Bird fans always welcome another way of listening to Charlie Parker take flight. Yet there are few truly exciting moments here if you’ve already been listening. This is not a collection for beginners, with its myriad alternate takes, false starts and incomplete takes. Do you really need 11 versions of “Marmaduke” in a row? This is for deep connoisseurs who can recognize the subtleties of different solos played over the same background. Still, with eight discs in the set, there is an awful lot of great bop swinging around.
Check out other box sets full of music and spoken-word greatness which are stocking the shelves this season.
Larry Gabriel is the Metro Times editor. E-mail [email protected].
