Charlie Parker Plays with Dizzy Gillespie in the Only Footage Capturing the “Bird” in True Live Performance

Here’s a his­toric TV broad­cast of the found­ing fathers of bebop, Char­lie Park­er and Dizzy Gille­spie, play­ing togeth­er in 1952. It’s one of only two known sound films of Park­er playing–and the only one of him play­ing live, rather than synch­ing to a pre­re­cord­ed track.

The per­for­mance is from a Feb­ru­ary 24, 1952 broad­cast on the pio­neer­ing DuMont Tele­vi­sion Net­work. The full seg­ment begins with a brief cer­e­mo­ny in which Park­er and Gille­spie receive awards from Down Beat mag­a­zine, but the clip above cuts straight to the music: a per­for­mance of the bebop stan­dard “Hot House,” com­posed by Tad Dameron around the har­mon­ic struc­ture of Cole Porter’s “What Is This Thing Called Love?.”

The quin­tet includes Park­er on alto sax­o­phone, Gille­spie on trum­pet, Sandy Block on bass, Char­lie Smith on drums and Dick Hyman on piano.

It was Hyman, who had played with Park­er and had his own night­ly show on the DuMont net­work, who helped orga­nize the appear­ance. In a 2010 inter­view with Jazz­Wax, Hyman talked about what it was like play­ing on the show with Park­er and Gille­spie. “It was togeth­er,” he said. “Those guys played with such a good time and feel. It’s a ter­rif­ic per­for­mance con­sid­er­ing it was a pop show with just two cam­eras.”

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