Taken from the January 1972 edition of Gramophone

Charlie Parker, born in Kansas City on August 29th, 1920, died in New York City, March 12th, 1955, is probably one of the most revered jazz musicians in the entire history of the music. Since 1955 his passing has been commemorated in Chicago, where he often played, at a series of concerts organised by Joe Segal and local musicians. The first concerts were held in March, to tie in with the date of Parker's death, but recently it has been found more convenient to shift the commemorative concert to August, the month in which he was born. This double-LP set was made at a series of four concerts spread over the month of August 1970. Segal succeeded in bringing together many important musicians who worked with, or were associated with, Charlie Parker. He took advantage of the fact that Dexter Gordon, now domiciled in Copenhagen, was visiting the United States. Thus we have the unique sound of Gordon's tenor, the trumpet of Red Rodney and the drumming of Roy Haynes, united in twenty-five minutes of music split into Billie's Bounce and Groovin' High, the latter with a particularly' fine Dexter solo and what sounds like a spur-of-the-moment coda when Rodney and Gordon play the original Dizzy Gillespie ending in unison. On these tracks the group is completed by Chicagoans Jodie Christian on piano, Rufus Reid (who plays bass on every track of the two LPs) and tenor saxophonist Von Freeman. The latter is the brother of drummer Bruz Freeman and guitarist George Freeman. It is good to hear Red Rodney on record again; the passage of the years has given his trumpet playing greater fluency than ever and the driving force that is Roy Haynes is exactly in context. Trumpeter Kinny Dorham leads a unit which contains Joe Daley on tenor; like Rufus Reid and the pianist in the group, Richard Abrams, Daley is often equated with a more experimental form of jazz but all three men play in the Parker idiom here. Due to a lastminute hitch, Ray Nance was brought in to substitute for a missing tenor saxophonist. Nance plays trumpet on Just Friends and violin on Summertime, two songs closely associated with Bird. An interesting facet of the latter performance is that the sound of the violin causes the drummer's snare to vibrate against the head of the side drum; Nance can be heard asking Wilbur Campbell to release the snare to obviate the distortion.

Howard McGhee leads a quintet on Ornithology, unfortunately the only track by this particular group on the set. McGhee is in brilliant form with long lines of semiquavers cascading across the chord sequence. McGhee's front-line companion is Miss Vi Redd, an efficient and very Bird-like alto saxophonist who tends to play complete Parker phrases learned from records rather than immerse herself in the idiom. In this respect she sounds like Sonny Stitt on some of his Parker-orientated alto solos. The fourth unit is led by a man who succeeded in forging an original alto style at a time when Charlie Parker seemed to be influencing every other alto saxophonist in jazz. Lee Konitz gets into a deep Parker groove on Scrapple From The Apple and, even more so, on Yardbird Suite where he closes the performance with an accurate note-for-note transcription of Parker's solo from the original Dial recording. Art Hoyle, a splendidly equipped trumpeter with years of big band experience behind him, plays on the Konitz tracks and the music is spurred by the exciting drumming of Philly Joe Jones. On the closing three titles the Konitz unit is joined by Eddie Jefferson who sings apt lyrics to Parker solos on Now's The Time, Parker's Mood and Disappointed (actually Bird's JATP solo on Lady Be Good). Lee switches to tenor for the latter tune incidentally.

Obviously an occasion such as this has its highs and lows but the main thing is that every man and woman at the concerts were sincere in their desire to make this a memorable tribute to perhaps the greatest jazz soloist. All over the jazz world thousands of musicians and enthusiasts still thrill to the sound of Parker's music and his memory is likely to be commemorated for years. I have been assured that a cycling club in North London still runs an annual Charlie Parker Memorial Road Race. Incongruous as this may seem it is nevertheless an indication of the impact that Charlie Parker and his music had on dedicated listeners. A.M.