Celebrating Bird: The Triumph of Charlie Parker 9780816690411, 2013030843, 0816690413

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Celebrating

Bird

Celebrating

Bird

The Triumph of Charlie Parker Revised Edition

Gary Giddins

University of Minnesota Press Minneapolis • London

First published in 1987 by Beech Tree Books; second edition published in 1998 by Da Capo Press. First University of Minnesota Press edition, 2013

Copyright 1987, 2013 by Gary Giddins All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Published by the University of Minnesota Press 111 Third Avenue South, Suite 290 Minneapolis, MN 55401-2520 http://www.upress.umn.edu Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Giddins, Gary. Celebrating Bird : the triumph of Charlie Parker / Gary Giddins. First University of Minnesota Press edition. Includes discography, bibliographical references, and index. ISBN 978-0-8166-9041-1 (pb) 1. Parker, Charlie, 1920–1955. 2. Jazz musicians—United States—Biography. I. Title. ML419.P4G5 2013 788.7'3165092—dc23 2013030843 [B] Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper The University of Minnesota is an equal-opportunity educator and employer. 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13     10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

For Deborah Eve

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wallace stevens

I know noble accents And lucid, inescapable rhythms; But I know, too, That the blackbird is involved In what I know

elizabeth hardwick

For the grand destruction one must be worthy.

aristotle

Some would hold . . . that music has some contribution to make to the cultivation of our minds and to the growth of moral wisdom.

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CONTENTS



Prelude to the Revised Edition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xi

1.

Bird Lives! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

2.

Youth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

3.

Apprenticeship . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55

4.

Mastery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87

5.

Bird Lives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111



Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147



A Selected Discography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151



A Selected Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171



Photography Credits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177



Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181

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Prelude to the Revised Edition

charlie parker, who died at thirty-four in 1955, was an

artist deeply embedded in jazz history, legendary yet omnipresent— a spring of anecdotal veneration—when Celebrating Bird: The Triumph of Charlie Parker was first published in 1987. More than a quarter century later, he seems curiously less remote. Once I thought of him as a figure before my time; now I am fascinated by the fact that we haven’t even reached his centenary. History fosters temporal illusions, fractured perspectives. Time, like jazz, speeds up, slows down, and circles back on itself. Growing up, I thought westerns depicted an ancient epoch until I learned that Wyatt Earp was alive to hear Louis Armstrong’s Hot Seven and read about Lindbergh crossing the Atlantic. In short, Parker is our contemporary. You can speak to people who spoke to him; not nearly as many as when I wrote this book, but quite a few. Age and custom have not dimmed the brilliance of his art, which, forged virtually in secret, illumined a panicky postwar world. Charlie Parker and his peers, shoulders to the wheel, inspiration through the roof, created the bedrock of

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modern jazz, its aspirations and language. We hear him more than we know. The first time I read an essay on Charlie Parker, I got lost in the usual moniker switcheroo: first the writer talks about Parker, then about Bird. No one I knew could explain, although a high school music teacher suggested he might be referring to the jazz guitarist Charlie Byrd. But soon I underwent a reboot of the epiphany that had hit me (in fifth grade, with the exaltation of pealing church bells) when, mulishly trying to make sense of the opening chapters of The Brothers Karamazov, I twigged that Alexei and Alyosha were the same guy, ditto Dmitry and Mitya—ditto maxima, Parker and Bird. When I started writing music criticism, I made a point of not switching proper nouns without an explanatory clause, until an exasperated editor said, “Really, everyone knows Charlie Parker is called Bird.” Reading through a jazz magazine in the 1960s, you could hardly turn the page without finding mention of him. Clearly, if you wanted to dig jazz, you were expected to discern basic Bird. I cannot recall why I launched my Parker expedition with Bird Symbols, on the infamous Charlie Parker Records—just lucky, I guess. It certainly was not because of the black and white jacket, with its shadowy photograph of an African American male who might or might not be (I vote not) Charlie Parker. It was probably a reduced-price cutout. Doris Parker, one of his embattled common-law wives, and Aubrey Mayhew, a country music entrepreneur and JFK fetishist, began the label in 1961, after Parker temporarily wrested sufficient control of the estate to lay claim to the Dial recordings and unprotected airchecks. The company lasted three or four years, though several of its forty-six albums, a third of them by Parker (including a few that recycled the same material but with different covers and titles), lingered in bargain bins. Mayhew’s liner notes boasted of audio enhancement, but it would be hyperbole to say that he was high on fidelity: one LP featured a singer who sang into a closed mike; another exposed a piano trio to treble intensities that can shatter

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eardrums; another preserves a vaudevillian telling stories to inaptly screeching laughter. The label’s logo, with its illustration of a beretwearing bird playing saxophone, should have been: Take a chance! I did. Some of its music is fine (Duke Jordan, Cecil Payne, Art Pepper, the Orioles, Mundell Lowe’s big band score for a Times Square sexploitation film Satan in High Heels). The audio is mostly early garage band: thumping bass, small-space echo, nebulous rumbling. This is especially true of the Parker tapes from the Rockland Palace, the Royal Roost, and Birdland, and the Dial studio classics, which have raw edges and a streak of urgency that good sound can blunt. Bird Symbols, with only twelve tracks, is my favorite Dial sampler: the best takes of the best selections plus window-rattling bass levels. But while I played it to death and quickly added other Parker albums, better produced and engineered, I can’t say that I responded to Bird straightaway. The tunes were so autonomous, unlike anything I’d heard, the fast ones amazingly fast, the slow ones achingly slow, all of it sharp, knowing, aggressive, as if to say, “Hop on board, if you dare.” Years later, after I began teaching, I was intrigued to find that students responded in much the same way: with trepidation. They had followed me through Armstrong and swing, and never blinked when we got to Ornette Coleman and Cecil Taylor, but the volatile 1945 Savoy record of “Koko” unnerved them. They could make no sense of it, and when I assured them it was just (just!) melody, albeit at supersonic speed, they scoffed. When this happened the next year, I told a colleague, who said he seduced his classes into Bird with a three-minute excerpt from the irresistible “Funky Blues,” issued by Verve, or Savoy’s “Now’s the Time,” with its rhythm and blues sensibility. But where’s the pedagogical fun in that? I continued to start the class with “Koko” without preface, enjoying the general alarm (and disappointed when there was none), then handed out a transcription of the two-chorus solo, having circled memorable bits that the ear invariably registers. We listened to the breakdown take, with its “Cherokee” reference, and a pop version

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of “Cherokee”; we counted out the sixty-four-bar choruses; we listened again. By the end of the two-hour seminar, they were more than smitten; they were possessive, even proud, as if they personally had found the sound of a great amen. They had. What a stroke of genius for Parker, at his longdelayed maiden voyage as a recording artist, to announce himself with as uncompromising a paradigm shift as “Koko,” leaving most swing fans in the dust, most virtuosos scratching their heads, most critics despondent. This was not just about music. This was a generational call to arms. Small wonder that the mainstream press preferred to focus on berets, goatees, dark glasses, slang, secret handshakes, dope, sex. Yet another aspect of Parker’s playing, beyond the pyrotechnics, proved more profound and elusive: his elegance, his ability not just to launch an ingenious phrase but to bring it home with the same authority and grace. His imitators often allowed phrases to splinter off in angular feints. Parker’s sovereign conviction was ever matched by a singular devotion to melodic logic and sublime execution. He takes care of the listener. If Celebrating Bird gave me an opportunity to celebrate Bird, something I had already done in several essays and would continue to do in the future, it also allowed me to take a shot at a kind of ­writing I longed to try: an extended biographical critical essay, a brief life. My model—indeed, the first thing that came to mind when I started on the project—was Sartre’s “The Prisoner of ­Venice,” his superb and concise study of Tintoretto. It appeared in English in his 1965 collection Situations and inspired me no less than Charlie Parker did. I always wanted to write biography, and the brief life appealed to me not least as an apprenticeship route. The first “grown-up” book I read was Paul de Kruif’s Microbe Hunters; most of my childhood reading, beyond comic books, consisted of biographies in the Landmark and Signature children’s series. What got to me about Sartre’s “Prisoner of Venice” was that it did everything, fluidly crossing the borders of biography, criticism, psychology, history, speculation. By the 1980s, I had read Johnson,

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­ oswell, Strachey, and Sartre’s longer Saint Genet, and I knew what B I wanted to do, if not how to do it. The University of Minnesota Press has kindly given me the chance to revisit and revise a book I had not thought about in a long time. I have taken this opportunity to clean and tighten the gears, restore a few cuts, and add a few elaborations, but essentially I left the work alone. The discography and bibliography have been updated; the text hasn’t. To do that would be to undermine and falsify whatever value it has. I think it holds up pretty well. I know the pictures do. G. G. August 2013

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Celebrating

Bird

1. b i r d l i v es !

