Question on Bird live date - 10/23/1950

[Big Wheel]

I recently bought the Savoy/Denon/Nippon Columbia CD An Evening At Home With the Bird, but just realized a couple of things:

1) This session (discussed here in more detail) appears on the Savoy Jazz Originals 4-CD box Charlie Parker: The Complete Live Performances On Savoy, which came out in 1998 and which I own. So it appears I duplicated this session accidentally and can probably sell the single CD.

2) HOWEVER...the track times do not line up. The tracks on the single CD are longer. "There's a Small Hotel" is 10:51 on the single CD, but only 10:14 on the box. The most elongated is "These Foolish Things," which is 3:54 on the CD but only 2:06(!!) on the box.

So...what the heck happened here? Listening to the version of "These Foolish Things" from the box, it sounds like the track starts in the middle, during Bird's solo. Did Orrin Keepnews intentionally cut portions of the music to save playing time on the box, or is there some other explanation like different sources being used?

Edited February 19, 2011 by Big Wheel

[jeffcrom]

If the Evening at Home CD is a straight reissue of Savoy LP 12152, the extra time comes from splicing that repeats some of the saxophone passages. And many of the tunes were not complete on the source tape - I believe that the 2:06 of "These Foolish Things" was all that was there. At least, that's the way it appears on the 1980 Savoy LP One Night in Chicago, which was at attempt to present this material in the most complete form possible.

[brownie]

All details on this date from Pete Losin's excellent website:

October 23, 1950

Read down to the bottom of the page for explanations on the various lengths of the different issues.

[chewy-chew-chew-bean-benitez]

was it ever determined who the correct sax player is?

[Big Wheel]

All details on this date from Pete Losin's excellent website:

October 23, 1950

Read down to the bottom of the page for explanations on the various lengths of the different issues.

Ah, thanks. I was looking at that but had lazily skimmed over the part on track times.

The "These Foolish Things" edit is even weirder than Losin describes it: listening more closely, it sounds to me like they repeated that particular chunk of Bird's solo because the chunk starts with him quoting the head of the tune. Therefore, they probably thought they could get away with passing it off as the actual way the head was played if they just threw it in at the beginning of the track.