The Quintet - Jazz At Massey Hall (1976 Japanese Debut/Fantasy Mono Vinyl LP)

The Quintet (Parker, Gillespie, Powell, Mingus, Roach) - Jazz at Massey Hall | Vinyl LP - 1976 Japanese Debut Mono Reissue (VIJ-5001M, Victor Musical Industries)

Jazz at Massey Hall is the record people mean when they talk about the greatest jazz concert ever held. On 15 May 1953 the five most important figures in bebop shared a stage in Toronto: Charlie Parker on alto, Dizzy Gillespie on trumpet, Bud Powell at the piano, Charles Mingus on bass and Max Roach on drums. It should have been a coronation. In fact the hall was half empty, its audience drawn away by a Rocky Marciano title fight televised the same night, and the musicians had been at odds for years. None of that reaches the music. What was captured is bebop at its highest pitch, five masters pushing each other through "Salt Peanuts", "Hot House" and a blazing "A Night In Tunisia", with Parker and Gillespie trading phrases like the old sparring partners they were. It was the last time the two of them were recorded together. Mingus taped the show and put it out on Debut, the label he and Roach ran, later overdubbing his own bass because the original had barely registered.

There is a footnote that became famous. Parker was under contract to Norman Granz, so on the original Debut sleeve he could not be named, and appears instead as "Charlie Chan", a wink that fooled no one. The recording survived because Mingus had the presence of mind to capture it and the label to release it, and it has been in print somewhere ever since, one of the essential documents of the music.

This is the 1976 Japanese mono reissue on Debut, licensed from Fantasy and manufactured by Victor Musical Industries, catalogue number VIJ-5001M.