Jazz at Massey Hall | ||||
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![]() Original Jazz Classics reissue | ||||
Live album by the Quintet | ||||
Released | December 1953 | |||
Recorded | 15 May 1953 | |||
Venue | Massey Hall, Toronto, Canada | |||
Genre | Bebop | |||
Length | 46:54 | |||
Label | Debut | |||
Producer | Charles Mingus | |||
Charlie Parker chronology | ||||
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Bud Powell chronology | ||||
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Review scores | |
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Source | Rating |
AllMusic | ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
MSN Music (Consumer Guide) | A [2] |
The Rolling Stone Jazz Record Guide | ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings | ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
All About Jazz | ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
Jazz at Massey Hall is a live album released in December 1953 by jazz combo The Quintet through Debut Records. It was recorded on 15 May 1953 at Massey Hall in Toronto, Canada. Credited to "the Quintet", the jazz group was composed of five leading "modern" players of the day: Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Bud Powell, Charles Mingus, and Max Roach. It was the only time that the five musicians recorded together as a unit, and it was the last recorded meeting of Parker and Gillespie. [6]
The first pianist considered by the organizers was Lennie Tristano, but he suggested Powell as a more appropriate match for the other musicians. [7] Oscar Pettiford was considered as an alternative to Mingus. [7]
Parker played a Grafton saxophone on this date; he could not be listed on the original album cover for contractual reasons, so was billed as "Charlie Chan", an allusion to the fictional detective and to Parker's wife Chan. The concert included performances by both the entire quintet and a trio consisting of Powell, Mingus, and Roach, as well as a Roach drum solo.
The original plan was for the Toronto New Jazz Society and the musicians to share the profits from the concert. However, owing to a boxing prize fight between Rocky Marciano and Jersey Joe Walcott taking place simultaneously, the audience was so small that the Society was unable to pay the musicians' fees. The musicians were all given NSF checks, and only Parker was able to cash his; Gillespie noted that he did not receive his fee "for years and years". [8]
Jazz authority Burt Korall says that for Roach, this performance was a "culmination on record of music and relationships developed in the 1940s." Despite the difficulties, according to Korall, "the music was the great leveler." [9]
The opening act on the night was a 16-piece big band billed as the CBS All Stars. [10]
The record was originally issued in December 1953 [11] on Mingus's label Debut, from a recording made by the Toronto New Jazz Society (Dick Wattam, Alan Scharf, Roger Feather, Boyd Raeburn and Arthur Granatstein). [12] [13] Mingus took the recording to New York where he and Max Roach dubbed in the bass lines, which were under-recorded on most of the tunes, and exchanged Mingus soloing on "All the Things You Are".
A 2002 reissue, Complete Jazz at Massey Hall, released on The Jazz Factory label, contains the full concert, without the overdubbing. [14]
Jazz at Massey Hall was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1995. [15] It is included in National Public Radio's "Basic Jazz Library". [16] The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings included the album in its suggested "core collection" of essential recordings. [4] The concert was issued in some territories under the tag "the greatest jazz concert ever". [14]
(Originally issued as two 10" LPs:)
Vol. 1 (Debut DLP-2)
Vol. 3 (Debut DLP-4)
(Vol. 2 consists of the trio recordings of Powell, Mingus and Roach from the same date: all but "I've Got You Under My Skin", and one track by Billy Taylor with Mingus and Roach from a later date.)
(Issued as 12" LP:)
(Debut DEB-124)
(The 2004 reissue contains fourteen tracks, of which nos. 5 through 11 are without Parker and Gillespie:)
Tracks 5 through 11 are without Parker and Gillespie.
An album of a trio set, played by Powell, Mingus and Roach at the concert, was also issued (tracks 6 through 11 above). [17]
Maxwell Lemuel Roach was an American jazz drummer and composer. A pioneer of bebop, he worked in many other styles of music, and is generally considered one of the most important drummers in history. He worked with many famous jazz musicians, including Clifford Brown, Coleman Hawkins, Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Duke Ellington, Thelonious Monk, Abbey Lincoln, Dinah Washington, Charles Mingus, Billy Eckstine, Stan Getz, Sonny Rollins, Eric Dolphy, and Booker Little. He also played with his daughter Maxine Roach, a Grammy nominated violist. He was inducted into the DownBeat Hall of Fame in 1980 and the Modern Drummer Hall of Fame in 1992.
Clifford Benjamin Brown was an American jazz trumpeter, pianist and composer. He died at the age of 25 in a car crash, leaving behind four years' worth of recordings. His compositions "Sandu", "Joy Spring", and "Daahoud" have become jazz standards. Brown won the DownBeat magazine Critics' Poll for New Star of the Year in 1954; he was inducted into the DownBeat Hall of Fame in 1972.
