Bird at Symphony Hall,Boston, 4/21/51

[medjuck]

Mark Stryker just posted about this on Twitter.  It's been up for at least a year.  Anyone here know about it before?  Bird is on fire but most other solos are cut out.  

Should we start  (is there already?) a thread for finds on Youtube? 

 

 

Edited December 21, 2022 by medjuck

[John L]

Wow!  Some of this music was issued on the Bird's Eyes series.  But nothing close to this 1 hour and 15 minutes.  The fidelity here also appears to be a lot better.  So it must be a different tape.  

[John L]

I am really enjoying this immensely.   Thanks for the link!

[Mark Stryker]

I've been sharing this around on social media.  I'm especially struck by the ever-modern Roy Haynes, who is hot in the mix, supper loose, aggressive, swinging, conversational, juggling syncopated accents in multiple dimensions of time. He and Bird are really talking to each other. This music was recorded 71 years ago and sounds as fresh as the morning dew. Good Lord, Roy's solo passages on "Ornithology." I mean, Elvin and Tony, sure, and of course Max, Philly Joe, Blakey, Higgins, etc. But Roy was playing the future before anyone else.

 

[AllenLowe]

I only went to one concert at Symphony Hall, in the '70s, and the acoustics were very difficult, though the recordings I've heard that were made there (like Armstrong's) are pretty clear. This of course is rough, but everything is there.

[John L]

6 hours ago, Mark Stryker said:

I've been sharing this around on social media.  I'm especially struck by the ever-modern Roy Haynes, who is hot in the mix, supper loose, aggressive, swinging, conversational, juggling syncopated accents in multiple dimensions of time. He and Bird are really talking to each other. This music was recorded 71 years ago and sounds as fresh as the morning dew. Good Lord, Roy's solo passages on "Ornithology." I mean, Elvin and Tony, sure, and of course Max, Philly Joe, Blakey, Higgins, etc. But Roy was playing the future before anyone else.

 

Yes!  This has quickly become one of my favorite Bird concerts, and Roy Haynes is one of the reasons.  

[Gheorghe]

Yeah, I think I have that too, but I have a separate box  for  "CDs" that don´t have an official cover and I think those have very little written info. I heard it once at home and as a fan of good drumming I was exited and delighted by what Roy Haynes does. 
It´s interesting that Haynes sounds much more subdued on that famous "Modernists 1949 BN album with Bud, Sonny and Fats. I prefer the drums much louder. 
 

but I saw Roy Haynes only one time live, and this was in the 2000s already, but I would have expected more drum solos on it and more "action". As I remember, that Quartet, maybe titled "Fountain of Youth" was quite a tame thing, mostly standards and not much happenin.

[chewy-chew-chew-bean-benitez]

new to this, so this is not clips of meldies and solos on birds eyes this is a good SQ full source tape?  This is just appear somewhere online?  good find

[medjuck]

Just noticed that I labeled this wrongly:  it's Symphony Ballroom not Symphony Hall. 

[John L]

Peter Losin's online Charlie Parker discography would indicate that this tape was made by Chan Parker.  

[Gheorghe]

Boston must have had a lot of attraction for Bird in the early Fifties , that´s my impression. 
I remember there was some old LP with red cover from the 70´s on some of those cheaper labels Bellaphone or Musidisc that was titled "The Happy Bird" and it was one of my favourites, above all for the great contributions of Wardell Gray too. 

And it seems there was another record on which Red Garland was the piano player, very nice. 

In my early days I had to chance to play with an US saxophonist and when I drove him to my place where we did a little rehearsal for the gig and he saw the streets of Vienna he said "nice Town, reminds me of Boston, fancy buldings....." 

[chewy-chew-chew-bean-benitez]

when bird was doing this show my new telephone ringer, a rental unit from the New England Telephone & Telegraph co,  had already been doing 64 years of ringing