The Quintet [Charlie Parker/Dizzy Gillespie/Bud Powell/Charles Mingus/Max Roach]

• Jazz at Massey Hall [Original Jazz Classics, 1991] A
• Hot House: The Complete Jazz at Massey Hall Recordings [Craft, 2023] A

See Also:

• Dizzy Gillespie
• Charles Mingus
• Charlie Parker
• Bud Powell
• Max Roach
• merge all

Consumer Guide Reviews:

Jazz at Massey Hall [Original Jazz Classics, 1991]
Date: 5/15/53. Length: 47 minutes. Place: Toronto, Ontario. Band: Dizzy Gillespie, Bud Powell, Charlie Mingus, Max Roach, and clandestine alto saxophonist Charlie "Chan." Never mind the apparently similar Diz N Bird at Carnegie Hall (24 minutes of a quintet that adds John Lewis, Al McKibbon, and Joe Harris to the two horns before turning into a big band record) or the hosannahed Town Hall, New York City, June 22, 1945 (38 Bird-Diz-Roach minutes substituting Parker's studio-favored Al Haig-Curly Russell piano-bass combo). Without question, this is live Bird numero uno even though the setlist belongs to Dizzy, including the inevitable (and dandy) "Salt Peanuts" and "Night in Tunisia." Parker's relaxed, bluesy mood is epitomized by a seriously interactive "All the Things You Are" that shifts bar-by-bar between virtuoso phrases and soulful here's-the-melody before dissolving into a "52nd Street Theme" breakdown. Gillespie is lyrical and incisive, Powell brings his A game, Roach thunders like no post-swing drummer working, and Mingus's bass is the most expressive in classic bebop. O Canada! A

Hot House: The Complete Jazz at Massey Hall Recordings [Craft, 2023]
Somewhere in my unkempt trove of Charlie Parker CDs gather large portions of this legendary May 1953 bebop showcase, most of it recorded at 2753-capacity Massey Hall in Toronto's toddlin' town--not to a full house, especially with Joe Walcott defending his heavyweight championship against Rocky Marciano in Chicago the same night, a piece of history Dizzy Gillespie elected to follow on a backstage TV whenever he could grab the chance. The rest of this never again duplicated ensemble comprised doomed eternal bebopper Parker on alto, indomitable Max Roach on drums, a zonked Bud Powell replacing originally scheduled Lennie Tristano on piano, and Oscar Pettiford's replacement on bass Charlie Mingus, who when he discovered that some of his music had gone unrecorded that night absconded with the tapes so he could dub his own parts onto them. If this reads like some kind of mess, in some respects it was. For years when I wanted to hear some bebop I'd return not to Massey Hall however legendary it was but to the aforementioned Charlie Parker trove, especially his Dial sessions and the de facto Bird showcase Now's the Time. But given the historic weight of this event I'm definitely not done with Hothouse. And just for the record, whether those are the right Mingus bass parts doesn't seem to matter that much. A