M

ythologies die hard. The witness to Charlie

Parker’s death heard a clap of thunder at the moment of his ­passing. The ­companion of his last years remains in spiritual contact with him after more than thirty years. His childhood sweetheart and first wife continues to hear his music as nothing more or less than the “story of our lives together,” though all his recorded music and innovations postdated their relationship. Countless musicians tell their own stories in terms of Parker’s influence on them, as if they had been dawdling contentedly down one path until they heard his call and abruptly about-faced. Such testimonies of veneration and awe, shot through with religious symbology, suggest the extent to which Parker’s posthumous life is clouded with desire and romance. The deification did not begin with his death. Parker enjoyed remarkably little renown during his short life, yet he was faithfully attended by disciples and hagiographers—musicians, critics, and a coterie of enthusiasts drawn mostly though not exclusively from the fractious, defensive

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world of jazz, inspired by his music to a voluble rapture that finds comfort in the elaborations of hyperbole, allegory, myth. Parker’s status as a prophet evolved inadvertently, a by-product of his willed destiny to become “a great musician.” As an apprentice in Kansas City jazz circles, he got off to a painfully slow start, impressing fellow apprentices with little more than his confidence and determination. Some thought him lazy, obdurate, and spoiled. But the young man was favored with supernatural abilities, and the tempo of his life quickened soon enough. Resolve gave way to obsession and a desire to succeed equaled only by a vertiginous need to fail. He hurled himself at the gates, falsifying his age to gain entry into the most competitive nightclubs, daring Kansas City to reject him (it did), and maximizing every rejection as a stimulus for new feats. He pursued his muse with astonishing assurance. At sixteen, he was laughed off a bandstand; at seventeen, he made converts—including Jay McShann, a stranger in town, who eventually offered him the chance to reject Kansas City. The fledgling, who many years later would answer a query about his religious affiliation by declaring himself “a devout musician,” was too conscious of his talent, too possessed of pride, and too much the product of racial repression and maternal sanction not to suspect that a larger world awaited him—a world he could recast in his own image. It is no surprise to learn that Parker was embarrassed by the insipid onomatopoeia bebop, which got tarred to modern jazz and which survives his scorn with a rather chipper defiance. He never proselytized for modernism in any guise. Impatient with those who attempted to stampede him into aesthetic pigeonholes, he ­jousted with critics. He honored the traditions of jazz in one inter­view (Down Beat, 1948) and dismissed them in another (Down Beat, 1949). Asked to distinguish between his music and that of his predecessors, however, he invariably demurred: “It’s just music. It’s trying to play clean and looking for the pretty notes” (1949). His willingness to let people draw their own conclusions is encapsu­lated in his one surviving television appearance, when he disdain­fully

2

Charlie Parker, Detroit, 1950.

tells a dotty emcee, the Broadway gossip columnist Earl Wilson, “Well, Earl, they say music speaks louder than words, so we’d rather voice our opinion that way.” Everyone agrees that he knew his own worth and had neither the need nor the desire to politick on behalf of a new movement. On the contrary, he kept himself humble with an attentive enthusiasm for those modernists— Stravinsky, Hinde­mith, Schönberg, Bartok—who were skilled in

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the ­compositional ­techniques he coveted. Yet, at twenty-five he was the acknowledged leader of a new and distinctly American music; at thirty, his genius was recognized by musicians around the world; at thirty-four, when he died, he was regarded as an elder statesman who had yet to be superseded by his descend­ants. No sooner was he buried—in ­Easter season—than the graffiti appeared: Bird lives! Parker’s followers dogged his footsteps, often equipped with tape recorders to preserve his improvised performances (but not necessarily those of his accompanying soloists, who also have claims on posterity). Some put words to his music. One such lyricist, a singer who called himself King Pleasure, Louis Armstrong, Chicago, 1930. made a profession of the practice and paid Parker the dubious but canonical tribute of predicting his early demise in his words to “Parker’s Mood.” Parker sought allies (and could be stern with musicians who failed to make the grade), but he did not seek followers and tended to be contemptuous of idolizers. He had little use for cult foppery—beret, beard, jive talk—or cult arrogance. If he seems to have attracted converts rather than mere fans, the reason is obvious. Parker was the first jazz player after Louis Armstrong whose innovations demanded a comprehensive reassessment of all the elements of jazz. A great saxophonist influences saxophonists, and a drummer, drummers. But Parker, like Armstrong before him, engineered a

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total shift in the jazz aesthetic. The autodidactic country boy from Kansas City brought modernism to jazz. He forced players on every instrument to face their worst fears or realize their most prized ­aspirations in his music. Established players, satisfied with approved jazz styles, encountered in Parker’s music fresh concepts of harmony, melody, and rhythm—all of which evolved from precedents easily found in classic jazz—and something more unsettling: an iconoclastic sensibility that threatened to undermine generally accepted standards of excellence. Younger players were more open to Melville’s shock of recognition, which binds not only the community of geniuses but that of apprentice artists impatient to express their own powers in a world paralyzed with orthodoxy. No surprise,

At the Three Deuces, 1948. Left to right: Tommy Potter, Charlie Parker, Max Roach (hidden behind Charlie Parker), Miles Davis, and Duke Jordan.

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then, that so many musicians of Parker’s generation (and not a few ­elders) tell of how he changed their lives with a way of playing and ­thinking about music they scarcely imagined. The witnesses are many, but the language is similar: When I first came to Kansas City, I went to all the clubs to meet all the musicians. So one night I stopped in a club and Bird was blowing. That was in 1937, and he was playing, and you know the first time you hear Bird, you hear it—you’ve got to hear it. I asked him, “Say, man, where are you from? You don’t play like anybody else in Kansas City.” He said, “Well, I’ve been down in the Ozarks with George Lee’s band. It’s hard to get musicians to go down there, because it’s quiet and musicians like to be where the action is, but I wanted to do some woodshedding so I went down there with George. That’s probably the reason you think I sound different.” dizzy gillespie I had a friend, Buddy Anderson, who played good trumpet with Jay McShann, and we’d jam together in Kansas City. He wanted me to hear this saxophone player, but I wasn’t too interested because I’d been hearing Don Byas, Lester Young, Chu Berry, Coleman Hawkins, and Ben Webster, and I said, “Not another saxophone player!” Until I heard him. Jesus! Knocked me off my feet. We played all day that day. red rodney Dizzy kept telling me about this saxophone player I had to hear. . . . He took me up to New York with him and I met Charlie Parker. When I heard him play I near fell out the window. Oh, my God! Everything came together at one time. I knew then. I knew where it was and who was it and what I had to do. buddy de franco He was just three years older than me, but he seemed so much more mature and older. . . . When I got to know him I got to realize that he was more than just an jay m c shann

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i­nnovator and a musician. He was a deep, extremely knowledgeable person, though self-taught. I don’t think he had professional training and teaching, but his fingers were perfect. His technique was just perfect—as though he had years of schooling. To me it’s incredible that he’s the one person in jazz who influenced the entire jazz world. Every bit of it. joe newman Jay McShann had his band at the Savoy Ballroom, and Rudy Williams, a well-known alto player at the time, said, “Come on with me, man, I want you to meet this alto player.” He introduced me to Bird and the first time I heard him play I couldn’t believe it, because he was doing something different from what everybody else was doing, and it was obvious his style was going to force things in another direction. thad jones I was in the army on an island called Guam, traveling with a GI show. There were about six of us, all in our tent, preparing for the evening and listening to the radio, and all of a sudden Dizzy comes on playing “Shaw ’Nuff” with Charlie Parker. And, you know, I can’t describe what went on in that tent. We went out of our minds! . . . It was the newness and the impact of that sound and the technique. It was something we were probably trying to articulate ourselves and just didn’t know how. And Dizzy and Bird came along and did Buddy De Franco, Loew’s Kings Theater, it. They spoke our minds. Brooklyn, New York, March 24, 1952.

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Parker’s travail as prophetic genius, accepted only by a co­terie in his own country, was hardly as ­unambiguous as that of the traditional romance. Nor, tragically, were his converts satisfied with imitating just his music. The usual tale of the exceptionally gifted and sensitive young artist who is emboldened by despair and suffering, who ultimately overcomes self-doubt and public indifference, is too conventional, too perfunctory (perhaps too European) to suit Charlie Parker. Parker achieved hipster sainthood in part by transcending, in word if not in deed, a full measure of Augustinian vices. If Parker’s career was a frantic quest for musical fulfillment, it was continuously detoured by self-destructive impulses so gargantuan that they too became the stuff of legend. The bop king had another, by no means secret, identity as king of the junkies, and votaries unable to get close to him musically were eager to share the communion of drugs. “Do as I say, not as I do,” Parker warned friends when they asked about that part of his life. He kept it private, refusing to partake with those he respected, at least until they were as far gone as he was. Despite his warnings, they persisted in the sometimes fatal belief that Parker drew part of his seemingly inexhaustible greatness from burnt teaspoons of white powder. Disconcerted commentators can be forgiven the inclination to link Parker’s gluttonies to racism and an absent father. Still, something basic in Parker’s individuality resists the familiar simplifications of fast-Freud analyses. The colossal majesty and authority of this man are diminished when the culpability for his downfall is removed from his shoulders and attributed to uncontrollable circumstances. Racist and philistine societies are alike; every artist is unique. The shift in blame from Parker himself to, say, a frustration with the uncomprehending masses tethers him to the very prosaicness his art unequivocally counters. Always a step ahead of the mobs, he cut himself down before they could. Still, it must be emphasized that as a black man in mid-twentieth-century America, Parker suffered more than personal injustices. He also endured a constant, debilitating slander against his art. Minority citizens

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Clockwise: Billy Bauer, Eddie Safranski, Charlie Parker, and Lennie Tristano, RCA Studios, New York, January 1949, at a recording session for the Metronome All Stars.

bird lives !

healthily buffered by their own communities do not look to the oppressive majority for a sense of identity. The artist, however, does seek recognition in the community of artists that defies, or ought to defy, the conventionalism, mediocrity, and pettiness that are born of racism and nationalism. In that community, a fate worse than neglect is recognition followed by expulsion for lack of an acceptable pedigree. By most accounts, Parker could not be cowed by the insanity of white supremacism. But the vexation he endured on behalf of his art was lifelong and stifling.

