Jazz at Massey Hall is a live album released in December 1953 by jazz combo The Quintet through Debut Records. It was recorded on 15 May 1953 at Massey Hall in Toronto, Canada. Credited to "the Quintet", the jazz group was composed of five leading "modern" players of the day: Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Bud Powell, Charles Mingus, and Max Roach. It was the only time that the five musicians recorded together as a unit, and it was the last recorded meeting of Parker and Gillespie.[6]
Background
The first pianist considered by the organizers was Lennie Tristano, but he suggested Powell as a more appropriate match for the other musicians.[7]Oscar Pettiford was considered as an alternative to Mingus.[7]
The concert
Parker played a Grafton saxophone on this date; he could not be listed on the original album cover for contractual reasons, so was billed as "Charlie Chan", an allusion to the fictional detective and to Parker's wife Chan. The concert included performances by both the entire quintet and a trio consisting of Powell, Mingus, and Roach, as well as a Roach drum solo.
The original plan was for the Toronto New Jazz Society and the musicians to share the profits from the concert. However, owing to a boxing prize fight between Rocky Marciano and Jersey Joe Walcott taking place simultaneously, the audience was so small that the Society was unable to pay the musicians' fees. The musicians were all given NSF checks, and only Parker was able to cash his; Gillespie noted that he did not receive his fee "for years and years".[8]
Jazz authority Burt Korall says that for Roach, this performance was a "culmination on record of music and relationships developed in the 1940s." Despite the difficulties, according to Korall, "the music was the great leveler."
[9]
The opening act on the night was a 16-piece big band billed as the CBS All Stars.[10]
Album releases
The record was originally issued in December 1953[11] on Mingus's label Debut, from a recording made by the Toronto New Jazz Society (Dick Wattam, Alan Scharf, Roger Feather, Boyd Raeburn and Arthur Granatstein).[12][13] Mingus took the recording to New York where he and Max Roach dubbed in the bass lines, which were under-recorded on most of the tunes, and exchanged Mingus soloing on "All the Things You Are".
A 2002 reissue, Complete Jazz at Massey Hall, released on The Jazz Factory label, contains the full concert, without the overdubbing.[14]
(Vol. 2 consists of the trio recordings of Powell, Mingus and Roach from the same date: all but "I've Got You Under My Skin", and one track by Billy Taylor with Mingus and Roach from a later date.)
^"Down Beat's' Five Star Discs". DownBeat. December 30, 1953. p. 1. The following records represent the cream of the last two weeks' crop.... Jazz at Massey Hall.
Years given are for the recording(s), not first release. Because Powell's discography features albums with the same title, record labels are identified to avoid any confusion.
