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The Essential Charlie Parker

Charlie Parker

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Album Review

Another anthology that has less value due to the exploding reissue market. These cuts were among Parker's most influential compositions and performances, but they've been reissued many times, both in anthology packages and on re-releases of their original albums. But it's part of the Essentials sampler line, and if you only want a little Parker, it's a good choice.

Customer Reviews

great little collection

As a true jazz collector, this is not my first choice, but I have to recommend this very highly because someone thought the choices through carefully and put together a well-engineered package for the first timer. Important also since many Parker collections suffer from the limitations of 1940s technology. Pair this album with the Best of the Savoy and Dial collection, and you've really captured a lot of the genius. So influential you can hear it in lots of today's music. Enjoy!

some great songs

I don't know how anyone can beat the eclectic sound of some of these great charlie parker songs. Anyone who is new to this tremendous player should definitely buy Bloomdido and Stareyes, these are two of his best

Great Introduction

A lot of my friends who arent hat deep into jazz go out and buy a Charlie Parker album and get turned off. This is a man who to many does need an introduction. A lot of the ideas are incredibly complex, especially to casual fans. The great thing about Parker and a collection like this though, is it allows you to wade into the deep end just enough, and the genius of this music is so all encompassing that you can sense the ocean of all music around you. Follow through this and you can get a perfect understanding of modernism, but with a non academic nature that just gives you the raw emotion of the period without all the pretention and cr*p around the Europeans.

Biography

Born: August 29, 1920 in Kansas City, KS

Genre: Jazz

Years Active: '40s, '50s

One of a handful of musicians who can be said to have permanently changed jazz, Charlie Parker was arguably the greatest saxophonist of all time. He could play remarkably fast lines that, if slowed down to half speed, would reveal that every note made sense. "Bird," along with his contemporaries Dizzy Gillespie and Bud Powell, is considered a founder of bebop; in reality he was an intuitive player who simply was expressing himself. Rather than basing his improvisations closely on the melody as was...
Full Bio

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