Roy Haynes and Charlie Parker at the Open Door, January 1953.

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Parker was bred in one of the richest musical communities in America: Kansas City in the 1930s. In addition to constant access to dozens of the most individual and accomplished musicians in the country, he could hear the rest of the world’s best jazz musicians on recordings and radio. As a provisionally popular music, jazz wasn’t merely available; it was virtually inescapable. But partly because of its popularity, it was also reputed to be lacking in seriousness: a folk music at best, or a ballroom fashion, or a fad for the young—or, at worst, an exercise in decadence, a sound track to vice. The combination of Jim Crow contempt and the public’s inability to distinguish genuine achievement from meretricious travesties invariably favored the exposure of white bands—and not the good ones. As those bands diluted their music with trite novelties and showmanship of the funnyhats variety, jazz itself was often construed to be a low, feeble art. In Europe, Japan, and elsewhere, jazz was celebrated as vital music. In the United States, jazz was confined to gin mills and dance halls, all but barred from concert halls until 1938, when Benny Goodman’s band (and guests, ­including

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Kansas City’s Count Basie) played Carnegie Hall; not until five years later was Duke Ellington accorded the same platform. When Parker and “the Stars of Modern Jazz” (among them Bud Powell, ­Sarah Vaughan, Miles Davis, Stan Getz, Max Roach, and Lennie Tristano) played Carnegie Hall in 1949, not one of New York’s dozen or so newspapers and tabloids reviewed the event. Universities and musical conservatories snubbed it for much longer. Jazz was discounted by most classical music critics, and still is. When he died in 1955, Charlie Parker was arguably the most influential musician in the country. Jazz musicians copied him so shamelessly that the pianist Lennie Tristano remarked that Parker ought to invoke plagiarism laws. Charles Mingus routinely made a show of

Left to right: Billy Bauer, Eddie Safranski, Charlie Parker, and Lennie Tristano: the rhythm section for the Metronome All Stars recording session, January 1949.

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Charlie Parker and Red Rodney listen to Dizzy Gillespie and Clyde Lombardi at the Club Downbeat, New York City, 1948.

firing his musicians on the bandstand for relying on Parker clichés. Studio musicians, composers, and producers, no less mesmerized by Parker’s ideas, wove bebop harmonies and melodic figures (once considered terrifyingly complex) into film and television scores, as well as arrangements for pop and rock-and-roll records. While the 1950s saw the production of movie valentines to such white band leaders as Glenn Miller, Eddie Duchin, and Benny Goodman, the proliferation of jazz scores in that same period (by Elmer Bernstein, Johnny Mandel, Henry Mancini, Lalo Schifrin, and several others, not least composers who apprenticed with Parker, like John Lewis, Miles Davis, and Gerry Mulligan) directly reflected the modernism of Parker and his peers. It is doubtful that television’s impresario

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Dizzy Gillespie leading his Orchestra, c. 1948.

Ed Sullivan knew that his entrances were cued by Parkeresque phrases, or that filmgoers who saw The Helen Morgan Story realized that its 1920s torch singer crooned to bebop licks, or that kids dancing to “The Hucklebuck” recognized the melody as Parker’s “Now’s the Time.” Six decades after Parker and Gillespie popularized Latin rhythms, salsa bands continue to feature solos played in their styles. As Parker’s influence extended into the repertory of “legitimate” ensembles (David Amram symphonies with passages for Parker-style solos, John Lewis fugues and ballets), Gunther Schuller coined the term “Third Stream” to suggest the new pluralism made possible by

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Parker’s music. Long before that, Parker’s impact superseded music. Novelists, poets, and painters cited him as the trigger to spiritual and cerebral breakthroughs: the action painting of Jackson Pollack, the cinematic improvisation of John Cassavetes, the bebop prosody of Jack Kerouac, who likened Parker to Buddha. Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, Bud Powell, Kenny Clarke, and others jammed their way—literally, at after-hours sessions for the cognoscenti, in uptown nightclubs where shingles might have been hung reading “Bebop Spoken Here”—into a music that drew a line, at once inadvertent and deliberate, between the way jazz was before the war and the way it had to be after. They redefined its language harmonically, rhythmically, melodically, and psychically. Their music was said to be incomprehensible, even by musicologists. It was not popular music, but it could not be ignored because it seeped into everything. It received the dubious but telling flattery of parody, from Bing Crosby and Patty Andrews singing “Be-Bop Spoken Here,” in 1949, to a plethora of dramatized delinquents, dropouts, and existentialists in black turtlenecks, comical or tragic, wearing goatees, carrying bongos, speaking the alleged language (“crazy, man, crazy”) of hipster jazz. Yet the ­music had been forged with uncompromising purity. It reflected the righteous urgency of discovery, alternately emotional, funny, and sublime, and frequently so exhilarating it demanded a primary response from the brain because the feet could no longer keep up.

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Yet the various rewards with which a society pays tribute to its artists were denied Parker. The academic musical world, notwith­ standing individual admirers such as Varèse, never knew him. Count­ less jazz and popular performers who worshipped him achieved a renown that persistently eluded Parker. In fact, the ­cultural racism that sneers at jazz had sniped at his heels from the moment he obtained a saxophone: he never had the option of studying at either of the two conservatories in Kansas City because neither accepted black students. When, at the peak of his influence, Life ran an article on bebop, Parker wasn’t discussed. When Time cast about for a cover story on the new jazz, it turned to a white musician with a “classical” education, Dave Brubeck—a slight that is said to have riled Parker. If the mainstream press ignored him, the jazz press was not much more perspicacious. He won few jazz polls, even when all the winners reflected his guidance. The best-known jazz club of the era (Birdland) was named for him, yet in concert appearances with Gillespie he was usually billed second and in smaller type. When he died in New York City, where he’d lived most of his adult life and achieved his greatest successes, a minority of local newspapers published obituaries. Of those that acknowledged his passing, only the New York Post got his age of thirty-four right (the others gave fifty-three) or attempted to suggest his impact on the music of his time. Two papers failed to learn his first name and buried him as Yardbird Parker. Posterity made up for that neglect in a hurry, not with an accurate rendering of facts but with a rush of memories, many of them self-serving, a mad pastiche of discipleship and ardent love. “I knew him better than anyone,” is the most frequent pledge a Parker biographer hears. But the fairest warning he can expect is that of the far from dispassionate observer who said, “You will talk to a million people and you will hear of a million Charlie Parkers.” One wonders if it is possible to peel away the Charlie Parker created in death by family and partisans, hagiographers and voyeurs, and if so, to what purpose? Would a Charlie Parker reduced to life size be more

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easily apprehended, understood, and admired, or even closer to the truth, than the one of legend? The one irreducible fact of his existence is his genius, which will not cater to the routine explanations of psychologists, sociologists, anthropologists, or musicologists. But a basic ordering of facts, as best they can be adduced in spite of conflicting claims, may, at least, complement the music of Charlie Parker and engage the imagination of listeners who know the ravishing pleasures of his art.

Birdland and the Bandbox, Broadway near Fifty-second Street, New York City, January 1953.

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2 . yo u t h

C

harles parker jr. was born August 29, 1920, in

Kansas City, Kansas, during a bitterly contested presidential election. In previous weeks, Senator Warren G. Harding of Ohio had emerged as the compromise candidate for the Republicans, with Governor Calvin Coolidge of Massachusetts filling out the ticket. The New York Times, in an extraordinary front-page editorial, accused the convention of “cowardice and imbecility” and argued “we must go back to Franklin Pierce if we would seek a President who measures down to [Harding’s] political stature.” The Democrats settled on Ohio’s Governor James Cox and Secretary of the Navy Franklin D. Roosevelt. The Republican landslide foretokened an era of unexampled corruption, exceeding party affiliations. Within three years the nation learned of the administration’s illicit dealings in oil reserves. Even before that, numerous municipalities had fallen into the hands of venal politicians and their gangster sponsors, for 1920 was also the year the Volstead Act took effect. Charlie Parker and the King alto he favored when he began playing with an ensemble of strings, c. 1950.

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During its tenure (1920–33), legitimate businessmen were barred from selling, manufacturing, or distributing alcoholic beverages. No other minority group would ever get so generous a boost from Congress as organized crime received from U.S. Representative Volstead; no community would plunge into the trough more extravagantly than Kansas City, Missouri, just across the Kaw River from Charlie Parker’s birthplace. The United States was experiencing birth pangs of various sorts in 1920. The Republican victory repudiated Wilsonian ideal­ ism, which was widely blamed for the country’s entanglement in the Great War. ­Isolationists spurned the League of ­Nations and de-

Charlie Parker and his half brother, John, nicknamed Ikey, Kansas City, Kansas.

