CHARLIE PARKER with Strings, original 78rpm, 1949 Clef Recording, Mercury C-101
$
103
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Description
CHARLIE PARKER with Strings. Condition is Used. Shipped with USPS Media Mail. Records are in VG+ condition. I don't have a way to play for an audio check, but the vinyl looks glossy. There are a few scrapes, but I think the sound will be precious. The cover is in strong shape for 1949. It appears that someone dropped the record and that caused a crumple in the lower right corner, but the package looks great in the library.
This set includes the original three discs RPM 78 (Mercury 11036-11038), with one song on each side: JUST FRIENDS EVERYTHING HAPPENS TO ME APRIL IN PARIS IF I SHOULD LOSE YOU SUMMERTIME I DIDN'T KNOW WHAT TIME IT WAS
Additional information:
In January 1949, Charlie Parker recorded for the first time for Norman Granz’s Clef Records at a session with Machito And His Orchestra. More sessions soon followed, and he appeared at the JATP at Carnegie Hall in February, that were recorded featuring Fats Navarro (trumpet) Tommy Turk (trombone) Sonny Criss, Flip Phillips (tenor saxophone) Hank Jones (piano) Ray Brown (bass) and Shelly Manne (drums). But that initial session yielded the magnificent Charlie Parker With Strings.
Several studio sessions were followed by another appearance at the JATP in September. In November 1949 he ‘had recorded Charlie Parker with a group of outstanding longhairs’; a popular term at the time for classical musicians. They were members of the NBC Symphony Orchestra, Pittsburgh Symphony and Minneapolis Symphony, along with a jazz rhythm section of Stan Freeman, Ray Brown and Buddy Rich with the music arranged in ‘straight style’ by Ray Carroll, and ‘Parker’s bop alto featured in front.’ According to producer Mitch Miller, who was also working at Mercury, ‘He asked me if I would produce it for him. He would be there, but I would produce it… And got Jimmy Carroll who had done a lot of arranging for me, to do the arrangements.’‘Charlie Parker begged me to let him use strings. I don’t think that strings swing in a jazz context, but he begged me so much I gave in to him.’ – Norman Granz
They recorded at Reeves Studio in New York and, according to Miller, who played oboe and English horn on the session: ‘Charlie walked in and he hears this music and he said, “Man that’s too much.” With that Parker left the studio and disappeared, didn’t come back and the musicians had to be sent away. Granz eventually tracked him down and a week or so later they did the session that produced some of the album that became Charlie Parker With Strings
Charlie Parker With Strings was originally released as two albums on Clef and they are among the most beautiful jazz recordings ever made. Before the album came out, Mercury, who released Clef’s recordings, issued a string of shellac 78rpm records including the divine, ‘Just Friends’ coupled with ‘Everything Happens To Me’. Producer, and later the head of Verve Records in the 1990s, Tommy LiPuma remembers the impact of ‘Just Friends’: “In the 1950s the jukebox was the deal. As a saxophone player I was gigging, although still at school. I’d sit in with black musicians; the jukeboxes in ‘the hood’ were outrageous. One day I’m sitting there making myself scarce, because I was under-age, and suddenly out of the jukebox comes this record. It was ‘Just Friends’ by Charlie Parker, that first time I heard it I couldn’t believe it.’
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