Ko-Ko
Nov 26 1945
WOR Studio
New York
City, New York
It cannot be
said my friend that all is infatuation with the presentation of the
moment as question and answer period, instead kind takes a flow that
moves over and under time passes as moments in the mist that wraps
now inside it then inside of a premise in eternity that comes down to
the moment, which is not the same thing as now, if you dig what I'm
saying you'll understand.
It was
November 26 and I was going down to Parker's apartment to bring back
the man we all knew as “Bird”, for the bird he shot with a
shotgun and ate in front of all the band members one day in July.
More people have said they were there, and if it's true, there must
be 400 people who were there when he did it. I wasn't, I'm not afraid
to say, but trust me I've heard a distant different renditions from
people who say they were there that day. Me, I don't even know which
day it is, because renditions differ. How am I supposed to know?
So anyway, Byrd
was booked for a three hour session, doing four tunes in New York. It
was a union contract mood at by some people the week before. It was
all legal and official like. Parker, Miles Davis, Bud Powell, Curly
Russell, and Max Roach were allegedly booked for the time. And I was
sent down to Bird's apartment, to get full bird and Bud Powell.
Anyway there was bird they are all right, but there was no Powell,
because he was working on his mother. She wanted to go to
Philadelphia, and look at a pad which supposedly was big enough for
herself, and off she went with Bud. And well you see there was no
nevermind about what she wanted to do, when she wanted to, contract
or no contract she was going to have her boy with her.
Anyway, I got
there and I will tell you that I was cool because I knew that Dizzy
Gillespie was staying at birds apartment, and while I didn't exactly
know him, I knew him by reputation, and substituting Powell for
Gillespie was a no-brainer, sorry but it's true, anyone would take
Gillespie, including, and probably dis-including, Powell. It was that
that bad.
So I got on to
the front stoop, and their was bird, absolutely as friendly as day,
and I knew that he had told Powell to get lost, that dizzy was really
the person he wanted as the person tickling the keys, there was no
two ways about it. “No need to worry, here is our piano player,
rest assured.” who was I to judge?
So I took the
two of them down to the station, I can't remember which room we were
in, and there is confusion from the other people involved. And you
know something? It doesn't matter. It just doesn't matter at all, but
you will have 10 different opinions, and that is only from two
different people. You know how it is when something small gets caught
up in the details. It assumes a kind of detail that normally you
wouldn't recollect anything about it if it were not part of the
substance and significance of the moment. And boy was that ever a
moment to paint a picture of. After all, it'd been three years since
we been allowed to record, what with the war going on and all.
Anyway, first
we start talking about what they were going to be playing, and I
wasn't doing any talking just listening for ideas. It was of course
Bird who had settled on bringing Gillespie's new rendition of
“Cherokee” , because having listened to Duke Ellington's
rendition from a few years ago, I checked it was 1940, he wanted that
to be the marker that things were going to be different after the
war. “It was a new generation.” someone said, I don't think it
was Parker.
There was no
warm up, new beats before, they were ready, and it started quick and
ended quicker.
Well it started
out with an eight part phrase, both alto and in unison octaves, each
note played in unison no quirks or vibaroto. Then the trumpet goes
solo, and then the sax does the same thing, each playing a different
caress on the same notes but completely different in their
interpretation and excitation, one could not even guess they were
playing the same tune. The first take someone, not playing anything,
started whistling and clapping and shouting, “You can't play that”,
and so they started again, doing the 32 bar introduction piece, but
then they skip the Cherokee introduction, that being the cause that
started the whistling and clapping. You see, playing the piece as the
piece was a big no-no.
So they got to
the 64 bar solos from Parker, and what a tune it was to become. No
one could believe that anyone could do such things on the sax, okay
maybe it Parker believed, but no one else did. And it was fast, oh
God was it fast, take the fastest piece by Beethoven, and double it,
that's how fast it was. And Parker started with quavers, and went on
to yet more difficult pieces, including a notoriously difficult
quotation from Picou playing “High Society”. Even now, I can't
believe I heard live.
I can't tell
you how difficult it sounds on the recording, and how easy Parker
made it look. There was a total disconnect between the eyes and the
ears. It was almost as if looking at him it was easy, but if you
closed your eyes, and listened, really listened, it sounded as hard
as anything that you have heard played. Maybe even more so than that,
if you can believe it. The people watching it were open jawed amazed,
just flabbergasting. If someone tells you that they were there, don't
believe them, because there were only a few of us who actually
listened to it as alive as live gets. And they have all been heard
from.
Anyway, as I
was saying, after Parker's enormously long solo, there comes in a
drum solo from Max, which in its own way takes the cake, and you'll
hear plenty of people saying that was the best solo for drums that
they have ever heard. I won't get in to the drum solo part, because
that is really for drummers to contend with. And believe me, you can
get a heated argument on which offbeat is better, let alone the whole
solo.
Finally there
is a 28 bar coda, somehow integrating all the main themes and sly
lick from Parker and Davis, obviously they had planned this for a
very long time, no one could just improvise, it was a planned
improvisation. Then suspended on top was an imperfect cadence, the
kind which hangs there and you think it will resolve, but it never
does, even in your mind it doesn't.
That's how I
remember it, other people may remember things differently. But I can
hear fragments of this recording everywhere, I may just be locked in
a kind of written with it, and there is nothing I can do about it. I
wish I could go back to the beginning of the session, and here it
through once again live, and thrill to the extreme virtuoso
performance that Parker gave on that night.
I missing him,
and the sounds that he made for the first time. I can go on talking
and talking about this, and while talking I could just be able to
touch the hem, and ride off in two the sunset, talking about Bird and
the amazing days he started. It really wasn't the first bebop
performance, but it was the first one recorded, and from there it
slipped into a groove never before sounded out.
And that's the
good thing, is it? The only thing I wish is that Hakim, that's his
name now, would have recorded Ko-Ko as well, but he had to leave
because he was not a member of the New York City Union.
Will I think it
is, and from the number of recordings after the war, many other
people were locked in that same place, and tell rock 'n roll and then
just rock, took its place on the scene where jazz was once supreme.
(What Teddy
doesn't say, is he was the producer of this session. He also
disagrees with John Mehegan in putting Powell in the mix of things,
appoint which he agrees with most people. And since he was sent to
collect people, he should know. The other thing which he doesn't
recall is that Dizzy was under the pseudonym “Hen Gates”. I
should also mention that according to most people he was the one who
said “you can't play like that” - though of course he demires to
other people. - SN)