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manded reparations from Germany, which succeeded only in help­ing to starve a bellicose nation and ensuring another war. Few noticed, but in 1920 ­Hitler founded the Nazi party. Amer­ica was more con­cerned with domes­tic bolshevism, un­ ionism, and anarchy—Sacco and ­Vanzetti were ­arrested that year. A few new novels—Main Street, The Age of Innocence, This Side of Para­dise, Painted Veils (which was banned as ­ob­scene)—indi­cated a growing im­patience with provincial val­Charlie Parker, Kansas City, Kansas. ues. And a new American music called jazz was successfully touring Europe. Black jazz musicians could not yet record, however, and the hit songs that greeted the infant Charlie Parker included “I Love the Land of Old Black Joe,” “Alabama Moon,” “My Little Bimbo Down on the Bamboo Isle,” and “Whatcha Gonna Do When There Ain’t No Jazz?” Also, curiously, a song called “Cherokee” debuted, entirely unrelated to the one Parker made his anthem. On the other hand, 1920 was the year women were given the vote and a cultural renaissance took hold in Harlem. Massive demonstrations by black soldiers, the theatrical success of Eugene O’Neill’s The Emperor Jones, and the first convention of Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association contributed to renewed awareness of a nation within the nation. The Parkers lived at 852 Freeman Street, an intimate suburban neighborhood quite unlike the glittery city about to burgeon in Missouri. Charles Parker Sr., born in Mississippi and bred in

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Memphis, drifted to Kansas while touring as a dancer and singer on the T.O.B.A. ­circuit, a substandard chain of theaters organized in 1911, which maintained a harsh dominion over black vaude­ville. (The acronym stood for Theater Owners Booking Asso­­ciation, but performers considered it Tough on Black Asses.) His ­sallow ­coloring set off dark brown eyes, and he wore his hair slicked and parted on the side. Parker drank heavily, though rarely at home, as his wife did not Addie Parker, date unknown. tolerate liquor in the house. His alcoholism eventually pre­cip­itated their separation, by which time he had gone to work as a chef on the Pullman line, a job that kept him away from home. Charlie’s mother was the former Addie Boxley, a broad-shouldered, deep-bosomed woman, whom many thought beautiful and all found steely and dignified.* Her family came from Muskogee, Oklahoma, and her part-Choctaw ancestry was readily apparent in prominent cheekbones and thin lips. She wore her gray-streaked hair long, plaited atop her head in two big buns; she favored dangling earrings and large glasses that seemed to magnify her obsidian eyes, which her future daughter-in-law Rebecca Ruffin said “could

* Mrs. Parker’s maiden name is a mystery. The Ruffins, who were close to the Parkers (they were buried in adjoining plots, as the former Rebecca Ruffin pointed out), insisted on Boxley or Boxely. A birth certificate for Charlie Parker, certified in 1958, gives her name as Bailey. Charlie’s passport application says Boyley or Bayley.

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cut you to the quick.” The family was completed by Charlie’s older half-brother, John, known as Ikey, Mr. Parker’s son from a previous liaison with an Italian woman. Addie sent Charlie to a Catholic school reputed to be better than the public school, but she probably regretted her decision when he brought orthodox Roman teachings into her Baptist home. In any case, she soon reenrolled him at a nonsectarian public school. A quiet boy and the focus of his mother’s life, Charlie was well ­behaved, studious, and apparently content. He played with Ikey and a neighborhood friend and rarely spoke of his father, who was usually on the road. During the late twenties, Charles Sr. left on long trips, taking his older son with him. He hoped to find work as a dancer across the river in Missouri, but as the Depression gathered, vaudeville withered. He stayed with the Pullman line, traveling through the Midwest, and Charlie saw him only a couple of times after that. In a 1950 interview with Marshall Stearns, he spoke briefly but with an unmistakable tone of defensiveness about his father. “Sure was a well-tutored guy,” he said, “spoke two or three languages.” In a 1949 interview, Parker said he was seven when the family moved to Missouri. His biographers assume that the 1927 move involved Mr. Parker, but if so, he did not remain and Addie soon broke with him for good. They settled in a traditional two-story frame house in the heart of the black district of the more populous Kansas City, where she worked as a charwoman for Western Union, cleaned houses, took in laundry, and rented the top-floor rooms to boarders. Addie spoiled the boy utterly, Charlie Parker, age 16.

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­dressing him in made-to-order suits (short pants, of course) and refusing to let him deliver papers or do any other kind of work. In the sometimes misleading account Addie gave to Robert George Reisner for Bird: The Legend of Charlie Parker, she boasted: “Whenever he needed anything, all he had to do was call, and it was there. That’s what I worked for and what I lived for, that boy.” In the ­Stearns interview, Parker appears quite animated on the subject of his mother: “She’s very much alive . . . she’s sixty-two and just graduated from nursing school. She don’t look it or act it—she’s spryer than me . . . she takes good care of herself, she owns her own home . . . very well situated.” The home he referred to, the one Addie bought and lived in for the rest of her life, was down the street from the one she rented when she and Charlie first came to Missouri. Located at 1516 Olive Street, the house in which Charlie came of age was a short walk from the nightclubs and dance halls where a new style of jazz was being born. There was a swing on the front porch and eventually a piano and a Victrola in the parlor. Downstairs Addie had a room near the kitchen that separated her from the large room where Charlie slept, warmed in winter by a potbellied stove. His mother claimed he did exceptionally well at Crispus Attucks Public School (named for the African American hero of the Revolutionary War), which Rebecca attended, and one of its teachers remembered him as bright and eager to please. But in recent years, doubt has been cast on whether he attended Attucks at all; Missouri’s school records show no enrollment for him there, while the Penn School (named for the Quaker leader William Penn), in nearby Westport, claims him as a nongraduating alumnus. In any case, his mother withdrew him at some point, probably in sixth grade, and enrolled him at Charles Sumner Elementary School, where he completed classes and graduated in 1931. Rebecca graduated from Attucks in 1931 and did not recall seeing him in attendance, but she did remember the Sumner diploma hanging on the wall of his bedroom.

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One thing is sure: Charlie underwent a sea change in his eleventh or twelfth year. A strangely different Charlie registered for Lincoln High School in 1932. The impeccably dressed, ingratiating, fussed-over child was now an incorrigible truant. Parker often said that he began to dissipate at twelve and started using hard drugs at fifteen—an exaggeration, as will be seen, but one that underscores the trauma of those years. The mystery is compounded by the precipitous speed with which he shuffled off his childhood and found a spiritual home in jazz. If he was destined to become a prominent musician, as he and at least one close friend believed, there were few early signs. His first flirtation with music was as fleeting as that of most children who ask for music lessons. At thirteen, he expressed his enthusiasm for the sound of Rudy Vallee’s alto saxophone on the radio, and his ever-obliging mother bought him a used and unplayable alto for forty-five dollars. She invested a larger sum to repair it, but his interest waned and he loaned the instrument to a friend. Writing of Lautrec, Aldous Huxley observed, “Up The remains of the house at 1516 Olive.

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to the age of ten (provided of course that his teachers don’t interfere) practically every child paints like a genius. Fifteen years later the chances of his still painting like a genius are about four hundred thousand to one.” Charlie’s artistic ripening reversed the usual process. Not until he reached fifteen did the rebel apprentice display an aptitude for music, and even then his talent seemed negligible. During his second try as a freshman, Charlie was encouraged to join the school’s marching band by its locally celebrated bandmaster, Alonzo Lewis, whose students had already numbered several of Kansas City’s professional musicians. At first he was assigned an alto horn, but he impetuously switched to baritone horn when the student who played it graduated. Charlie soon realized the limitations of the cumbersome brass instrument and grew bored with the stilted parts written for it. Addie thought it looked “heavy and funny coiled around Lawrence “88” Keyes, 1945. him with just his head sticking out.” Yet the baritone served the purpose of bringing him into contact with older kids who played music and were charmed by his questions and eagerness. Around this same time, he began associating with Mr. Lewis’s prize pupils, notably pianist Lawrence Keyes,

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who had a band called the Deans of Swing in a club on Eighteenth and Vine, not far from the Parker home and the Crispus Attucks School. Charlie retrieved his alto saxophone and practiced with a vengeance. For nearly two years, nothing about the boy’s playing suggested much promise. Only his obsessiveness, a burning desire that enlarged his gaze beyond customary responsibilities, begged notice. He taught himself as best he could, soliciting help from anyone willing to teach him, and attended school periodically, chiefly to play in the band. He stayed out late, sometimes overnight. Addie looked the other way when he disappeared, though she forbade him from walking into the combat zone near Twelfth Street, where the best musicians were heard. Charlie’s discovery of Kansas City’s musical riches and, indeed, his mother’s move to that city, coincided with the rise to power

George E. Lee Singing Novelty Orchestra. Left to right: Thursto “Sox” Harris, Bob Garner, Charles Bass, George E. Lee, Chester Clark, Julia Lee, and Abe Price, Kansas City, Missouri, 1929.

