Charlie Parker

Unlike some musicians (Sidney Bechet, for one, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, for another), Charlie Parker was not a child prodigy by any means. He began playing the sax as a pre-teen and piddled around a bit. He apparently lost interest for a couple of years before he took the horn up again. His formal musical education was limited to playing in his local Kansas City high school band. Kansas City at the time, though, was the midwestern center for the high life, and in a day where real music meant live music, the town became a magnet for musicians who couldn't or preferred not to wind their way to Chicago, New Orleans, or New York. Charlie quickly saw playing a horn was a ticket out of the poverty that surrounded him and his mother. So Charlie soon dropped out of school, paid his union dues, and became a professional musician.

Even then Charlie wasn't the phenomenon he later became, and it took near constant practice for him to acquire the fluency that made other musicians stop and listen. Charlie's early problems were simply inexperience and owning rather poor quality instruments. But the reasons for not playing well don't matter when you want to sit in with professionals. Eddie Barfield, himself a rising young alto player, said Charlie sounded so bad they wouldn't let him play.

But Charlie didn't sound bad for long, and like most people he really learned his craft on the job. He also finally acquired a top line instrument after the car carrying the band to a job skidded off the road and crashed. The accident killed one band member and broke Charlie's ribs. Amazingly (particularly for that day and age), the impressario worked out an insurance agreement which paid Charlie over three hundred dollars - big bucks for the time. He took the money and bought a top of the line Selmer.

Charlie's most valuble teacher was probably the saxophonist Buster Smith. Buster (the "Prof" to his friends) hired the teenager to play in his band. Buster confirms Charlie had trouble keeping up with the other musicians, but he recognized Charlie's potential and worked to improve the kid's playing. Under the Prof's tutelage, Charlie combined his undoubted talent and just plain hard work to where his playing quickly began to stand out. The jazz pianist Jay McShann (who also later hired Charlie) said he once heard a broadcast of Busters' band. When he next saw Buster he told him he had sounded particularly good. Buster said he hadn't played that night. That was Charlie Parker.

By the early 1940's, Charlie had abandoned Kansas City (and we must admit, his wife Rebecaa and his son, Leon) and moved to New York. He played in Jay's band, and soon other musicians began to notice the fluent sax player from KC. But as good as Charlie's playing now was, it didn't mean he could write his own ticket. Part of his problem was a horrible unreliability caused at least in part (as everyone knows) by the heroin habit he picked up in his teens. Band leaders would prefer a very good musician who shows up for his gigs rather than a great musician who doesn't. In 1941, Earl Hines hired Charlie away from Jay. Three or four months later Earl told Jay he could take Charlie back. Jay didn't.

It was Jay, by the way, who has given us the most direct story of how Charlie got the sobriquet "Bird". Although the account is oral history (which is not always a terribly reliable source), Jay's account has the virtue of being first hand. Jay, Charlie, and the band were driving to a job, and the car with Charlie hit a chicken. Charlie told the driver to stop, and he got out and picked up the bird. As was common then, the band members were staying at private residences, and Charlie asked their hostess if she'd cook the "yardbird" for him. She said sure, and after that, Charlie was always "Yardbird", "Yard" (which Dizzie Gillespie was still using long after Charlie was dead), and (of course) "Bird".

Charlie's knowledge of chord structure, scales and modes, and his ability to play in all keys made him a great improviser. He would sometimes make up passages in response to something going on in the club or hall where he was performing. Improvisation, though, was just a part of Charlie's playing. Much of what sounds improvised was actually worked out in meticulous detail and different takes of a recording show some of his most complex passages were repeated almost note for note. Similarly and although overshadowed by his famed solos, an equally impressive feature of Charlie's (and his other band members') playing was the complex rhythmic and harmonic lines played in perfect unison. You don't do that by just picking up your horn and blowing.

It's odd that so many people found bebop jazz to be discordant and even upsetting since it was actually a natural (almost inevitable) outgrowth of a number of jazz genres. Rising costs had forced the demise of the big band era and so working in small combos were the only way most jazz musicians could survive. Jazz had always featured show pieces where the players were allowed to strut their stuff and even the mainstream swing sax man Jimmy Dorsey used runs and phrasing that were closer to bop than most of the traditional swing jazzists would admit (Charlie, by the way, always liked Jimmy's playing).

Although the gist of Charlie Parker's life is known, many of the details remain obscure, and his personal relationships were complex. Even exactly how many times he was actually married and divorced (and even if he was married and divorced at any particular time) aren't easily sorted out. But one story about Charlie is true. When he died, on March 22, 1955, the medical examiner estimated his age somewhere between 50 and 60. He was thirty-four.

So remember, kids. Don't try this at home.

References

Bird Lives..... Although CooperToons is often critical of people using the Internet as major source material (a case of the pot calling the kettle black you might think), there are some websites that rise to the level of the highest scholarship and objectivity. Bird Lives..... is probably the most comprehensive and accurate accounts of Bird's life on the net (or in print for that matter). The author has done the necessary homework and thoroughly discusses the varied and at times conflicting evidence. Best of all we have primary documented evidence which - as is so often the case - contradicts accepted wisdom oft times derived from verbal accounts and memory. If you want a good, accurate, and intelligible account of the life of Charlie Parker, this is the place.

Charlie Parker: His Music And Life, Carl Woideck, The University Of Michigan Press,(1996). This biography is pretty unique in that the majority of the book actually discusses Bird's music. Even samples of the passages are notated. From that standpoint it may seem to scimp over the details of his life and is not a straightforward traditional biography.

Celebrating Bird: The Triumph of Charlie Parker, Gary Giddings (Director), 1987. Although Ken Burn's Jazz episode Risk covers Charlie's life as well (and in more detail), this earlier documentary has some interviews with those who knew Charlie personally but were not interviewed for Ken's film. The interviews in Celebrating Bird have also been used as sources in various biographies. CooperToons saw this film when it first came out (and while sitting in a hotel room on a business trip to Boston), and it made an impression.

Risk, Ken Burns (Producer), 2001. From the famous Jazz series. One amusing interview was when Allen Ginsberg tells us how the bebop jazz was spontaneous and anyone could just pick up an "ax" and "blow". Allen's remarks were played after the narrator had said that this was a misconception by the public since only the most accomplished musicians could play bebop. But to be fair, Allen didn't explicitly say that all spontaneous jazz was good jazz.