Canada Relives ‘Greatest’ Jazz Concert After 50 Years

Originally published on eJazzNews · 20 May 2003 · By Amran Abocar

On May 20, 2003, eJazzNews published Amran Abocar’s report on the 50th anniversary of Jazz at Massey Hall, the Toronto concert of May 15, 1953, at which Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Bud Powell, Charles Mingus and Max Roach played together as the Quintet. It is the only recording of the five as a group, and the album has long been sold as “the greatest jazz concert ever.”

What the 2003 report covered

For the anniversary, Massey Hall put a new quintet on the same stage: Herbie Hancock on piano, Roy Haynes on drums, Roy Hargrove on trumpet, Dave Holland on bass and Kenny Garrett on saxophone, playing contemporary jazz rather than recreating the 1953 set. The program also included a symposium and a tribute to Max Roach, then the only surviving member of the original group.

Most of the article went back to 1953. The concert was organized by the New Jazz Society of Toronto, a group of young fans who drove to New York and signed the musicians with very little negotiation. Society member Roger Feather, who was 18 at the time, recalled finding Parker at a music store on Broadway and visiting Gillespie at home. Alan Scharf, who looked after Powell that night and photographed the concert, remembered the trio set by Powell, Mingus and Roach as a highlight. Saxophonist Hart Wheeler, who played in the CBC All Stars band that opened the show, recalled Gillespie doing all the talking, introducing the tunes and clowning on stage.

The night of May 15, 1953

The concert lost money. The same evening Rocky Marciano fought Jersey Joe Walcott for the world heavyweight title, and only about a third of the 2,753 seats were sold, according to the notes for the 2023 reissue. Gillespie kept slipping backstage to follow the fight on the radio, and Parker played a white plastic alto saxophone. At intermission much of the band and the audience crossed the street to watch the fight on television; Marciano won in about two and a half minutes. The society could not pay the promised fees in full, and Gillespie later said his cheque “bounced, and bounced, and bounced.”

There was no rehearsal. The quintet played “Perdido,” “Salt Peanuts” and “All the Things You Are” into “52nd Street Theme” before the break, then “Wee,” “Hot House” and “A Night in Tunisia” after a Roach drum feature and a set by the Powell, Mingus and Roach trio. For the style these five built and the players themselves, see our guide to bebop and our lists of jazz saxophone players and jazz drummers.

The record

Mingus took the tapes to New York, overdubbed bass lines that had barely been captured, and released the music on Debut, the label he had started with Roach a year earlier: first on three 10-inch LPs in 1953, with the quintet on volumes 1 and 3 and the trio on volume 2, and in 1956 as the 12-inch LP The Quintet: Jazz at Massey Hall. Parker was billed as “Charlie Chan” for contractual reasons. The producer of a later reissue describes it as the last authorized recording of Parker and Gillespie together.

The album was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1995 and is part of NPR’s Basic Jazz Record Library. In November 2023 Craft Recordings released Hot House: The Complete Jazz at Massey Hall Recordings, which collects the original LP, the six quintet tracks without the bass overdubs, the trio set and Roach’s “Drum Conversation.”

Since the anniversary

Max Roach died in New York on August 16, 2007, so none of the 1953 quintet is still living. Two members of the 2003 band have also died: Roy Hargrove in November 2018 and Roy Haynes in November 2024, at 99.

Where to start listening

The Quintet: Jazz at Massey Hall (Debut, 1956; reissued by Original Jazz Classics): the six quintet performances with Mingus’s overdubbed bass.
Hot House: The Complete Jazz at Massey Hall Recordings (Craft, 2023): the full surviving recordings, including the quintet tracks without overdubs.

Sources

“Craft Recordings Celebrates the 70th Anniversary of ‘The Greatest Jazz Concert Ever’,” Concord, September 19, 2023.
Murray Horwitz and A.B. Spellman, “Charlie Parker: ‘Jazz at Massey Hall’,” NPR Basic Jazz Record Library.
Stewart Hoffman, “Jazz at Massey Hall, May 15, 1953,” drawing on Mark Miller’s Cool Blues: Charlie Parker in Canada 1953.

This page is based on an article from the original eJazzNews archive (2001 to 2018), with background and sources added in 2026. The original text is not republished here. You can read the original as it appeared on eJazzNews via the Internet Archive.
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