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Benny Moten’s Band. Left to right: Jimmy Rushing, Jack Washington, Woodie Walder, Count Basie, Leroy Berry, Bus Moten, Eddie Durham, Willie McWashington, Vernon Page, Thamon Hayes, Harlan Leonard, Ed Lewis, Booker Washington, and Bennie Moten, behind Old Folks Home, Kansas City, Missouri, 1929.

of the infamous Tom Pendergast. Born in St. Joseph, Missouri, in 1872, Pendergast was a vain, muscle-bound ward heeler who affected a rakish derby and prized his ability at fisticuffs. His family had long been involved in the distribution of liquor, so when the Volsted Act took effect, he acquired a cement company as a front. His ability to deliver the Democratic vote and the backing of organized crime guaranteed his rise to power. As councilman, he appointed a friend city manager and by 1931 controlled Kansas City, thereafter known as Tom’s Town. The Depression stopped short at his threshold, beyond which gambling, loan sharking, prostitution, narcotics, and extortion thrived. When Pretty Boy Floyd found things too hot in Oklahoma, he lit out for Tom’s Town. So did the Sicilian mafia, which established its midwestern axis there rather than in Chicago, where the Neapolitan Al Capone governed. Naturally, entertainment also flourished. The clubs and dance halls operated day and

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night, and the best musicians in the country were attracted as much by the competitive atmosphere of excellence besting excellence as by the possibilities for employment. Andy Kirk came from Denver, Count Basie from New Jersey, Mary Lou Williams from Pittsburgh. But most of the major jazz players traveled a shorter distance, from Texas, Oklahoma, and Missouri itself. Many of them played in territory bands, and Kansas City was the richest territory of all, the Las Vegas of its day. Among those who passed through, many of them ripe for the picking by eastern promoters, were Jimmy Rushing, Lester Young, Eddie Durham, Hot Lips Page, Jo Jones, Gus Johnson, Walter Page, Ben Webster, Herschel Evans, Dick Wilson, Gene Ramey, Eddie Barefield, Charlie Christian, Buster Smith, Buddy Tate, Henry Bridges, Jay McShann, Joe Turner, Pete Johnson, Jesse Price, Budd Johnson, Bennie Moten, Julia Lee, Herman Walder, Tadd Dameron, Harlan Leonard, and Fred Beckett. If that wasn’t enough, nationally famous touring bands—those of Duke Ellington, Fletcher Henderson, Jimmie Lunceford, Cab Calloway—brought Coleman Hawkins, Chu Berry, Johnny Hodges, Barney Bigard, Willie Smith, Dizzy Gillespie, and various other virtuosi to town. The milieu that the teenage Charlie Parker made his own was soaked in the blues and lavish with scorching rhythms and startling improvisations. Playing absurdly long hours, sometimes around the clock, what with breakfast dates, matinees, dances, and afterhours clubs, the bands specialized in head arrangements, which were invented on the bandstand through the communal mastery of riffs. These punching phrases—short, rhythmic, and memorable— picked up momentum through repetition; they were the building blocks of big band arrangements and the basis for much improvisation. As the Kansas City sound spread across the country, many of those improvised cobbled-together scores were formalized, recorded, notated, and copyrighted—Basie’s “One O’clock Jump,” for example. Like New Orleans and Chicago, Kansas City was a hotbed for creative music financed by racketeers whose only ­interest in

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music was its ability to lure customers. Some thugs forced bands to work free weeks just to flaunt their power. But their power proved fleeting. When Pendergast went to jail for tax fraud in 1938, the Kansas City boom in jazz began to fade. Charlie’s awakening to music was accompanied by another awakening. Rebecca Ellen Ruffin vividly recalled the first time she saw him, on April 10, 1934, as she, her mother, brother, and five

Hot Lips Page, Charlie Parker, Paris, 1949.

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sisters moved into the Parker home. Until her parents divorced, the Ruffin family had lived several blocks away. On the day they brought their belongings to 1516 Olive, toting them up the staircase to settle in the second-floor rooms, Charlie and Addie stood against the lower banister. Rebecca felt his eye on her and imagined that he had never seen so many girls before, and that he singled her out. She noticed he wore knickers, which seemed odd for a

Charlie Parker and Gene Ramey, Wichita, Kansas, 1940.

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boy as big as he was, and made no effort to help them carry their bags. “You want to know about Charlie Parker? I’ll tell you about Charlie Parker—he was lazy!” she said, but with the endearing tone her mother could never comprehend. Fanny Ruffin, an imposing, principled woman (“we were religious, book-learning people,” Rebecca observed), saw her worst suspicions about Charlie’s good-fornothing ways confirmed in his habitual absence from school and his predilection for shooting marbles with a friend, Sterling Bryant, by the side of the house. She called him an alley rat and expressed displeasure at the friendship that swiftly developed between Charlie and her children, especially the daughter he quietly eyed that first day. Rebecca was an uncommonly pretty girl, with fair skin and a slinky figure; a few years later people told her she looked like a young Lena Horne. Born February 23, 1920, she was Charlie’s age and took to him right away. As the families grew close, they discovered they had much in common. Each had lived in Kansas (the Ruffins traveled there from Memphis) and had Indian blood, the Ruffins more than the Parkers. Addie was onequarter Choc­taw and Charles Sr.’s stock is uncertain, while Fannie was ­half-­Cherokee and half-­English, and her ­hus­band, Marcus W. Ruffin, an in­sur­ ance salesman with a dark, ruddy complexion, was ­Indian and Negro. The Parkers and Ruffins lived as one large family, with Charlie increasingly the focus of attention as the other children adopted him as a sibling. Parker’s biographers Rebecca Parker, January 1937.

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have assumed Rebecca was older than Charlie because she graduated from Lincoln High in 1935. But in the Kansas City school system, you went to grade school until you were eleven or twelve and required only four years of secondary school for a diploma, allowing for graduation at fifteen or sixteen. “Extra years” were optional. Charlie would have graduated in 1935, too, had he progressed each term. Rebecca believed he was on the verge of dropping out for good when he was forced to repeat his freshman year. She thought he continued as long as he did simply for the pleaCharlie Parker at Billy Berg’s, sure of walking to and from Hollywood, California, 1946. school with Rebecca and her two sisters: “Charlie enjoyed walking with the three girls—seemed like he had a family.” Charlie was a lonely boy, a mama’s boy. Addie insisted he wear made-to-order suits to high school and treated him like a prince. “He didn’t have to do anything because Parky took care of him,” Rebecca said, using Addie’s nickname given her by a cousin, Hattie Lee, who subsequently moved into the house. Yet Ikey was not around, and other than Sterling, his companion in marbles, Charlie did not seem to have friends. Addie had a boyfriend, a deacon, who visited twice a week and disappeared with her into the bedroom—

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much to Fannie’s consternation. The son would sit in the living room, waiting and looking dejected, while the Ruffin children, congregating around the piano, tried to divert his attention. Rebecca took a job in the library, three days a week for two hours, and Charlie, though his attendance in classes grew erratic again, would wait for her on the school steps until five to walk her home, holding hands and strolling by the shop windows, movie theaters (he loved westerns), and dance halls on Eighteenth and Vine. They didn’t dare wander around Twelfth and Paseo, however, barely a mile away, where the best musicians played in the town’s roughest clubs, the so-called buckets of blood. This was the area Charlie would shortly be haunting, looking for informal lessons, handouts, and jam sessions to test his mettle. There were large rooms for dancing, like Lincoln Hall, where Alonzo Lewis’s talented students played, mostly for other teen­agers. There were small, crammed, adults-only clubs like the Cherry Blossom, where Lester Young, Ben Webster, and Herschel Evans, the cream of the city’s tenor saxophonists, challenged and bested the acknowledged king, Coleman Hawkins; the Subway Club, where Jesse Price terminated a drummers’ cutting session by playing a s­eventy-five minute solo on “Nagasaki”; the Sunset, where Pete Johnson played piano and Joe Turner tended the bar and sang, his voice carried by an outdoor speaker into the streets; and the Reno Club, a hole-in-the-wall where a nine-piece band led by Count Basie and including Lester Young created arrangements out of the air. In those first quiet months of their friendship, Rebecca and Charlie spent their evenings on the front-porch swing, and he never spoke about music. She didn’t know he was much interested until she saw him playing baritone horn in Lincoln High’s marching band the day she graduated. The procession filed by the bandstand, and she saw him looking at her as the band played “The Star Spangled Banner.” Later they danced, and she was impressed with how sure Charlie was on his feet.

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Lester Young, 1936.

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The program for Rebecca Ruffin’s high school graduation (including Rebecca’s handwritten notes), at which Charlie Parker played baritone horn, 1935.

