Off the cuff notes and thoughts on Bird, Part III: Photo by William Gottlieb, Three Deuces, NYC, ca. 1947, public domain It's hard to say with confidence what the "most ______" of Bird's recorded output is without comprehensively surveying the territory, which is fairly well-defined at this point, but would still require at least 72 hours of time on hand and access to the complete discography. I believe I've heard most of the publicly available recordings, although there are still a number of recordings that I haven't been able to get a hold of—most notably tunes from a spring 1951 performance supposedly in Boston, as well as a quartet performance as part of Jazz at the Philharmonic from November 1948. What surprised me most wasn't any single holy grail-type recording, but instead the consistency of the entire body of work, which is almost unerringly excellent and many times great.