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CD reviews

The Complete RCA Victor Recordings

Dizzy Gillespie - The Complete RCA Victor Recordings Audio CD

A fair review of the Dizzy Gillespie "The Complete RCA Victor Recordings" Audio CD. Please note that the below review is the views of the authors, and authors only. You can get a complete list of all Dizzy Gillespie reviews here, or go back to the Dizzy Gillespie tabs.

Band: Dizzy Gillespie
Title: The Complete RCA Victor Recordings
Rating:

Release Date: 1995-01-24
Media: Audio CD

Tracks: 1: Manteca 2: Anthropology [Take 2] 3: King Porter Stomp - Dizzy Gillespie, 4: Yours and Mine - Dizzy Gillespie, 5: Blue Rhythm Fantasy - Dizzy Gillespie, 6: Hot Mallets - Dizzy Gillespie, Lionel Hampton 7: 52nd Street Theme [Take 1] 8: 52nd Street Theme [Take 2] 9: Night in Tunisia [Take 1] 10: Night in Tunisia [Incomplete Take] 11: Ol' Man Rebop 12: Anthropology [Take 1] 13: Ow! 14: Oop-Pop-A-Da 15: Two Bass Hit 16: Stay on It 17: Algo Bueno (Woody 'N' You) 18: Cool Breeze 19: Cubana Be 20: Cubana Bop 21: Ool-Ya-Koo 22: Minor Walk 23: Good Bait 24: Guarachi Guaro 25: Duff Capers 26: Lover, Come Back to Me 27: I'm Be Boppin' Too [Take 1] 28: Swedish Suite 29: St. Louis Blues 30: I Should Care 31: That Old Black Magic 32: You Go to My Head 33: Jump Di-Le-Ba 34: Dizzier and Dizzier 35: I'm Be Boppin' Too [Take 2] 36: Hey Pete! Let's Eat More Meat 37: Jumpin' With Symphony Sid 38: If Love Is Trouble 39: In the Land of Oo-Bla-Dee 40: Overtime [Shorter Take] - Dizzy Gillespie, The Metronome All-Stars 41: Overtime [Longer Take] - Dizzy Gillespie, The Metronome All-Stars 42: Victory Ball [Shorter Take] - Dizzy Gillespie, The Metronome All-Stars 43: Victory Ball [Longer Take] - Dizzy Gillespie, The Metronome All-Stars

Can we have a remaster?
Of course Dizzy's big band in the forties made some fantastic music. Of course this is a fine collection. Of course this is an indispensible part of jazz history. But oh, the sound. . .

Previous issues of this music on both CD and vinyl far surpass this one in terms of sound quality. The dreaded nineties-era noise reduction technology is all over this music, taking great hunks of sonic elements away from these vital performances. Since Bluebird corrected similar problems by issuing the Blanton/Webster sides by Duke Ellington, should they not do the same for these great records?.

Oop-Bob-Sh-BAM!!
From the first time I heard Dizzy's big band, on a now-defunct RCA Vintage LP ("The Bebop Era"), I was hooked. . then I found out that my father had heard the band for FREE when he worked at the Metropole in NYC on 52nd Street. . . and HATED it because Dizzy didn't play like Sammy Kaye (his favorite band)!! How I envied and disliked him for that!!

These innovative Gil Fuller arrangements, in which the entire trumpet section swung like five Dizzies, are simply staggering. The music swirls and eddies, jumps and dives like a hyperactive jazz dancer. And all the soloists are fabulous: inventive, original, highly swinging. The jam sessions at the Metronome All-Star sessions are also very historic, with a trumpet section of Dizzy, Miles Davis and Fats Navarro, all trying to sound like Dizzy in their solos (and succeeding!), as well as scintillating piano solos by the brilliant but anti-social Lennie Tristano. All in all, an exciting and important album that no jazz lover should be without.