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As tiresome as he found the baritone parts, Charlie realized that they were a definite aid in learning harmony. Even more helpful were older boys who responded to his incessant questions, especially Lawrence Keyes, a neighbor living down the street on Olive. His home was a meeting place for young musi­cians, and Charlie often practiced there. Keyes played xylophone and cymbals for Alonzo Lewis, but as leader of the Deans of Swing, he played piano and worked through some of those harmonic secrets that so puzzled Charlie. “If [Charlie] had been as conscientious about his high school work as he was about his music, he would have become a professor,” Keyes recalled. Parker’s obsessive determination didn’t guarantee him an easy time, however. He played a ridiculous alto, patched with tinfoil, cellophane, and rubber bands, and he was slow in mastering the rudiments of transposition and improvisation. Incredibly, he knew only one and a half melodies—“Honeysuckle Rose” (he admired Fats Waller) and the first strain of “Lazy River” —and one key (concert F, D on the alto) when he stopped in at a practice session held by some of the older kids at the Hi-Hat Club and strolled right up to the bandstand. The group included saxophonist James Keith and trumpet player James Ross, both of whom later recorded with Harlan Leonard and His Rockets, and a pianist named Shipley Gavan. They immediately went into “Body and Soul” in long meter and Charlie couldn’t find a ­single

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note. He left, fighting back tears, consumed with the knowledge that he would have to learn all the keys as well as double-timing. Kansas City’s acknowledged master of doubling-up (playing at twice the stated tempo) was Buster Smith, an alto saxophonist whom many local musicians later recognized as a key influence on Parker. Charlie followed him around and memorized his few recorded solos. He admired his tart and bluesy sound, rippling phrases, and rhythmic drive. Yet even as he taught himself his craft, mastering each component in his own fashion, Charlie sought and played professional gigs. Within a year of their first practice session, Keyes had taken him into the Deans of Swing, and Addie went down to the Hurst Loan Shop on Eighteenth and Vine, right near Lincoln Hall, where the Deans usually played, to borrow the money to buy Charlie a used silver-colored Conn in excellent condition. The Deans included James Ross (already a promising arranger as well as a trumpet player), saxophonists Vernon Walker and Freddie Culliver, vocalist Walter Brown (soon to star with McShann’s band), and

The Original Oklahoma City Blue Devils. Left to right: Hot Lips Page, Buster Smith, Thomas Benton, Walter Page, Ermir “Bucket” Coleman (leader until Walter Page took over), Willie Lewis (at piano), Lawrence Williams, Ernie Williams, and Thomas Bill Owens, 1928.

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Coleman Hawkins, London, May 1934.

a trombonist named Robert Simpson who several people believed was the closest friend Charlie Parker ever had. In his interview with Robert Reisner, Keyes spoke of Parker, Simpson, and himself as forming a triumvirate: “The three of us would hang out in each other’s houses, practicing and talking music day and night. . . . To say that Charlie admired [Simpson] is perhaps too mild; Charlie worshipped him and was in his company a great deal.” Simpson dated Hattie Lee, Mrs. Parker’s niece, and seemed to get closer to Charlie than anyone else could do. When the Deans

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of Swing broke up, Parker went to work with Oliver Todd at a club called Frankie and Johnny’s. The club’s owner didn’t like Charlie and asked Todd to fire him or pay his salary out of his own pocket. As Todd recalled the incident to Stanley Crouch, Simpson suffered from pneumonia and a heart ailment, yet he took a streetcar to the club to beg Todd not to fire him. Simpson argued that Charlie had an inferiority complex and needed encouragement; he predicted Charlie would attain greatness as a musician. A few days later Simpson died at twenty-one on the operating table from what Keyes heard was a heart ailment. Charlie was inconsolable, and the tragedy may have contributed to his sudden appetite for Benzedrine inhalers, pot, and liquor. Shortly before his death, Parker would tell Ahmed Basheer (as quoted by Reisner), “I don’t let anyone get too close to me, even you.” Asked why, he answered, “Once in Kansas City I had a friend who I liked very much, and a sorrowful thing happened. . . . He died.” During the year and a half that Charlie played with Keyes, they usually worked weekend dances at Lincoln Hall, which had overflowing crowds of young people. As a nonunion band, it worked for a percentage of the door money (admission: two bits), and on a good night each man might take home ten to fifteen dollars. Charlie worked with other bands as well, though he didn’t impress anyone other than Simpson. He had another humiliation in store, probably in the spring of 1936. On that night, Count Basie finished the late set at the Reno Club, and a jam session was organized with the imperial Jo Jones presiding at the drums. Charlie had taken to hanging around the notoriously rowdy club to hear Lester Young; the room had a balcony in which he could sit undisturbed and soak up the kinds of lessons that had the most value for him. “The actual experience, to be around the thing in person, is what counts,” Jones once told Stanley Dance. As an example he mentioned the glory years in Kansas City, where there were “farm teams. You played down here and then you graduated. It was like going from grade school, to high school, to college. You didn’t just

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jump into a ­particular thing until you were ready.” Charlie decided to jump during Jones’s jam session, and after he played a couple of faltering choruses at a racing tempo, Jones struck his bell in imitation of Major Bowes striking a gong to stop an act on his radio show Amateur Hour. Charlie did not take the hint. After one or two more unheeded clangs, Jones lifted his ride cymbal off its stand and sent it crashing at Parker’s feet, setting off a din of cruel laughter. Charlie left, vowing to return and show them up. Meanwhile, his courting of Rebecca proceeded as quickly as his music. For two years, they had strolled through Kansas City, hand in hand, attending the movies and sharing popcorn and ­cherry sodas. That ended when one of Rebecca’s sisters caught them in his room and promptly reported the news to Fannie Ruffin, a strict Methodist who whipped her children for improprieties. She decided the family would have to move. Rebecca was ordered not to see Charlie, but another of her sisters helped her to sneak out for their continued rendezvous, which, she insisted, were entirely innocent. Her beau was still a proper young man. When told of the statement he made years later about becoming dissipated at twelve and using heroin at fifteen, Rebecca exclaimed, “Charlie’s crazy! We had to take tests in school to check for pregnancies and venereal disease. If he had been using drugs then it would have showed up on the tests.” She claimed that he began using narcotics in 1937, after they married, which confirms the recollections of other friends and musicians in Kansas City. On Friday evening, three months after the Ruffins moved out, Charlie and Rebecca sat on the steps of Crispus Attucks and he proposed. She went home, packed, informed her mother of her decision, and moved back to Olive Street. Addie took the news with her customary stoical efficiency and proceeded to superintend the details. She asked Charlie to stay out that night after work with the Keyes band, so she could help Rebecca fashion a wedding dress. The next day, July 25, 1936, they went to the courthouse, and Rebecca, dressed in yellow and white and holding a white Bible Addie bought her, became Mrs. Charlie

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Various Kansas City nightclubs. Left to right, top to bottom: Dante’s Inferno, 512 East Twelfth Street, a white club showcasing female impersonators; Harlem Nightclub, 1414 East Fifteenth Street, where Benny Moten’s band played; Red and Dutch; Wiggle Inn, 2607 Troost Street; Hey-Hay Club, Fourth and Cherry Streets, where Charlie Parker played with George E. Lee; unknown; Deluxe Nightclub; King Kong Lair, 520 East Twelfth Street, where white bands played, 1937.

Rebecca Ruffin and Charlie Parker’s marriage license, July 25, 1936, Kansas City, Missouri.

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Parker. When the justice of the peace asked Charlie for the ring, he did not have one. Addie removed the rings his father had given her and handed them to Charlie. She also signed the certificate of marriage, as the bride was sixteen and the groom a month short of that. Returning home, they were greeted by Charlie Sr., whom Rebecca had never previously seen, Ikey, and other relatives, as well as Hattie Lee and Marie Goldin, the boarders who moved in after the Ruffins left. Addie served cake, ice cream, and punch. The naive Rebecca locked her door that night but eventually gave way to her husband’s entreaties. She had several surprises in store during the next couple of years. Shortly after they married, Charlie tore or infected his foreskin and disappeared for two weeks, during which time Addie told her only that he went for a cure. Many years later, she learned he had gone to Wheatley, Kansas, where Dr. J. R. Thompson, who had delivered him, performed a circumcision. Parker was impotent during the period of healing and was so ashamed that for several weeks he refused to talk to Rebecca, who was afraid to press the issue with him or Addie. He announced his return to health with a bewildering and unprecedented blast of music. One afternoon she was lying down upstairs when she heard him playing the Conn alto. She ran downstairs to find him “blowing his brains out” for about seven minutes, eyes shut, deep in concentration, impassioned and resolute. She asked him: why did he play so long, why didn’t he relax? He opened his eyes and merely smiled, then sat down at the piano and played a variation on Fats Waller’s “Stealin’ Apples,” which he dedicated to her. She noticed the spur to his imagination still in place on the Victrola: Fletcher Henderson’s version of Waller’s tune, featuring Roy Eldridge and Leon “Chu” Berry. Parker had seen Berry, one of the most admired tenor saxophonists in the country, during his visit to a local club, and was enthralled by him, talking about him incessantly. Berry built his style on that of his predecessor in Henderson’s band, Coleman Hawkins, but he devised his own, personal elaboration—his own weighty sound, ornamental style, and bluff

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Lester Young, Ed Lewis, Count Basie, and Jo Jones, at the Apollo Theatre, New York City, 1940.

authority. Charlie’s explosion of sustained playing that afternoon was Rebecca’s first indication of the progress he’d made. November brought another surprise. During the preceding months, Charlie had taken to spending almost all his time downstairs practicing. Since he stayed out late, sometimes all night, Rebecca did not see him much. She never went to the clubs. In order to study beyond the scrutiny of Kansas City’s disapproving eyes, Charlie began working in Jefferson City in the Ozarks with Ernie Daniels. On Thanksgiving, he embarked on the 150-mile trip in a Chevrolet with Daniels and the band’s bassist, George Wilkerson.

