Charlie Parker is, without doubt, one of the most important and influential musicians in the entire history of jazz.

As a pioneering and innovative alto saxophonist during the bebop era, Parker was a composer of some of the most enduring modern jazz standards. During a career that was all too brief, cut short by an early death as a result of the excesses of his pressurised lifestyle, Parker came to the fore in the early 1940s.

Nicknamed “Bird” and “Yardbird”, he was an early collaborator of like-minded luminaries such as Dizzy Gillespie and Miles Davis and, over the next decade, produced a substantial and extraordinary body of recorded work.

This 137-track compilation features  some interesting early recordings with other leaders, and then a significant proportion of his recordings as a leader and as a prominent member of other leaders’ bands, working in a variety of formats from quartets and quintets, through to noted recordings with strings.

It includes most of his recordings on the Savoy and Dial labels, and on Mercury, Clef, Norgran and Verve for Norman Granz, his primary record company relationships, and features some of the finest musicians of the day, including Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, Buddy Rich, Milt Jackson, Ray Brown, Erroll Garner, Barney Kessel, Bud Powell, John Lewis, Hank Jones, Art Blakey, Sarah Vaughan, Sonny Rollins, Percy Heath, Charles Mingus and more.

It does not purport to be a complete or definitive anthology, but it certainly represents about as comprehensive and representative cross-section of his work as can be accommodated in this 6CD set.

Miles Davis once said: “You can tell the history of jazz in four words: Louis Armstrong. Charlie Parker”… we could not agree more.

REVIEWS

This is a real blockbuster of a set, six CDs containing 137 tracks plus a thirty page booklet full of discographical information and track commentary. Parker was born in 1920, so this makes a fitting commemoration of his centenary by a label that continues to deliver compilations of the highest quality. There is so much fine music on this set that despite its sheer weight of numbers, this listener wanted to hear it all over again after the final track had finished. - Gerry Stonestreet (In Tune Issue 354)

Treasure trove of a boxed set. Given its headliner and date span (1941 to 1954) there's really little more to be said in appraising this collection; indeed, this is the kind of set that reviews itself simply by looking at the cast list and the tracks it contains. There's barely a stone left unturned in producing this most magnificent anthology, which really does provide all you need to hear in order to appreciate the altoist's visionary gift to the world. Whoever buys it will be delighted; its every alto sax utterance reminds us of just why Parker continues to matter. Recommended *****  - Simon Spillett (Jazzwise Issue 266)