Charlie Parker cuts a cake; Dizzy Gillespie looks on
Charlie Parker - “Bird” - the innovative saxophonist and composer and a key leader in the development of Bebop in the 1940’s was born August 29, 1920 in Kansas City, Missouri.
Charlie Parker, Tommy Potter, Max Roach, Miles Davis, Gottlieb Collection
Parker did not do a lot of recorded interviews, but one truly fascinating one was done with alto saxophonist Paul Desmond in 1954 with radio host John McLellan in Boston. Saxophonist Bob Reynolds of Snarky Puppy has a link to it at his personal web site.
On the radio show, we listen to classic sounds of Charlie Parker with Dizzy Gillespie, Fats Navarro, Bud Powell and more. We also hear a large segment from a 1947 radio broadcast on WOR in New York done as a promotional event for US Savings Bonds - a “Battle of the Bands” between groups presented by traditional jazz advocate Rudy Blesch and modern jazz promoter Barry Ulanov. We’ll hear the “modern” side of it with the band with Bird, Dizzy Gillespie, trumpet;John LaPorta, clarinet; Lennie Tristano, piano; Billy Bauer, guitar; Ray Brown, bass; and Max Roach, drums.
Also on the show, we’ve talked about the film Jazz on a Summer’s Day, and this time, we visit with Sandra Shulberg, President of IndieCollect - the non-profit film restoration organization behind the 60th Anniversary revitalization of this musical and visual treat from the Newport Jazz Festival, 1958, released in 1959. This summer, it is being re-released in a revitalized 4K format and distributed to support independent movie theaters across the country in this time when smaller art houses are having difficultly being open because of Covid-19.
Sandra Schulberg also tells us about a unique role Pittsburgh has in the independent film world - including a huge cache of films stored from the now closed WRS Film Lab in Pittsburgh - including a soon to be released film called NATIONTIME by William Greaves, a prolific and important African American film director, who died in 2014. His unreleased film about the 1972 National Black Political Convention in Gary, Indiana is powerful and timely.
Carnegie Mellon archivist Emily Davis identified the original negative for NATIONTIME in the in the wreckage of the WRS Lab in Pittsburgh.
Plus, the hunt for missing George Romero films!
Thursday night at 6, repeated Saturday at noon and Sunday at 5 on “THE SCENE” on WZUM - All on the radio on WZUM!