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The car, speeding to its destination, skidded on a sheet of ice and overturned more than once as it hurtled off the road. Daniels had to be hospitalized for a month with a punctured lung and Wilkerson was killed, staked by a peg from his bass. Charlie was lucky. He broke three ribs and fractured his spine, but he did not require hospitalization. He returned to the Parker home trussed in bandages, much to the horror of Rebecca and Addie, who hadn’t heard about the accident. Although the silver Conn was destroyed in the car, money from a lawsuit enabled him to buy his first Selmer, a gold-plated alto saxophone that he would pawn countless times but which remained his preferred brand until 1947, when he switched to King for his record sessions with an ensemble of strings. He did not get to play the Selmer for the two months he lay upstairs recuperating, his pillow filled with a stash of marijuana (still legal) and his needs attended to by four doting women: Rebecca, Addie, Hattie Lee, and Marie. “The women in that house loved Charlie,” Rebecca said. “Except Parky—she worshipped him.” When Charlie recovered, he lied about his age and joined the union, largely through the good offices of George E. Lee, a popular Kansas City bandleader who occasionally fronted the Keyes band as its vocalist. In a few weeks, he was taking weekly gigs in Eldon, Missouri, in the Ozarks, with Tommy Douglas’s septet. In some ways, he seemed renewed, less aloof, more given to joking, especially when he fooled around with Benzedrine capsules, which he would break, soak in wine or cola, and inhale. He amused the guys in the band by imitating the basso growl of Popeye with his voice and on alto, and began to display the ability, widely noted during his New York years, to discourse with learned authority on any subject. He also displayed the unpredictable behavior that would mar the rest of his career, staying up all night and sleeping through jobs. He looked shabby, threadbare. The other musicians occasionally took custody of his band jacket so it would remain presentable for the gig. At this time Mary Lou Williams heard him play with Andy Kirk’s wife, Mary Kirk, a pianist who favored a formal quasi-rag

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style with an oom-pah bass. Williams remembered Charlie playing “just the way he did when he [later came to] New York and it sounded funny.” That is surely an exaggeration, yet Parker’s playing was sufficiently different from the prevailing style not only to elicit ­criticism of his incompatibility with Kirk but also to impress a newly arrived Oklahoman, Jay McShann, who told Charlie the first time out, “You don’t play like anybody else in Kansas City.” In later years, McShann never believed the story about the debacle at the Reno Club: “I’ve heard more tales about when he wasn’t playing. He was playing good the first time I heard him. If that story about Jo Jones throwing a cymbal happened, it happened before 1937.” McShann’s insistence on Parker’s skill as of 1937 indicates that Charlie had improved mightily in the short time since the Reno Club farce, when Jo Jones skimmed his cymbal at him. Putative evidence to support McShann’s impression surfaced thirty years after Parker’s death in the form of an amateur discrecording made by Clarence Davis, a member of the Tommy Douglas band. Davis recorded several unaccompanied Parker solos, but only one survived: a threeand-a-half-minute medley of “Honeysuckle Rose,” the first tune Parker taught himself, and “Body and Soul,” the cause of his jam session Mary Lou Williams with Remo Palmier, downfall. Although a subNew York City, 1947.

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sequent owner of the disc framed it with the legend “1937,” it was likely recorded a year or two later (Davis could not be certain of the date). In any case, it repre­sents Parker’s first recording, and it shows him wrestling with an acidic tone, double-time, triplets, and rococo embellishments. The latter, in union with a soft-beat/hard-beat rhythmic gait, suggests the influence of Hawkins and Chu Berry. ­Moments of inco­her­ence—especially at the eight-bar transitional pas­sages (mu­si­cians call them turnbacks or turnarounds)—and overall lack of poise underscore the youthfulness of the performance. Because of his weekly trips to Eldon with Tommy Douglas, a virtuoso saxophonist and clarinetist, Charlie was always in the company of older musicians, and his willingCharlie Parker, Pleyel, Paris, 1949. ness to be influenced by them took an unexpected direction. Some of the guys were raising families. Charlie decided he too wanted a child, a son. When the mechanics of conception did not proceed as quickly as expected, he consulted his mother, who provided him with a tonic. Rebecca conceived that spring. At first Charlie was elated, but then the Eldon job ended and he hit the streets in search of work, finding only one-nighters. His mood was erratic, his manner distant. Strange visitors tramped up and down the stairs of the Parker home. In July, Rebecca got her first look at a needle. She was three months pregnant when Charlie called her upstairs and told her to sit on the bed. He wore a dark suit

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and a long tie. It was night and the shade was down. She looked toward the window where a small mirror was placed and watched the reflection as he twisted the tie around his arm—the needle plunging in and the blood coming up. She screamed, “What are you doing?” He just looked and smiled. He wiped the blood, slipped the tie off his arm and around his neck, and said, “Well, I’ll be seeing you, Rebec.” He kissed her on the forehead and left. She looked in the drawer, found his setup, and took it downstairs to show Addie, who did not say a word. The next morning, Addie told him, “Charlie, I’d rather see you dead than use that stuff.” He glowered at Rebecca and disappeared for two weeks. By summer he was back in Eldon with the ubiquitous George E. Lee, who for more than a decade led the band at Kansas City’s

Probably Eddie Nicholson, Bill DeArango, unknown, Ben Webster, and Charlie Parker, at the Onyx, New York City, 1943.

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Lyric Hall. Now he was in charge of a small group at a resort in the Ozarks, Lake Taneycomo, with rhythm guitarist Efferge Ware and pianist Carrie Powell, both of whom furthered Charlie’s education with instruction in harmony. Ware was particularly supportive, pragmatic as well as discerning. He not only showed him the cycle of fifths and the value of passing chords but also encouraged him to sit in at the Subway Club, where he often worked. Additional lessons were available through records. Count Basie, the native of Red Bank, New Jersey, who got stranded in Kansas City and became a staple of its musical life, made it back East in style. His debut session with a quintet had just been released, and it featured ecstatic, swaggering solos by the incomparable Lester Young, who until then had remained largely unknown beyond the Southwest. In a few days, Charlie knew those solos by heart. He wasn’t the only one. The Wild West sound of Kansas City had finally gone national. Without formal training, Charlie adhered to the golden rule of the autodidact: if it sounds good, it is good. Immersed in the ceremony of mastering an art for which there are complicated techniques but no absolute procedures, he worked feverishly to soak up its secrets and traditions. Despite his infrequent assertions of self, he moved cautiously through the Kansas City jazz world, preparing himself not for the moment when it offered him acceptance but for when he could supersede local ritual and, fueled by everything he had learned, take flight, like Basie, like Lester. The good apprentice seeks worthy masters and accommodates their teachings in grateful humility. Buster “Prof ” Smith contracted a large band for the Reno that fall, with Jesse Price and Jay McShann. He hired Charlie as second alto and took him under his wing, teaching him to shave thick reeds to project a bold, brighter sound. Charlie never missed a rehearsal, never came late. He called Smith “Dad” and visited his house for extra sessions. When the band moved up a grade to the Antlers, Parker openly emulated the older man’s improvisations. Weeks later, McShann managed to get a booking for his own group at a place called Martin’s, and he also hired Charlie. But when

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that job ended, Charlie was on the streets again, taking whatever work he could get. In not quite three years, he had metamorphosed from a keen, ingenuous kid, partial to the usual childish diversions and indifferently fond of music, to a disheveled musician convinced of his own destiny yet reckless with appetites that could only undermine him. Once considered boyish, he was now thought older than his years by practically everyone who knew him. As he rid himself of baby fat and grew to his full height of nearly five feet eleven, he carried himself with increasing authority and developed a knack for leading several lives. An expert mimic and fast wit, he disarmed even those who knew from experience that he would end up borrowing and pawning the shirts off their backs. He had presence, a ready smile, a shy flirtatious gleam in the eyes. The one thing he did not generate was indifference. Those who did not love him hated him. (Dave Dexter Jr., a record producer, spoke for the dissenters in a vicious personal attack, Buster Smith. published in 1964. Yet even he finished on the usual note of awe: “There will never be another like him.”) Most of those who knew him bear witness to Charlie’s spunky charm. They feel he had a right to the uncommon attention and forbearance he demanded of them. The severest trials were suffered at home. Charlie began to look haggard, rumpled. Pockets formed beneath his eyes. He acted with supreme coolness to the problems of the women with whom he lived, sometimes lashing out in violence. The drug traffic contin-

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ued. Addie’s curse had no effect. Charlie ignored Rebecca, brushing by her without so much as a hello. He asked her to get an abortion. When she refused, the subject was dropped. Things disappeared from the house: an iron, jewelry, the radio, clothing. He pawned anything he could get his hands on. Rebecca made a point of hiding her churchgoing dress. He took up with another woman whose identity Rebecca discovered when he left a couple of her letters under a pillow. She read and put them back. Yet they were not there when he looked for them the next day. He called her upstairs and told her to sit on the bed and look out the window. She heard a click. Charlie was holding a gun to her temple and demanding the letters. She told him to look in his bureau where he usually put mail, and there they were. As he descended the staircase, Rebecca threw a flatiron at him, which crashed through the glass panes near the front door. Addie came to the banister and asked, “What is it, dearie?” Then his mood reversed. He returned broke and despondent, looking desperate, when Rebecca was in her sixth month. At times he acted like his old self. On the night Marie and Rebecca went to Lincoln Hall to see Charlie play, he danced with her, big stomach and all. When she delivered on January 10, 1938, he was away on a gig, but before leaving he asked her please not to name the baby in his absence. “Just call it Baby Parker,” he said. He wanted to name his son himself. Nearly a week later, he did: Francis Leon, after Francis Scott Key, whose “The Star Spangled Banner” was the first piece Rebecca heard him play, and Leon “Chu” Berry. The presence of the infant, known by his middle name, did little to alleviate problems between Charlie and Rebecca, whose marriage was now tolerable at best. Charlie was usually away from home. He’d taken a gig at a place in the suburbs, about thirty minutes outside of town, owned by Tutty Clarkin, a brash eccentric who liked to be surrounded by animals, including a goat named T. J. Pendergast and a parrot that squawked “nigger.” Tutty’s Mayfair catered to a white middle-class

