Two pioneers come together

By the time Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie recorded the sessions that became Bird and Diz, the two had been playing together for about a decade—first in Earl Hines’ big band, and later in the small groups incubating bebop in Harlem during the mid-1940s. By Gillespie’s own admission, Parker was the sound’s architect—not that Parker had found many players who could hold their own with him, especially at the speed and complexity of stuff like “Leap Frog”. In hindsight, part of what made Parker so remarkable, as both composer and soloist, was how easily he balanced the abstractions of modernism with the familiar comforts of the blues (a talent best evidenced here by “Mohawk” and “Bloomdido”).

And as groundbreaking as Parker’s sessions for Savoy and Dial were, his albums for Verve—present material included—benefitted from a quality of sound and attendance to production (courtesy of Norman Granz) that you wish all of his work had received. Then there’s the unusual inclusion of Thelonious Monk, whose slanted rhythms and melodic pratfalls provide a kind of slapstick counterpart to Parker’s finesse—the drizzle of lemon that makes you pucker, then smile (“My Melancholy Baby”).