NRR Project: 'A Night at Birdland, Vols.1 and 2' (Feb. 21, 1954)

 

NRR Project: “A Night at Birdland, Vols.1 and 2”

Performed by the Art Blakey Quintet

Recorded Feb. 21, 1954

70 min.

Lightning in a bottle. I have heard pieces of this over my years as a jazz fan. However, it wasn’t until recently that I sat down and took in the two live sets the Art Blakey Quintet performed at the Birdland at 52^nd and Broadway in Manhattan on Feb. 21, 1954. It is an amazing experience, well worth listening to over and over.

The beautiful interaction of these five men is extraordinary. Read Alan Goldsher’s expert elucidation of the album here at the National Recording Registry.

The personnel: Art Blakey, drums; Clifford Brown, trumpeter; Lou Donaldson, alto sax; Horace Silver, piano; Curley Russell, bass. All-stars, all. Blakey’s aggressive and inspiring drumming gives the rest of the players a solid and reassuring backing on which to work. Every performer’s musical flights of fancy seem to issue effortlessly forth. And they all work together, listening, contributing, listening again.

It’s one of those magic sessions in which the live audience gives the performers energy, pushing them over the top with their excitement and attention. Pulling off a live album is no mean trick; so many things can go wrong. We have all heard some of Charlie Parker’s oeuvre in terrible sound quality, for instance. Most importantly, it just happened to be a great night.

This was the peak time of the hard bop era. TUTORIAL: Bebop came along in the 1940s, rising up during the final years of the Big Band Era. Its stars were Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, Bud Powell, Max Roach. Hard bop, evolving in the 1950s, had a more insistent rhythm, was open to blues and gospel and rhythm and blues influences.

The performers on this album were the primary practitioners of the new aesthetic. This is jazz’s Classic period, when it permeated the culture and was treated like the vital art form it is. This recording tells you what jazz is all about.

The National Recording Registry Project tracks one writer’s expedition through all the recordings in the National Recording Registry in chronological order. Next time: (We’re Gonna) Rock Around the Clock.