Birks Works: The Verve Big-Band Sessions (CD)

If Charlie Parker was the chief architect of the bop revolution of the 1940s, Dizzy Gillespie was its standard-bearer, an evangelist who battled public hostility and incomprehension with rapier wit. A trumpeter of dazzling virtuosity, he matched Parker's rhythmic innovations with deft harmonic ingenuity. He also functioned as teacher, putting his vast knowledge of harmony at the disposal of younger musicians like Miles Davis, who were trying to get a handle on the new sound. His historic big band featuring Chano Pozo was the first large-scale attempt to combine Latin music with jazz, and the unflagging excellence of his subsequent career was a tribute to the integrity of his original vision. He died in 1993.

• Category:  Music  »  Jazz  »  Trumpet
• Format: CD   Learn more about the CD format using Tower WIKI.
• Release Date: August 22, 1995
• Label: Verve (USA)
• UPC: 731452790026
• WAPI (Tower ID): 105799155
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• Tower.com Sales Rank: #86854 in Music (See Top 100 Music Bestsellers)
• #7472 in Jazz (See Top 100 Jazz Bestsellers)
• #462 in Trumpet (See Top 100 Trumpet Bestsellers)

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Personnel: Dizzy Gillespie (vocals, trumpet); Jimmy Powell, Phil Woods, Ernie Henry (vocals, alto saxophone); Billy Mitchell, Benny Golson, Ernie Wilkins (vocals, tenor saxophone); Marty Flax, Billy Root (vocals, baritone saxophone); Joe Gordon, Quincy Jones, E.V. Perry, Carl Warwick, Talib Daawud, Lee Morgan (vocals, trumpet); Melba Liston, Frank Rehak, Al Grey (vocals, trombone); Rod Levitt (vocals, bass trombone); Walter Davis, Jr., Wynton Kelly (vocals, piano); Nelson Boyd, Paul West (vocals, bass); Charli Persip (vocals, drums); Austin Cromer (vocals); Pee Wee Moore, Ray Connor.

Compilation producer: Michael Lang.

Recorded at Coastal Recording and WOR Recording Studio, New York between 1956 and 1957. Originally released as three separate LP's. Includes liner notes by Nat Hentoff, Marshall W. Sterns and an interview with Benny Golson, Kenny Washington and Charli Persip.

BIRKS WORKS: THE VERVE BIG BAND SESSIONS contains BIRKS WORKS, DIZZY IN GREECE & WORLD STATESMAN.

By the mid-1950's, when this Norman Granz production, BIRKS WORKS, was recorded, Dizzy Gillespie's big band had become a jazz force. Talent-wise on a par with the Count Basie and Duke Ellington bands, Dizzy's outfit was a little freer and open to the latest possibilities. With such fiery young players as Lee Morgan and Billy Mitchell in his horn section, and Chalie Persip rolling underneath them on drums, there's a dense musical tension in play here. The performance of a young Quincy Jones on trumpet, contributing to "Jessica's Day," and Melba Liston's soaring trombone on Claude Debussy's "My Reverie," are noteworthy.

Included in this collection are such classics as "Autumn Leaves" and "I Can't Get Started," along with famed Gillespie numbers, among them the seductive "A Night in Tunisia." Gillespie is a great front man, and plays in exemplary fashion on tracks such as "Dizzy's Blues." His trumpet work is big and lyrical, and takes no prisoners.

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