Home » Jazz News » Video / DVD

1

Post-Parker String Dates

Source:

Sign in to view read count
The genius of Charlie Parker's studio recordings with strings in 1949, 1950 and 1952 for Norman Granz's Cleff label wasn't in the merging of jazz and fiddles. In Parker's case, that was something of a happy accident when he turned up at a Carnegie Hall recording session at the tail end of 1947 and asked to solo over Neal Hefti's Repetition. The real genius of Parker and strings is that he knew exactly what to do with them.

Rather than bend to the will of strings' melancholy feel, Parker played bop solos lyrically in and out of the strings, treating the violins as a backdrop for his vision. Parker had all the respect in the world for classical music and symphonic strings, but not at the expense of his art. The results were magical.

Today, this observation sounds rather obvious, but back then Parker's approach stood out and would remain unmatched for years. Some might argue that no other jazz artist has ever topped Parker's use of strings. For the record, Parker's studio recordings with strings took place in November 1949, July 1950 and and January 1952.

Yesterday, while writing, I was curious about finding out exactly what recording jazz-strings sessions followed Parker's dates for Verve, since the great Granz had obviously come up with a fantastic recipe for merging two forms. So I went through the Verve discography and was surprised at how few string sessions were recorded in the years after Parker's dates and how poorly even the best musicians fared against the string charts written for them.

If we exclude big band leaders like Artie Shaw, Harry James and Tommy Dorsey who added string sections to their orchestras in the 1940s and look just a Verve jazz recordings with strings from 1950 to 1954, the results are rather miserable. The list includes the Ralph Burns Sextet with Strings in 1951 (too tedious), the Benny Carter Quartet with Joe Glover in 1953 and '54 (too syrupy and dated), Harry Carney in 1954 (too sluggish and odd, like a walrus trying to wriggle into a ballet tutu), Dizzy Gillespie in 1954 (lousy song choices and mambo-heavy arrangements by Johnny Richards) and Ben Webster in 1954 with Ralph Burns (painfully sincere and affected).

By my accounting, only George Wallington with Strings in 1954 and Buddy De Franco wit Oscar Peterson and strings on the George Gershwin Songbook in 1954 wound up with better song choices, interesting string arrangements and a lyrical outcome on Verve. The arranger on the Wallington session was Sonny Lawrence or George Brackman, while Buddy's session was the handiwork of Russ Garcia.

Outside of the Verve label, the only artist who came close to Parker with strings during this period was James Moody in Paris in 1951 for the Vogue label. And even then, Moody, in all of his sublime greatness, didn't match or top Parker's beauty, grace and yearning. Just additional evidence of why Parker to this day remains one of post-war jazz's most exceptional artists with the clearest vision.

JazzWax tracks: Here are artists' attempts at recordings with strings for the Verve label between 1950 to 1954 as well as James Moody's Vogue attempt. To be clear, I'm not dismissing anything below to the dustbin, just calling them as I hear them compared to Parker's recordings. To emphasize this illustration, I'll start and end with Parker... 

Here's Charlie Parker playing April in Paris...

 

Here's Ralph Burns with Lee Konitz playing Vignette at Verney's...

 

Here's Benny Carter with the Joe Glover Orchestra playing Blue Star...

 

Here's Harry Carney on We're in Love Again...

 

Here's Dizzy Gillespie with Johnny Richards' arrangement of Silhouette...

 

Here's Ben Webster on Do Nothing Til You Hear From Me...

 

Here's George Wallington with strings on Autumn in New York and Moonlight in Vermont...

 

Here's Buddy De Franco and Oscar Peterson playing It Ain't Necessarily So...

 

Here's James Moody with strings playing Les Feuilles Mortes (Autumn Leaves)...

 

And here again is Charlie Parker playing Everything Happens to Me. I rest my case...

 

Continue Reading...

This story appears courtesy of JazzWax by Marc Myers.
Copyright © 2024. All rights reserved.

Comments

Tags

News

Popular

Get more of a good thing!

Our weekly newsletter highlights our top stories, our special offers, and upcoming jazz events near you.