point - as a matter of fact, clearly Byas agreed as well, as his stage departure was surprising and unannounced. Yes, he was part of the pre-history of bop, but his playing, great as it was, was briefly swept aside in the bop whirlwind - to understand this is to understand the CONTEMPORARY response to the new bebop boys - Joe Albany once pointed this out to me, saying, yes, guys like Hawkins and Lester Young (his examples) were still great players, but in the very immediate flash of the new style, before the dust settled, their playing suddenly seemed very out of date. Of course, as perspective was gained that changed - and much as I l love Sid Catlett, on this date, Max sweeps him away, as well -

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