Verve Records releases Bird in Kansas City, a new set of rare recordings from Charlie Parker, dating from 1941 to 1951. Verve Records has released a once-mythic rendition of “I Found a New Baby” by jazz pioneer Charlie Parker. The track, which sees Charlie paying homage to Lester Young by quoting “Tickle Toe” and “Shoeshine Boy,” arrives ahead of the release of Bird in Kansas City, an album featuring a new set of rare Parker recordings dating from between 1941-1951.

“I Found a New Baby” is one of four tracks on the album recorded at Vic Damon’s studio in 1944 (LP side B, 1–4), at which Parker was accompanied by drummer Edward ‘Little Phil’ Phillips and guitarist Efferge Ware. Much of Bird in Kansas City has never been heard before and some recordings have never even been known to exist — the album chronicles Charlie Parker’s evolution from a blossoming soloist with the Jay McShann Band into a brilliant improviser who changed the genre forever.

In addition to two unreleased 78s with the McShann band, Bird in Kansas City offers two sets of private recordings — at the home of Parker’s friend Phil Baxter and at Damon’s studio— made with local musicians and a very relaxed-sounding Parker who has the room to stretch out and show us the shape of jazz that was to come in his wake.

Central to these recordings is Parker’s relationship to his hometown of Kansas City, a place he never lived again once he left in 1941 but that remained deeply important to him; his mixed emotions owed to the city’s history of racial segregation and to his strong ties to his family and friends there. Though he never returned permanently, he frequently came home during breaks in his travels, and it is during those times that these recordings were made.

ARTISTS
Charlie Parker