This
discography is based, in the first instance, on the one compiled by John C.
Burton to commemorate the 75th anniversary of Charlie Parker’s birth (August
29, 1995) that is available on the internet, http://www.j51.com/~jayl/jazz/bird_discography.html
which itself is derivative from the Kloster & Bakker, and Bregman, Bukowski
& Saks, discographies. I have restored some of the deletions from the Bregman
et al discography and have added material issued since. I have also added sources,
derived from my own collection, and referred to other printed works on Parker’s
music, career, and recordings throughout to clarify performance dates and locations.
Neretheless, the basic structure of John C. Burton’s discography has been
retained due to the ease of access to the information that it affords.
While Charlie Parker’s
life was very short, he was born on August 29, 1920, and died March 12, 1955,
at the age of 34, and his recording career much short, spanning in total about
15 years, but in actuality only 11 years from 1944 until his death there is
a very large amount of recorded material in existence. This reflects the impact
that Charlie Parker made while he was alive; from 1944 there is an explosion
of official and unofficial recording of his performances. They begin with an
early solo recording made by Parker sometime around 1940 and end with him playing
scales and talking about music in late 1954 or early 1955: ironically, then,
he began his recording career as a solo player and ended thus, despite his career
being of ensemble playing. There have been released on a number of labels
of Charlie Parker recordings, of varying qualities throughout the years (copyright
ownership of Parker’s music is by an large a mess, he often sold rights
with complete casualness). The most easily available of Parker’s recordings
include: The Dial recordings; available either as a Stash 4 CD set or, the much
better sound quality, Toshiba EMI recent 4 individual CD re-issue ‘Charlie
Parker on Dial, Volumes 1 - 4’, the latter’s disadvantage is, of-course,
that they lack the immediate post-Camarillo recordings (February 19, 1947, session
037). Next there is the Savoy recordings, which overlap the Dial sessions reflecting
the chaos of Parker’s recording arrangements; unfortunately as a complete
box set, these have long been out of print and there is no apparent plan to
re-issue these. The last set issue was the Nippon Columbia limited edition of
their beautifully presented, sound and gold disc, but partly flawed one; "The
Complete Charlie Parker on Savoy Years," Nippon Columbia COCY-75791/8),recently
Orrin Keepnews produced a box set of the Savoy live sessions, otherwise most
of the Savoy material, studio and live, is available only as individually issued
discs that reflect precisely the flaws of their first release in this form.
The next is the recordings that Charlie Parker made for the Mercury label, released
as "Bird: The Complete Charlie Parker on Verve," Verve CD837 142-2.
These are all of the recordings made under contract with companies by Charlie
Parker, the remainder are composed of private recordings made of concerts or
of or for radio broadcasts. The first. and what were nothing more than myth
until recently. were issued as "The Complete Benedetti Charlie Parker,"
recordings, on Mosaic 129. Next is the Philology CD issues, up to and including
volume 25, which is a collection of such recordings spanning CP’s entire
recording career, then there is the rarer Birdbox recordings which lays much,
not all, of the same material in chronological order, first issued as a limited
edition, then more charmingly re-issued as another limited edition of 500 in
Japan by Sound Hills, CD SSCD 8017 - 34; the French Company Media 7 have recently
embarked on a project to reissue the recordings where Charlie Parker performs
a solo (although there is some flexibility/ambiguity with this as they have
included recordings where there is no solo indeed where some where the participation
of Parker is in doubt), these are now at Volume 6 with good discographical information
included, they are worth keeping an eye on; then, lastly, there are various
individual issues of this sort of Parker material on Stash, Fresh Sounds, Charlie
Parker Records, Spotlight, Cool & Blue, Connoisseur Collection, Charly,
Black Label, and many many others, where often the same material has been issued
by these many different companies, in varying degrees of fidelity. My collection
is all on CD; I use a Naim CD player and amplifier, with mission speakers; this
CD player and amplifier gives, to my ears, the warmest sound of any CD player
that I have heard, especially, not exclusively, with 20 or 24 bit CDs. It seems
that the French company have began a reissue programme of the Parker material,
that has now reached Volume 4. All of this is taken from other sources, limited
to that out of copyright. I liked their issue of both the Charlie Christian
material, and the Billie Holiday recording, which have now reached Volume 12.
The latter were definitely much better sound than the Blue Moon releases of
the same material, which while clean were topped, as were their issue of the
Parker work on Dial and Savoy. One question that comes to mind: the material
issued by Philology generally improves in quality as the volumes progress; in
this period of ‘cleaning up’ many original recordings and transferring
older analogue recordings to 20 or 24 bit release, would it not be possible
for Philology to do the same with their very precious holdings? Perhaps drawing
them more towards a uniform, preferably higher, quality reproduction.