Every squeak of his horn ever laid to tape has been released somewhere. Many of these incomplete nuggets of songs, some as short as fifteen seconds, are presented here, between full takes of the same composition. This is jarring, and will likely strike many as pointless, even geeky. Savoy would have done better to place all these fragments on one disc at the end of the box, as Rhino did with Coltrane's throwaways on The Heavyweight Champion , the Atlantic-recordings box they released a few years ago. But this is a minor quibble, as CDs are not only superior-sounding, but highly programmable.
Any listener can quickly find ways to avoid the truncated performances.
Though this box is not a sacred text, it does contain some of the most technically brilliant, and purely pleasurable, jazz in the history of the music. Whatever Charlie Parker's achievements may have been in the minds of those who establish pantheons, hierarchies and dogmas of jazz, when his music hits the ear, the only measurement that counts for anything is taken. It is the pure joy this music provides that will make it eternal.