The Ko-Ko Session
The United States Copyright Office opens a formal inquiry into music streaming fraud and spells out, in a government document, how one fake play takes money from a real musician. Then New York, 1945: a label owner will not pay a songwriter, so the producer cuts off the take, and the record that comes out of it ends up in the national archive.
LioraThe Copyright Office opens a docket on streaming fraud. Today's record is Charlie Parker on Savoy. Later, New York, 1945, and the melody a label owner would not pay for. It's Friday. Let's go.
LioraIt's Friday, October 9th. This is The Daily Quintet. I'm Liora. Five stories from the world of jazz, in about ten minutes. Here we go.
One. The Lead: The United States Copyright Office opens Docket No
LioraThe United States Copyright Office wants to know how much of the streaming money is being stolen.
On Wednesday it published a notice of inquiry in the Federal Register. Docket number 2026-6. The title is "Music Streaming Fraud."
It is answering a four page letter from Representative Scott Fitzgerald of Wisconsin, who asked the Office to examine how common streaming fraud is and how it may be affecting the music industry as a whole.
The letter carries the numbers. Deezer found that up to eighty five percent of the streams on fully AI-generated tracks last year were fraudulent.
LioraThe Office spells out how the theft works. Streaming services dedicate a percentage of their revenue to royalty pools, and the more a song is played, the more its owner gets. So a fake play means "diverting money from rights owners of legitimately streamed works."
Now, on how slowly paper moves. The notice was signed October fifth and filed the sixth, and it still says Michael Smith's "sentencing is scheduled for October 2026." Smith was sentenced the day it was filed.
Public comments close November twenty third.
Two. Listen to This: Charlie Parker's "The Savoy 10-Inch LP Collection" is on Craft Recordings' own store
LioraToday's record is the one tonight's story is about.
Craft Recordings has Charlie Parker, "The Savoy 10-Inch LP Collection." Twenty eight tracks of Savoy sides, 1944 to 1948, with Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie and Max Roach among the players. Thirty nine ninety nine for the digital album.
Go to track five. "Ko-Ko." Two minutes and fifty four seconds.
Then the tip. Three more tracks on it come from that same afternoon, and the Library of Congress names them in its own essay on "Ko-Ko." "Billie's Bounce," "Now's the Time," and "Thriving on a Riff," which Craft's track list spells "Thriving from a Riff." Play all four and you have one session, in the order a shop put it in, not a studio.
LioraOne more for a Friday. A Thelonious Monk nonet recorded in Paris in 1967 is scheduled for release today, "Monk Live in Paris, 1967, Volume Two," with Clark Terry in the horns, on the Monk estate's own label.
Now go back eighty one years. Today on The Bridge: New York, 1945. Charlie Parker's first record date as a leader, and the melody the label's owner would not pay for. Silas has the story.
Three. The Bridge: New York, November 1945: Charlie Parker records as a leader for the first time
LioraOne true story from this music's history, every day. Silas tells it, I ask the questions. Silas, where are we?
SilasNew York. November 26th, 1945. WOR Studios, on Broadway. Charlie Parker is about to record as a leader for the first time. It's for Savoy. The owner, Herman Lubinsky, is there, with his producer, Teddy Reig.
Today Parker will record a tune built on the chords of "Cherokee," a song by the British bandleader Ray Noble. Sixty-four bars, where a blues runs twelve. When Count Basie's band recorded it in 1939, Lester Young soloed over the easy parts and let the hard bridge go by. Most players of the day did.
In December 1939, Parker worked the tune over with a guitarist, Biddy Fleet. Years later he told Down Beat, "I kept thinking there's bound to be something else." He found it. At last he could play what he had been hearing.
LioraWho's playing with him?
SilasMax Roach on drums. Curley Russell on bass. On trumpet for most of the day, Miles Davis. He's nineteen. He came to New York in the fall of 1944 on a Juilliard scholarship, and he's already playing 52nd Street with Parker.
The piano is trouble. A Library of Congress essay says "technical problems and union issues arose." The sources don't agree on who played piano on the early tunes. By the Library's account, Dizzy Gillespie saves the session.
