And he was, albeit succored by a cult, largely unknown during his life. He lived outside convention (he probably never voted or paid an income tax), yet, though totally apolitical, he presaged, in his drives and fierce independence, the coming of Malcolm X and Eldridge Cleaver. He was an irresistibly attractive man who bit almost every hand that fed him. He was an original and fertile musician who had reached the edge of self-parody. He was a tragic figure who helplessly consumed himself, and at the same time he was a demon who presided gleefully over the wreckage of his life. Like his spiritual brother Dylan Thomas, who died a year or so earlier, Parker was labyrinthine. But, by and large, Parker is fresh and searching, and the album serves as a singular reminder that Parker, who died at the age of thirty-four, in 1955, was one of the wonders of twentieth-century music.

Davis is dull, Lewis and Jordan don’t quite have themselves together yet, and the ensembles are smudged. Parker plays pale tenor saxophone on several tracks, and his accompanists, who generally include Miles Davis, John Lewis or Duke Jordan, a variety of bassists, and Max Roach, are sometimes leagues behind. The rest of the material tends to be uneven. Such later and equally imperishable efforts as “Parker’s Mood,” “Donna Lee,” “Barbados,” and “Blue Bird” are also present. The album includes the original masters of the thirty sides Parker recorded for Savoy between 19 (alternate takes, issued in a hopeless stew years ago, will be unscrambled for subsequent Arista reissues), and among them are the first small-band records he made (“Tiny’s Tempo,” “Red Cross,” “Romance Without Finance,” “I’ll Always Love You Just the Same”), all under the name of the guitarist Tiny Grimes, as well as the first, and still classic, numbers done under his own name (“Billie’s Bounce,” “Now’s the Time,” “Ko Ko,” “Thriving on a Riff,” “Warming Up a Riff,” and “Meandering”). Photograph by Eliot Elisofon / The LIFE Picture Collection / GettyĪrista Records, a relatively new company that helps mind the avant-garde, has recently purchased the invaluable Savoy Records catalogue, and its first reissue is “Charles Christopher Parker, Jr.: Bird / The Savoy Recordings” (Savoy SJL 2201).

Charlie parker take five