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Dean Benedetti (born Dino Alipio Benedetti, June 28, 1922 - January 20, 1957) [1] was a saxophone player known for the amateur live recordings he made of fellow saxophonist Charlie Parker. [2]
As a tenor saxophonist and band leader in California, Benedetti first heard a record of Parker in the spring of 1945. Deeply influenced by what he heard, Benedetti began to study Parker, transcribing solos, building them into set pieces, and working bop into his own playing.
A two-week engagement at Los Angeles's Hi-De-Ho Club in early 1947, recorded on discs, was the start of Benedetti's pursuit of Parker. In 1948, Benedetti headed to New York with bandmate Jimmy Knepper, and recorded Charlie Parker on March 31, and July 7, both of these on a Sears tape recorder.
While in New York, Benedetti began to use heroin. Unable to break into the New York music scene, he returned to his parents home in California in 1948. Trying to finance their way back to the East coast, Benedetti and Knepper attempted to sell drugs. However, Knepper took the drugs with him back to LA and abandoned Benedetti in New York.
Shortly after returning to California, Benedetti discovered he had a rare muscle disease, Myasthenia Gravis. The disease affected his playing, and he soon quit performing in public. The disease ruined his health, and in 1953 he moved in with his parents in Italy. He died on January 20, 1957, at the age of 34.
The jazz historian Phil Schaap in a 2008 New Yorker article described the Benedetti recordings of Parker's performances as existing for many years as a jazz legend (they were long elusive) similar to the myth of an undiscovered Buddy Bolden cylinder. [3] One of Parker's record producers Ross Russell of the Dial label, in his novel The Sound (1961) wrote of a failed musician he called Royo who recorded Parker and supplied him with heroin and alcohol. In his unreliable Parker biography Bird Lives! (1973), Russell used Benedetti's real name, but repeated his fictionalized assertions, and inaccurately claimed Benedetti recorded Parker without approval. [4]
Benedetti's surviving brother Rigoletto "Rick" Benedetti contacted Michael Cuscuna of Mosaic Records and informed Cuscuna the acetate discs and tapes existed. [3] Purchased by Mosaic for $15,000, Benedetti's archive comprised 53 78-rpm acetate discs and 14 reels of paper-based tape. [4] Produced by Phil Schaap and Bob Porter, the set took three years to assemble. [5] Benedetti's paper-backed tapes had dried out and were in a fragile state. Schaap used Wite-Out, a brand of correction fluid, on the reverse of the tapes (where necessary) to strengthen them. Initially the tapes, reportedly eight miles in total length, could not be played without breaking. [3]
The Complete Dean Benedetti Recordings of Charlie Parker, a 10 LP or 7 CD box-set, was released by Mosaic in 1990. [4] Leonard Feather wrote in the Los Angeles Times that "the sound quality inevitably is pre-digital, pre-stereo, prehistoric", but wrote the set "can be recommended unreservedly to Bird-lorists for selective, non-continuous listening." [6] By 2008, Mosaic had sold 5,000 copies of the box-set. [3]
Charles Mingus Jr. was an American jazz upright bassist, composer, bandleader, pianist, and author. A major proponent of collective improvisation, he is considered to be one of the greatest jazz musicians and composers in history, with a career spanning three decades and collaborations with other jazz greats such as Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker, Max Roach, and Eric Dolphy. Mingus's work ranged from advanced bebop and avant-garde jazz with small and midsize ensembles, to pioneering the post-bop style on seminal recordings like Pithecanthropus Erectus (1956) and Mingus Ah Um (1959), and progressive big band experiments such as The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady (1963).
Charles Parker Jr., nicknamed "Bird" or "Yardbird", was an American jazz saxophonist, band leader and composer. Parker was a highly influential soloist and leading figure in the development of bebop, a form of jazz characterized by fast tempos, virtuosic technique, and advanced harmonies. He was a virtuoso and introduced revolutionary rhythmic and harmonic ideas into jazz, including rapid passing chords, new variants of altered chords, and chord substitutions. Primarily a player of the alto saxophone, Parker's tone ranged from clean and penetrating to sweet and somber.
Grant Green was an American jazz guitarist and composer.
