Charlie Parker: Billie's Bounce

Bebop's breakthrough came in 1945, when it arrived on Manhattans 52nd Street, and Diz & Bird made its first great recordings. This fall track doesn't rival that spring's "Salt Peanuts," "Shaw 'Nuff" or "Hot House," but is nevertheless valuable. "Billie's Bounce" features bebop's best trumpeter (playing piano only), its premier saxophonist, and on trumpet a 19-year-old newcomer who, despite showing promise, never amounted to a hill of beans in the jazz world. (Just kidding! We love Miles.) Miles's flubbed notes and Bird's squawking reed are distracting, but Bird's 4-chorus blues solo shines as brightly as a long-extinguished, infinitely distant star whose light continues to reach us.