Jazz at Massey Hall

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Jazz at Massey Hall
Jazz at Massey Hall cover
Live album by The Quintet
Released 1953
Recorded 15 May 1953
Genre Jazz
Length 46:54
Label Debut/OJC
Producer Charles Mingus
Professional reviews

Jazz at Massey Hall is a jazz album featuring a live performance by "The Quintet" on 15 May 1953 at Massey Hall in Toronto. The musicians were five of the biggest names in jazz: Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Bud Powell, Charles Mingus, and Max Roach. It was the only time that the five men recorded together as a unit, and it was the last recorded meeting of Parker and Gillespie.[1] Parker famously played a plastic alto 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 record was originally issued on Mingus's label Debut, from a recording made by the Toronto New Jazz Society. 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." Gillespie was billed first, as can be seen in the copy of the advertisement in Mark Miller's Cool Blues.

The original plan was for the Jazz Society and the musicians to share the profits from the recording. However the audience was so small that the Society was unable to pay the musician's fees. The musicians were all given NSF checks, and only Parker was able to actually cash his; Gillespie complained that he did not receive his fee "for years and years".

Jazz at Massey Hall was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1995.[2] The concert was issued in some territories under the tag "the greatest jazz concert ever":

Contents

[edit] Track listing

  1. "Perdido" (Juan Tizol, Hans Lengfelder, Ervin M. Drake)
  2. "Salt Peanuts" (Dizzy Gillespie, Kenny Clarke)
  3. "All the Things You Are/52nd Street Theme" (Jerome Kern, Oscar Hammerstein II/Thelonious Monk)
  4. "Wee (Allen's Alley)" (Denzil Best)
  5. "Hot House" (Tadd Dameron)
  6. "A Night in Tunisia" (Gillespie, Frank Paparelli)

[edit] Personnel

An album of a trio set played by Powell, Mingus and Roach at the concert was also issued.

[edit] Footnotes

  1. ^ Brian Priestley, Mingus. A Critical Biography. Palladin, London 1985, p. 63.
  2. ^ Grammy Hall of Fame Database

[edit] Sources

  • Mark Miller. Cool Blues: Charlie Parker in Canada 1953. London, Ontario: Nightwood Editions, 1989. This is the definitive book on the concert and the events leading up to it, and much more comprehensive than any other. Mark is a consumate researcher and carried out many extensive interviews with musicians and members of the New Jazz Society.
  • Richard Cook & Brian Morton. The Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD 6th edition. ISBN 0-14-051521-6
  • Geoffrey Haydon "Quintet of the Year", Aurum Press, London, 2002.

[edit] See also

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