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Jazz At Massey Hall




  Type live
  Artist The Quintet
  Cover Jazz at Massey Halljpg
  Released 1953
  Recorded 15 May 1953
  Genre Jazz
  Length 46:54
  Label Debut / OJC
  Producer Charles Mingus
  Reviews All Music Guide link


''Jazz at Massey Hall'' is a , Charlie Parker , Bud Powell , Charles Mingus , and Max Roach . It was the only time that the five recorded together as a unit, and it was the last recorded meeting of Parker and Gillespie. Parker famously played a plastic alto saxophone on this date; he could not be listed on the original programme notes or album cover for contractual reasons, so was billed as "Charlie Chan" (an allusion to the Fictional Detective and to Parker's wife Chan ). The record was originally issued on Mingus's label Debut, using his own tape recording of the concert; the bassist, unhappy that his lines were insufficiently audible on the recording, overdubbed his part, and it is possible during the bass solos to hear him duetting with himself at times.

The music was born in part out of tension between the musicians, especially between Parker and Gillespie. One story asserts that they at first refused to go on stage, instead watching television in their dressing room.


TRACK LISTING



PERSONNEL



SOURCES

  • Richard Cook & Brian Morton. ''The Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD'' 6th edition. ISBN 0-14-051521-6

  • Mark Miller. ''Cool Blues: Charlie Parker in Canada 1953''. London, Ontario: Nightwood Editions, 1989.

  • SEE ALSO