Then there's "Cherokee." Miles wrote later that Bird knew he was having trouble playing it. When Bird said that was the tune he wanted him to play, in Miles's words, "I just said no, I wasn't going to do it." So on this one, by most accounts, Davis's own among them, the trumpet is Dizzy's.
LioraSo what happens on the first take?
SilasParker and Gillespie play straight into the real melody of "Cherokee." And Teddy Reig cuts the take off.
Here's why. Lubinsky would not pay songwriter royalties, and that melody is Ray Noble's. So Reig tells Lubinsky, on the spot, that the tune is called "Ko-Ko." Then he has Parker take the melody out of the arrangement. All of it.
LioraWait. No melody at all?
SilasNo melody chorus at all. An introduction, the solos, a closing chorus. That fixes a second problem. Parker's idea runs about six minutes, and one side of a ten-inch 78 holds about three.
One problem is left. In the middle of the tune, Dizzy has to switch between trumpet and piano, so they build in a drum solo for Max Roach to give him time.
The master is take two, after that one false start. You may read it took sixteen takes. Sixteen is the whole date: six titles in three hours.
In Parker's first chorus, the "Cherokee" melody turns up anyway, as a hint, in shorter notes. All at about three hundred beats a minute.
LioraWhat did the critics make of it?
SilasMetronome was not kind. Savoy put the record out in early 1946, and that May the magazine called it "another weird product." It was so hard that Parker seldom played it afterward. He saved it mostly for big occasions, like Carnegie Hall concerts and radio broadcasts. In 2002, the Library of Congress added it to the National Recording Registry.
Gary Giddins wrote a Parker biography, Celebrating Bird. He told NPR what you find if you keep listening. "It isn't just a bunch of incredibly fast notes. It's all melody."
LioraThe one thing the label wouldn't pay for was the melody. Bird brought his own.
That's The Bridge. Back to today, right after this.
Four. On the Road: Snug Harbor in New Orleans marks what would have been Abdullah Ibrahim's ninety second
LioraTonight, coast to coast.
Tonight's ticket is in New Orleans.
Snug Harbor has the Jazz Generations Initiative's tribute to Abdullah Ibrahim. The club's own page says today would have been Ibrahim's ninety second birthday. He died in June, at ninety one. Courtney Bryan on piano, Max Moran on bass, Jason Marsalis on drums. Two shows, seven thirty and nine thirty. Forty one dollars and thirty cents.
Now the sweep.
In New York, the Birdland Theater has a Thelonious Monk Birthday Celebration with Uri Caine, Ben Allison and Steve Smith, at seven, thirty five forty six to forty five seventy six, and at nine thirty, forty five seventy six. Upstairs in the Birdland Jazz Club, the Ron Carter Foursight Quartet at eight thirty and ten thirty, both sets reading "sales ended."
LioraIn Chicago, the Jazz Showcase has Christopher McBride and the Whole Proof at eight and ten. Thirty five, fifty for a preferred seat.
And in Hollywood, the Catalina has a B.B. King tribute with Daryl Darden's All-Star Band, eight thirty, forty one oh five to sixty two fifteen. The club also charges every patron a forty nine cent music royalty fee. On today of all days, read that line twice.
Five. One More Note: October 9, 1939, in Hollywood: Charlie Barnet cuts "The Wrong Idea" and "The Right Idea"
LioraOctober ninth, 1939. Hollywood.
Charlie Barnet spent a day at Victor making fun of the band business. The UC Santa Barbara archive has the cards. "The Wrong Idea," written by Billy May and Barnet, with May singing it. "The Right Idea." And "Ogoun Badagris," subtitled "Voodoo War God."
"The Right Idea" and the voodoo war god went out as the two sides of one Bluebird. "The Wrong Idea" got a record of its own.
Barnet had the 1939 hit on "Cherokee," for RCA Victor. This is a Barnet date from that same October, for the same company.
Outro
LioraThat's the Quintet. If today's show earned it, follow The Daily Quintet wherever you listen.
The Daily Quintet is an AI-crafted production, researched and checked by humans. Every listing you heard came from the venue or the festival's own organizer.
That's your Friday. I'm Liora. See you tomorrow.