Oscar Pettiford was an American jazz double bassist and composer. He was one of the earliest musicians to work in the bebop idiom.
Theodore "Fats" Navarro was an American jazz trumpet player and a pioneer of the bebop style of jazz improvisation in the 1940s. A native of Key West, Florida, he toured with big bands before achieving fame as a bebop trumpeter in New York. Following a series of studio sessions with leading bebop figures including Tadd Dameron, Bud Powell, and Kenny Clarke, he became ill with tuberculosis and died at the age of 26. Despite the short duration of his career, he had a strong stylistic influence on trumpet players who rose to fame in later decades, including Clifford Brown and Lee Morgan.
A quintet is a group containing five members. It is commonly associated with musical groups, such as a string quintet, or a group of five singers, but can be applied to any situation where five similar or related objects are considered a single unit.
Debut Records was an American jazz record company and label founded in 1952 by bassist Charles Mingus, his wife Celia, and drummer Max Roach.
"Hot House" is a bebop standard, composed by American jazz musician Tadd Dameron in 1945. Its harmonic structure is identical to Cole Porter's "What Is This Thing Called Love?". The tune was made famous by Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker as a quintet arrangement and become synonymous with those musicians; "Hot House" became an anthem of the bebop movement in American jazz. The most famous and referred to recording of the tune is by Parker and Gillespie on the May 1953 live concert recording entitled Jazz at Massey Hall, after previously recording it for Savoy records in 1945 and at Carnegie Hall in 1947. The tune continues to be a favorite among jazz musicians and enthusiasts:
Dillon "Curley" Russell was an American jazz musician, who played bass on many bebop recordings.
"A Night in Tunisia" is a musical composition written by American trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie around 1940–1942. He wrote it while he was playing with the Benny Carter band. It has become a jazz standard. It is also known as "Interlude", and with lyrics by Raymond Leveen was recorded by Sarah Vaughan in 1944.
Nelson Boyd was an American bebop jazz bassist.
Ernie Henry was an American jazz saxophonist.
Groovin' High is a 1955 compilation album of studio sessions by jazz composer and trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie. The Rough Guide to Jazz describes the album as "some of the key bebop small-group and big band recordings."
Charlie Parker on Dial: The Complete Sessions is a 1993 four-disc box set collecting jazz saxophonist and composer Charlie Parker's 1940s recordings for Dial Records. The box set, released by the English label Spotlite Records, assembled into a single package the multi-volume compilation albums the label had released by Spotlite on vinyl in the 1970s under the series title Charlie Parker on Dial. The box set has been critically well received. In 1996, a different box set collecting Parker's work with Dial was assembled by Jazz Classics and released as Complete Charlie Parker on Dial.
The Complete Bud Powell on Verve is a five-disc box set, released on September 27, 1994, by Verve Records, containing all of jazz pianist Bud Powell's recordings as leader for producer Norman Granz.
Bird on 52nd St. is a live album by the saxophonist Charlie Parker. It was recorded in July 1948 at the Onyx Club on a non-professional tape recorder by trombonist Jimmy Knepper, a fan of Parker who also made the recording released as Bird at St. Nick's. It was first released in 1957 on Charles Mingus' Jazz Workshop label as JWS 501. Several tracks are incomplete; Knepper was focused on capturing Parker's solos to conserve audiotape. AllMusic reviewer Scott Yanow wrote that Parker "plays quite brilliantly on this live set", but because of seriously deficient sound quality which "sometimes borders on the unlistenable" the album can be considered as being "for true Charlie Parker completists only."
The Bop Session is an album by jazz legends Dizzy Gillespie, Sonny Stitt, John Lewis, Hank Jones, Percy Heath and Max Roach recorded in 1975 and released on the Swedish Sonet label.
Music Written for Monterey 1965 is a live album by the American bassist, composer and bandleader Charles Mingus, recorded at Royce Hall in Los Angeles and released on Mingus's own Jazz Workshop label in 1966. The album was rereleased by Sue Mingus on the Sunnyside label in 2006.
Solo Piano is an album by jazz pianist Tommy Flanagan. It was recorded in 1974 and released in 2005 by Storyville Records.
Holidays in Edenville, 64, also known as Earl Bud Powell, Vol. 8, is a live album by jazz pianist Bud Powell and saxophone player Johnny Griffin recorded in Jullouville, France and released on Francis Paudras' Mythic Sound label. Recordings from the hotel gig, which ran for several nights in August, were also used on the albums Hot House, Salt Peanuts, and on one release of Blues for Bouffemont.
The following records represent the cream of the last two weeks' crop. ... Jazz at Massey Hall.