Savoy Celebrates 60th Anniversary with CD Collections

Sixty years ago the Savoy jazz label began making a name for itself by releasing hot sides from Charlie Parker, Dexter Gordon, Miles Davis, Stan Getz, Fats Navarro and J.J. Johnson as the new sound of bebop began to catch on. This month the label is celebrating its 60th anniversary with three CD collections from Parker and two other bebop stars, Dizzy Gillespie and Red Norvo.

These packages feature all new 20 bit digital transfers from the original session acetates and master tapes and exhaustive annotation in black and silver foil digipaks. Charlie Parker: The Best of the Complete Live Performances on Savoy boasts 12 seminal tracks culled from the historic 1948 Royal Roost performance that included Miles Davis and Max Roach. The Modern Red Norvo is a long overdue survey that features two previously unissued tracks that capture him during one of his most productive phases and those of his star sidemen such as Parker, Charles Mingus, Gillespie and Teddy Wilson, among others. Dizzy Gillespie: Odyssey 1945-52 surveys the trumpeter’s rise to prominence as the co-founder and pre-eminent spokesman of bebop. And later in the summer Savoy Jazz will release premium single and double cd packages by Stan Getz, Lester Young, JJ Johnson and Billy Eckstine, among others produced by multiple Grammy Award winning producer Orrin Keepnews.