With this CD, Telarc squeezes another package out of a month-long salute to the jazz master's 75th birthday at New York's Blue Note jazz club, advertising them as
Dizzy Gillespie's last recordings (they're not). What it is, is a mixed blessing, an obviously heartfelt tribute to an aging legend by several of his disciples, conservative to a fault in its adherence to the basic bop language that
Dizzy and the album's co-honoree
Charlie Parker helped invent.
Dizzy's solos are like fallen swans; the chops simply weren't there anymore to execute his still-potent ideas, and reviewers in
Dizzy's final years found his decline painful to report (many pretended not to notice). Otherwise, the excerpts here present a holiday for saxophones, with
Benny Golson,
David Sanchez,
Clifford Jordan,
Antonio Hart,
Paquito D'Rivera and
Jackie McLean taking turns on the front line, backed by the workmanlike trio of
Danilo Perez on piano,
George Mraz on bass and
Lewis Nash or
Kenny Washington on drums. Easily the best of the sax encounters is "Ornithology," where a speeding
McLean and relatively relaxed
D'Rivera engage in a high-flying dialogue, and the first part of
Bobby McFerrin's vocal solo is so uncannily like late-period
Dizzy that one is fooled. This album and its companions might have worked better as videos, where one could still bask in
Dizzy's live presence and thus experience the atmosphere of this celebration more fully. ~ Richard S. Ginell