"A Night in Tunisia" (Bud Powell Trio)

I was in a jazz music appreciation class in college, and I heard "A Night in Tunisia" for the first time as homework.  (Our assignments each week were to listen to a specific set of songs and read the liner notes from a boxed set compiled by The Smithsonian.  Hard work, I know.)   The song was sitting among some other great bebop tunes from the late 1940s by saxophonist Charlie Parker and trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie.  I recognized "A Night in Tunisia" as a Gillespie composition, but The Smithsonian had chosen a cut by the Bud Powell Trio.  Who was Bud Powell?  I had no idea.
(Talk about an eye-opening experience.)
As I would learn in class, Powell basically defined piano playing for the bebop era, often playing at a breakneck pace and rarely if ever holding a note for more than a moment.  
He also was an example of one of jazz's tragic stories: substance/alcohol abuse, mental illness, stints in psychiatric hospitals, stints in jail, bouts with physical illness including tuberculosis, and ultimately a disintegration of his talents before dying at the age of 41.
In spite of (or maybe because of) these lifelong challenges, he invented a style that, like Parker's, tried to pack as much life and living as possible into one song--or even into a single solo.  
Powell (whom you also can hear singing/grunting along as he plays) literally floats across the keyboard throughout this recording of "A Night in Tunisia."  I don't think he plays anything other than 16th notes for 90% of the song!   And even though every note comes flying at you at lightning speed, every note is in its proper place.  It reveals a virtuosity and vision that is rare.
But it was the funky groove on snares and cowbell, laid down by drummer Max Roach, that initially grabbed me when I heard the song for the first time.  (Hip-hop producers dream about drum breaks that sick.)  And then when Curly Russell falls in with that unmistakable undulating bassline, it transports you to another place--somewhere between North Africa and 52nd Street, circa 1951.