My favorite piano solo in a Charlie Parker recording
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Artist:
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Album:Charlie Parker Anthology
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(If you want to hear a basic straight version of "Out of Nowhere," a song that the Charlie Parker Quintet later improvised on, listen to Bing Crosby's 1931 recording above.)
When bebop burst onto the jazz scene around 1945, it sounded as if "Tin Pan Alley was being scrambled like data being fed into a military coding machine to emerge as a new musical intelligence….The entire body of American jazz, from Bolden to Basie, was being subjected to an exhaustive re-examination," in the words of biographer Ross Russell in his book Bird Lives!
The 32 tunes that the Charlie Parker Quintet recorded in late 1947 with Duke Jordan as pianist are for me one of the highpoints in jazz history.
Charlie Parker, 27, alto sax; Tommy Potter, 29, bass; Miles Davis, 21, trumpet; Duke Jordan, 25, piano; Max Roach, 23, drums.
Of the 32 tunes, only their version of "Out of Nowhere" has a Duke Jordan solo that isn't just a few seconds long. Like many of their slower ballads, it also has a beautiful little piano intro. This being bebop, the bandleader solos first, and in this case the bandleader had one of the world's top musical minds of the twentieth century.
"Parker's own musical genius extended beyond his own playing. His perception allowed him to immediately spot the real players of quality….The pianist [Jordan] has recounted how he came to join Charlie Parker in the Spring of 1947. Jordan was a member of Teddy Walters' trio at the Three Deuces on 52nd Street and one night Bird was in the audience. 'Charlie was seated at a front table, and I heard him say, Wow, listen to that guy, and he was talking about me,' Jordan told Bob Reisner. Then he came over and asked me if I would like to work for him, and I jumped at the chance." (from Mark Gardner's liner notes for the Duke Jordan reissue LP Jordu)
Jordan didn't share Bud Powell's ability to thrive at lightning tempos, or Thelonious Monk's genius at composing wonderfully odd, dissonant tunes, but he did have an innate feel for lyrical melody that I find quite moving. Check out his 1954 version of "Embraceable You," using his same brief intro from his 1947 Charlie Parker Quintet recording of it.
Comments (12)
Spike, you old dog. This is so fine. At 1:43 in he just stole my heart. I don't have the necessary vocabulary to speak here, I cannot adequately express myself......but ......His touch is authoritive and sure. Not what I'd call a "light" touch. His left hand especially gets delightfully, dramatically percussive at times as it sends the right hand off on excursions through the melody, soaring, diving, spinning madly across the sun.
Thanks for this.
The above comments were made in reference to Embraceable You.
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Haven't heard either of these for many a year - thanks for posting
deadmandeadman, a fellow stolen heart at 1:47 must mean that we're now soulmates!
Baudolino, you actually remember hearing that version of "Embraceable You"? We need to meet.
It took me about halfway into that Crosby cut before I really could tell that it was Crosby. So unlike his later self-parody, with a sharp attack and a rhythmic precision I would never have expected. Also, it was so instructive to hear Parker's version right afterward - with the ghost of the first song still rattling around in my head, I could clearly hear where Parker was taking it. If I were given to hyperbole, I would have called it revelatory. And yes, Duke Jordan is maybe the least sung great pianist of his day....
ivylander, it's gratifying that you made good use of Crosby. Back in the day when word of his late 1920s-early 1930s stuff first sparked my interest in that era of jazz and pop, it was a thrill to hear so many of his straight versions of tunes I'd heard up until then only as modern jazz improvisations.
The 1971 notes to Jordan's Jordu reissue LP mention that "Complex personal problems have dogged Duke for many years and resulted in an unfortunate incident in Sweden in 1956." ? Perhaps his sweet understated piano style mirrored his career strategies in the ruthless music industry.
"The entire body of American jazz, from Bolden to Basie, was being subjected to an exhaustive re-examination" - this is so true and could not have been said better. i guess i've been fortunate enough to be exposed to this music in my childhood, thanks to my father. Out of Nowhere is so beautiful, i had not heard it in an extremely long while. a most enlightening post, Spike, thanks.
poebegone, I'm glad you enjoyed it. You remember hearing that version of "Out of Nowhere"? It's not one of Parker's most famous cuts. Yes! Let's hope that someday our kids will tell someone, "I guess I've been fortunate enough to be exposed to this music in my childhood, thanks to my father/mother," instead of, "You can't believe how much of a hassle it was to get rid of all those wierd CDs the geezer had accumulated."
Spike, my father was 15 years old in 1935 when the Philippines became a Commonwealth and at the same time, ironically enough, started to become an Americanized free society. Filipinos from this generation knew American music to high heavens. anyway, Out of Nowhere was a song my father loved dearly but he was really a fan of Bing Crosby. this is so true that some of my birthday presents to him had been Bing Crosby retrospective CDs.
it's interesting that both my parents are not the hippest music buffs out there but just the fact that they had passion for music (and creativity) was inspiring enough, and i could see the inspiration did so much for me and my siblings. so hooray to great parents.
You're lucky to have parents who helped make you such an inspired music lover and memoirist. Many parents are able to pass onto their kids an indifference to music, for instance a couple I know whose kids were in the same school carpool as my daughter, and neither parents nor kids were interested in music. Fortunately life offers many other areas to be excited about.
'embraceable you' is really lovely, just whats needed at 1.30 in the morning thank you for posting
lakeillustration, I'm really glad you liked it.