Revinylization #5: Craft Recordings & Charlie Parker’s Savoy LPs

June 29, 2023 / By mobanmarket

I was well over 50 when I first heard an original copy of Charlie Parker’s “Ko-Ko.” It was a happy accident. I received a call from the family of a well-to-do neighbor who had recently passed away, asking if I’d be interested in having his record collection. Three minutes later, I was parked near the servants’ entrance of their centuries-old brick mansion—how quickly we forget our proletariat resentment when there’s vinyl to be had—loading a few cartons of LPs and 78s into my car: The collection was small but high in quality, reflective of very good taste that cut across multiple genres. And there, in one of those cartons, was a copy of the 10″ LP New Sounds in Modern Music, Volume 2 (Savoy MG 9001).

Except it wasn’t: When I got home and removed the good-condition disc from its fair-condition jacket, I found that it was in fact New Sounds in Modern Music, Volume 1 (Savoy MG 9000). The one with “Ko-Ko” as the Side Two opener.

As I recall, this happened not long after I got hold of an EMT OFD 25 mono pickup head, the stylus of which is sized for early LPs. By the time I acquired the Savoy LP, I had owned the EMT long enough to appreciate its almost comically superior (footnote 1) way of reproducing the touch and impact so often found in early-1950s LPs. But nothing could have prepared me for what I heard from that Charlie Parker record: Low in the mix though it was, Curley Russell’s string bass was taut and forceful; every note attack from Parker’s alto sax and Miles Davis’s trumpet (footnote 2) had the feel of the real thing; and Max Roach’s drums exploded from the speakers—no other word for it.

In fact, upon my first listen to the original 1950 LP, I experienced recorded music in a way that’s happened only a handful of times in my life. I was so knocked out by one side of a record that, for weeks, I couldn’t bring myself to flip it over and listen to the other side. Whether I feared being disappointed (what on Earth could possibly match what I had just heard?) or was simply being superstitious (what if I break the spell?), I have no idea, but my paralysis had far more to do with the music-making than the punchy mono sound: The sheer audacity of Parker’s and Davis’s rapid-fire playing, some lines performed in unison, was startling—like hearing a silence broken by a small group of people speaking in code, loudly and joyously.

Parker’s “Ko-Ko,” in which a semi-improvised introduction hurtles into an up-tempo progression based on the jazz standard “Cherokee”—and which boasts one of the strangest endings in all of jazz—is arguably the first bebop recording ever released. The session took place in November of 1945 at WOR studios in New York and was issued on a Savoy 78rpm single, backed with a version of “How High the Moon” by another bebop artist, Don Byas. Its first LP release was in 1950, on Savoy’s New Sounds in Modern Music, Volume 1, the first of four 10″ LPs, the last of which came out in 1953. Now, in celebration of the centennial of Parker’s birth, Craft Recordings has reissued all four volumes in a boxed set called Charlie Parker: The Savoy 10-inch LP Collection (CR00010). It isn’t enough to say “Ko-Ko” isn’t the only gem among the set’s 28 selections: Every minute of music herein is electric. Standouts include “Constellation,” “Ah-Leu-Cha” (which Thelonious Monk and others have covered), “Chasin’ the Bird,” and a live performance of the Parker composition “Confirmation,” recorded in 1947 at Carnegie Hall.

The sound of Craft’s remastered LPs is a mixed bag. Surfaces on my review copy were exceptionally clean and tic-free, with lead-in grooves so quiet that the music never failed to surprise me at least a little. But the EQ was somewhat different from the original; in particular, the lowest frequencies had been bumped up. Most bothersome was the fact that note attacks, especially audible in the drums and the double-bass, were smoothed over. Compared to the very live-sounding original disc, the sound overall was just a tiny bit plasticky. (I reached out to the label’s publicist in an effort to determine what source materials—original tapes? files made from the best available LPs? something else?—were used for the new LP masters, but by press time I had not heard back. The liner notes credit Grammy-winning engineer Paul Blakemore with “audio restoration and mastering.”) To my ear, the LP masters were cut from digital, but I’ve been known to be wrong.

That being said, I would rather have a set of less-than-ideal 10″ Charlie Parker LPs than no 10″ Charlie Parker LPs, and the packaging and very good liner notes sweeten the deal—that, and a retail price of $89.99 for the set, including a Savoy T-shirt (which I haven’t seen, so I’ve no idea if it’s 100% cotton or a polyester blend [do please imagine a semi-ironic smiley emoji in this space]).

If you don’t have these records, you need them, so order a set now before the supplies dry up.

Footnote 1: As in: to everything.

Footnote 2: There is no consensus among critics as to who played trumpet on this track. The liner notes for this reissue credit Dizzy Gillespie, who was hired for the session as a pianist. I tend to think it was Davis.

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