Birks Works

Product Description:

Personnel: Dizzy Gillespie (vocals, trumpet); Jimmy Powell, Phil Woods, Ernie Henry (vocals, alto saxophone); Billy Mitchell, Benny Golson, Ernie Wilkins (vocals, tenor saxophone); Marty Flax, Billy Root (vocals, baritone saxophone); Joe Gordon, Quincy Jones, E.V. Perry, Carl Warwick, Talib Daawud, Lee Morgan (vocals, trumpet); Melba Liston, Frank Rehak, Al Grey (vocals, trombone); Rod Levitt (vocals, bass trombone); Walter Davis, Jr., Wynton Kelly (vocals, piano); Nelson Boyd, Paul West (vocals, bass); Charli Persip (vocals, drums); Austin Cromer (vocals); Pee Wee Moore, Ray Connor.

Compilation producer: Michael Lang.

Recorded at Coastal Recording and WOR Recording Studio, New York between 1956 and 1957. Originally released as three separate LP's. Includes liner notes by Nat Hentoff, Marshall W. Sterns and an interview with Benny Golson, Kenny Washington and Charli Persip.

BIRKS WORKS: THE VERVE BIG BAND SESSIONS contains BIRKS WORKS, DIZZY IN GREECE & WORLD STATESMAN.

By the mid-1950's, when this Norman Granz production, BIRKS WORKS, was recorded, Dizzy Gillespie's big band had become a jazz force. Talent-wise on a par with the Count Basie and Duke Ellington bands, Dizzy's outfit was a little freer and open to the latest possibilities. With such fiery young players as Lee Morgan and Billy Mitchell in his horn section, and Chalie Persip rolling underneath them on drums, there's a dense musical tension in play here. The performance of a young Quincy Jones on trumpet, contributing to "Jessica's Day," and Melba Liston's soaring trombone on Claude Debussy's "My Reverie," are noteworthy.

Included in this collection are such classics as "Autumn Leaves" and "I Can't Get Started," along with famed Gillespie numbers, among them the seductive "A Night in Tunisia." Gillespie is a great front man, and plays in exemplary fashion on tracks such as "Dizzy's Blues." His trumpet work is big and lyrical, and takes no prisoners.