Boppin!
Introspection doesn't seem to have been a word often used in Diz's vocabulary, musical or otherwise. Dizzy Gillespie's style was the nemesis of Miles Davis's. His playing did have a 'dizzying' effect always putting speed, dynamism and drama at the forefront of his performances. On this collection Gillespie's talent as a bandleader and musical arranger also come to the fore. He had of course a great theoretical knowledge of music and wasn't afraid to pass this on to other musicians by way of help and encouragement. With the big bands here he manages to register bebop lines in a larger sound and the over-all enthusiasm shows through.

Throughout this collection Gillespie never loses sight of the desire to swing despite his revolutionary tendacy to subvert traditional chord structure. 'Hot Mallets' swings like hell over great xelophone playing that also features on 'Blue Rhythm Fantasy'. The first version of '52nd Street Theme' is amazingly fluent while the second version goes in for greater improvisation. The bebop standard 'A Night In Tunisia' gets its greatest rendition here in its original form with Diz's no-holds emphatic sound. Gillespie's generosity to other musicians can be heard on 'Ol' Man Rebop' where each soloist takes his turn exercising his own bop interpretations. The most incessantly driving tracks on these CD's are the two versions of 'Anthropology' which rock like crazy. I also loved the rolling end of 'Ow!' and the swinging shout of 'Cool Breeze'. With 'Cubana Be' and 'Cubana Bop', Gillepie moves into even greater experimental territory. Each display a menancing rhythm like the growing stampede of an elephant herd backed up by Gillespie's elephant sounding shrieks on the trumpet.

More brash and emphatic playing on 'Minor Walk' and 'Lover Come Back To Me' proves to be yet another shining example of Dizzy as a great arranger. The backing brass jumps about at its own frenetic pace while Gillespie's trumpet bursts with energy and of course there's also the tight technical arrangement of the 'Overtime' tracks. The footstomping 'I'm Beboppin' Too' could be a manifesto for the whole bebop movement, while tracks like 'Jump Did La Ba' shows an early example of bop scat-singing. In contrast you have tracks that still swing (almost violently in Dizzy's case) like his interpretation of St. Louis Blues.

What always shows through in Dizzy's playing is his total enjoyment and utter euphoria, something that he shares with few other jazz players (the most notable exception being Louis Armstrong). All in all a marvellous collection for Dizzy fans.

Lots of great early Diz in one spot...unlike the LPs
The two different takes (one abbreviated) of "Night In Tunisia", "Manteca", "Anthropology", the Afro-Cubano stuff with Chano Pozo, on and on. All of this stuff is contained on the RCA Victor Vintage Series LPs of Diz, and another RCA LP called "The Best Of Dizzy Gillespie" - but how nice it is to see it all in one spot. . . even the Teddy Hill cuts. Any serious student or fan of Diz must have this. Yes, there are a few 'filler' cuts, but hey - that's historic, too! Now what really would be nice would be to see a Prestige CD of what was contained in the 2LP set "In The Beginning" with stuff like "She's Gone Again" and "He Beeped When He Should'a Bopped", and the like. I'll have to dig further.

I bought it for the Latin jazz, but the rest is fab!
I wasn't disappointed. I had been searching for the tracks with Cuban drummer Chano Pozo for several years, the first fusion of Latin and jazz music from 1947 and some of the few recordings to feature the legendary Pozo who was murdered soon after the waxings. . . "Manteca", "Cubano-Be" and "Cubano-Bop" are absolutley essential to any jazz collection. Of course, as other reviewers attest, there are loads more treasures here. The only exceptions I'd make are the tracks with singer Johnny Hartman. I rate his singing as absolutely awful, a lead weight tied around the neck of any music he's involved with. But it wouldn't be complete without these recordings, and I'm sure somebody likes them.

You can see a complete list of all Dizzy Gillespie discography, or go back to the Dizzy Gillespie tabs. There is also a good guide on how to read guitar tabs here.