Henry "Hank" Mobley was an American tenor saxophonist and composer. Mobley was described by Leonard Feather as the "middleweight champion of the tenor saxophone", a metaphor used to describe his tone, that was neither as aggressive as John Coltrane nor as mellow as Lester Young, and his style that was laid-back, subtle and melodic, especially in contrast with players like Coltrane and Sonny Rollins. The critic Stacia Proefrock claimed him "one of the most underrated musicians of the bop era." Mobley's compositions include "Double Exposure," "Soul Station", and "Dig Dis."
Harold Floyd "Tina" Brooks was an American jazz tenor saxophonist and composer best remembered for his work in the hard bop style.
Mosaic Records is an American jazz record company and label established in 1982 by Michael Cuscuna and Charlie Lourie. It produces limited-edition box sets.
Bird is a 1988 American biographical musical drama film about jazz saxophonist Charlie "Bird" Parker, directed and produced by Clint Eastwood from a screenplay by Joel Oliansky. The film stars Forest Whitaker as Parker, and Diane Venora. It is constructed as a montage of scenes from Parker's life, from his childhood in Kansas City, through his early death at the age of 34.
Mingus Ah Um is a studio album by American jazz musician Charles Mingus which was released in October 1959 by Columbia Records. It was his first album recorded for Columbia. The cover features a painting by S. Neil Fujita. The title is a corruption of an imaginary Latin declension. It is common for Latin students to memorize Latin adjectives by first saying the masculine nominative, then the feminine nominative, and finally the neuter nominative singular —implying a transformation of his name, Mingus, Minga, Mingum. The album was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2013.
Philip van Noorden Schaap was an American radio host, who specialized in jazz as a broadcaster, historian, archivist, and producer. He began presenting jazz shows on Columbia University's WKCR in 1970, and hosted Bird Flight and Traditions In Swing on WKCR for 40 years, beginning in 1981. Schaap received six Grammy Awards over the course of his career.
Joe Albany was an American modern jazz pianist who played bebop with Charlie Parker as well as being a leader on his own recordings.
This is a list of recordings by American jazz alto saxophonist Charlie Parker ("Bird"). Parker primarily recorded for three labels: Savoy, Dial, and Verve. His work with these labels has been chronicled in box sets. Charlie Parker's Savoy and Dial Sessions have been issued on The Complete Savoy Sessions, Charlie Parker on Dial and Complete Charlie Parker on Dial and The Complete Savoy & Dial Master Takes. His Verve recordings are available on Bird: The Complete Charlie Parker on Verve and The Complete Verve Master Takes.
"Yardbird Suite" is a bebop standard composed by jazz saxophonist Charlie Parker in 1946. The title combines Parker's nickname "Yardbird" and a colloquial use of the classical music term "suite". The composition uses an 32-bar AABA form. The "graceful, hip melody, became something of an anthem for beboppers."
Kenny "Pancho" Hagood was an American jazz vocalist.
Michael Cuscuna is an American jazz record producer and writer. He is the co-founder of Mosaic Records and a discographer of Blue Note Records.
Complete Charlie Parker on Dial is a 1996 box set release of jazz saxophonist and composer Charlie Parker's 1946–47 recordings for Dial Records. The box set, released by Jazz Classics, features 89 songs, including alternate takes and notes composed by jazz historian and Parker biographer Ira Gitler. John Genarri, author of the book Blowin' Hot and Cool: Jazz and Its Critics singles out the recording of "Lover Man" on this album, noting that "[t]his wrenching, anguished version...has been called Parker's most poetic statement on record" though, says Gennari, Parker himself viewed it as substandard and threatened physical violence against Ross Russell, a Dial records producer, for including it. Gennari also indicates that other tracks included on this CD—"Relaxin' at Camarillo", "Cheers", "Stupendous" and "Carvin' the Bird"—"have struck many listeners as his most joyous and optimistic."
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 Blue Note Recordings of Thelonious Monk is a box set by American jazz pianist Thelonious Monk compiling his recordings for Blue Note first released as a limited four-LP box set on Mosaic Records in 1983 before being issued as a four-CD box set by Blue Note for the first time in 1994 as The Complete Blue Note Recordings.
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."
Jack Towers was in charge of radio broadcasting at the U.S. Department of Agriculture from 1952 to 1974 and became a noted remastering engineer of musical recordings after his retirement.
"Relaxin' at Camarillo" is a composition by jazz saxophonist Charlie Parker. It is inspired by his six-month stay in Camarillo State Hospital in Ventura County, California, after serving a prison term for arson and resisting arrest. The tune is a blues in C major and has become a jazz standard.
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