Wednesday, August 29, 2018

Bird quotes Satchmo

When Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie burst into the jazz scene in the mid-1940s, much was made of the presumed animosity between the new and the older generations of musicians. Although there were some noises in that direction, let's just say that jazz journalism paid a lot off attention to celebrity status, fans and gossip.

Back in 1928, Louis Armstrong recorded this classic cadenza as the opening for his "West End Blues":



Charlie Parker must have paid attention, since he used it twenty years after Armstrong, at least twice on record, both times while playing the blues, one at Carnegie Hall on Christmas day, 1949:



the other at St. Nicholas Arena in New York (St. Nick's), a couple of months later:


PS 2022-03-25: And a third one, on May 30, 1953, at Birdland with Bud Powell on piano and Charles Mingus on bass.

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