Charles Mingus, Dizzy Gillespie, Max Roach, Bud Powell, Charlie Chan

condition (record/cover): NM / EX- (minimal foxing on back)

No obi.

Toronto, May 15th, 1953, billed as the greatest jazz concert ever, played to a half-empty hall because the Rocky Marciano fight was on television the same night. Dizzy Gillespie, Bud Powell, Max Roach, Charles Mingus and Charlie Parker, the last of whom appears on the label as "Charlie Chan" because he was under contract elsewhere and playing a borrowed plastic alto. Powell had been drinking, Parker and Gillespie were barely speaking, and the performance is nonetheless extraordinary. Mingus recorded it himself and later overdubbed his own bass because the original was inaudible, which is the most Mingus detail imaginable.

Fantasy pressing of the Debut recording. The last time the five of them were ever in a room together.