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audience and charged good money; the musicians earned about fifteen ­dollars a week each. The band, consisting of five pieces and a woman ­vocalist, played for dancing and listening. They depended on ­Charlie’s arrangements, which inconvenienced Clarkin, who was habitually impatient with Parker and would have fired him if the other musicians hadn’t intervened. The nights of wandering around the district, soaking up Ellington (he loved his harmonic ­palette and the swirling clarinet solos by Barney Bigard) and Basie, of sitting in movie theaters concentrating on the scores, paid off. ­Charlie had become a distinctive writer, experimenting with flatted fifths and augmented thirteenths. His favorite tune, Ray Noble’s­ “Cherokee,” had a bridge considered so fiendishly difficult for improvisation that Basie all but omitted it when his band later recorded a two-part version. Parker loved the challenge, endlessly arranging and rearranging it— one week he brought in a different version every night, ­including a block­ buster with an intro­ duction of 138 measures. He worked on improving his thin sound, especially after he acquired a new saxophone. In a rage, he had battered his old one against the curb. Clarkin boasted to Reisner that he had magnanimously bought Charlie a new Selmer. The group’s bassist, Winston Williams, told Stanley Crouch that Clarkin Leon “Chu” Berry, 1938. put up the money grudg-

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ingly after Williams convinced him of the necessity and agreed to stand surety for it. The party was over in Tom’s Town. While Pendergast awaited trial for tax fraud, the city fathers proceeded to close most of the clubs. Buster Smith took an offer from Basie to help him with arrangements at New York’s Famous Door, where the band did capacity business. McShann hoped to use Charlie again, but was off touring with a group in Chicago. Some musicians were now reduced to playing in Swope Park. There was no place else to go. Then Charlie got into an altercation with a cab driver over a ten-dollar tab he could not pay. The driver tried to snatch his horn and Charlie nicked him with a knife. He spent some time, accounts range from overnight to three weeks, in jail. When he got out, he wanted out of Kansas City. He pawned his alto, walked to the outskirts of town, and stole a ride on a freight train, fleeing to Chicago.

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3 . a pp r ent i ces h i p

w

hen Charlie landed in Chicago, most likely in

the fall of 1938, before the bitter winds—the Chicago hawk— hit, he was as thin as the rails that brought him and not much better for wear. Bedraggled and exhausted, he nonetheless made his way in the early morning hours to the 65 Club, near Michigan Avenue and Fifty-fifth Street, where a breakfast dance was in progress. The featured band, a quintet led by King Kolax, took a break, and a few of the guys were on the street smoking with friends, including Billy Eckstine and Budd Johnson. Charlie, “the raggedest guy you’d want to see,” as Eckstine described him to Reisner, walked over to bum a cigarette but otherwise held back. Later, inside, he asked the alto saxophonist Goon Gardner if he could play his horn. In Eckstine’s words, “This cat gets up there and, I’m telling you, he blew the hell off that thing!” Everyone turned to listen, including Budd Johnson, who was mesmerized: “I couldn’t believe it. I said, ‘What!’” Afterward, Parker went to the bar to introduce himself to ­Johnson, telling how he played stickball in front of

Charlie Parker, Los Angeles, 1946.

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George E. Lee’s mother’s house in K.C. when Budd and the others rehearsed, and how he would peep through the window and listen. Gardner took him home, gave him some clothes and a clarinet, and got him a few jobs. Within weeks, Charlie pawned the clarinet and boarded a bus for New York. Charlie wasted no time in locating his mentor. He turned up on Buster Smith’s doorstep, frayed and hungry, legs swollen from having worn his shoes so long. Smith and his wife put him up, allowing him to use their bed by day, since he was out all night hanging around clubs, listening to the music and looking for work. That first night he walked over to the Savoy Ballroom and stood outside, staring at the marquee, marveling, as he later told Jay McShann, at the fact that he was in New York and dreamArt Tatum, c. 1949. ing of the day he would play on its most famous bandstand. But jobs were scarce even for locals with so many good players on the scene. For a transient without a union card, they hardly existed. When the Smiths lost patience, he took his only nonmusical job, scrubbing dishes at a popular Harlem hangout, Jimmy’s Chicken Shack. His hours were midnight to eight and his pay nine dollars a week. The one compensation was the

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featured performer, Art Tatum. Blind, rotund, and regal of manner, Tatum was an astonishing pianist, unequaled in his harmonic ingenuity and his ability to execute abrupt tempo changes and rapid-fire modulations. His pristine embellishments were packaged in glittery arpeggios and crowned with wittily juxtaposed melodic figures (often quotations from pop songs). Virtually all the key jazz modernists name Tatum as a major influence, but none received so concentrated a course from him as the diffident dishwasher at Jimmy’s, who was too shy to say hello yet continued in a disagreeable job for the entire three months of Tatum’s engagement. Eventually Charlie found a few musical or semimusical gigs. He even played at a Times Square tango palace. But he also sat in—for free or a meal or cigarette money—at Clark Monroe’s ­Uptown House on 138th Street, where some of the more adventurous musicians in town came to jam, though no one seems to have paid him much mind. He made friends Charlie P with a ­guitarist named Bill arker: th ree stills by Gjon M from a fil ili but nev “Biddy” Fleet, who rivaled m directe er re sou d ndtrack w

as lost, c.

leased b ecause th e 1951.

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Jay McShann, 1938.

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Buster Smith as a valuable sounding board for Charlie’s ­endless questions about harmonic theory. Perhaps the most important idea Parker learned from Tatum was that any note could be made to fit in a chord if suitably resolved. With Fleet, he pursued that notion, practicing passing tones and concentrating on the higher intervals of chords: raised ninths, elevenths, thirteenths. His fixation helped to buffer him from the indifference and downright scorn of other musicians who said he played funny or wrong. Despite his difficulty finding work or acceptance, he was choosy about musicians with whom he played and practiced. He was perfecting a music that would eventually send his detractors running for cover. Virtuosity was the best revenge. Although most musicians concentrated on a few select keys, easy chord progressions, and moderate tempos, Parker persistently raised difficult problems and sought complicated solutions. He reveled in songs with challenging chord changes like “All God’s Chillun Got Rhythm,” “Get Happy,” and especially his personal showpiece, “Cherokee,” a pop song that was nonetheless a jam session terror because of the fast-moving harmony in its middle section. Fleet and Parker often began the evening by practicing in the back room at Dan Wall’s Chili House, down the street from Monroe’s. It was there that the great epiphany occurred: I remember one night before Monroe’s I was jamming in a chili house on Seventh Avenue between 139th and 140th. It was December 1939. Now I’d been getting bored with the stereotyped changes that were being used at the time, and I kept thinking there’s bound to be something else. I could hear it sometimes but I couldn’t play it. Well, that night I was working over ­“Cherokee,” and as I did I found that by using the higher intervals of a chord as a melody line and backing them with appropriately related changes, I could play the thing I’d been hearing. I came alive.

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Parker had liberated himself from the obvious melody notes, or the lower intervals implied in any cycle of chord changes. He found that the more subtle upper intervals, which tended toward dissonance, could be tamed through resolutions that made them fit the underlying harmonic contour. He had flown the coop from cliché but not from the rigors of making a living in an unadventurous world. He took a job with a small show band led by one Banjo Burney, which drove down to Maryland for three weeks. There he received a telegram and a train ticket from Addie. His father was dead, stabbed by a jealous woman (some said a prostitute). He went home for the funeral.

Left to right: Buddy Anderson, Bob Mabane, Gus Johnson, Orville “Piggy” Minor, Charlie Parker, Gene Ramey, and Jay McShann, Wichita, Kansas, December 2, 1940.

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Shortly after he returned to Kansas City, he was hired by Harlan Leonard, an officious taskmaster whose band included several of Charlie’s friends and acquaintances—James Ross, James Keith, Jesse Price, Winston Williams—as well as a brilliant new arranger and pianist from Cleveland, Tadd Dameron. Charlie and Tadd became friends right off, having at least two interests in common. First, Tadd was as harmonically adventurous as Charlie and knew more theory. Once while practicing “Lady Be Good,” Charlie was so taken with the pianist’s substitute chords that he put down his alto, ran over, and kissed him. Second, Tadd could do all sorts of tricks with pharmaceuticals and had a big appetite for getting high. About the only person in the Rockets who could not get along with Charlie was the leader, who had the makings of an excellent band and an unfortunate habit of counting off tempos too fast for the music (that responsibility was soon given to Jimmy Keith). He entrusted Charlie with several solos, including “Cherokee,” but railed at his customary lateness. After four or five weeks, Leonard fired him. This was a break for Jay McShann, who now had a big band of his own and was getting ready to go on the road. McShann’s was the band of choice for many younger players (Dameron also admired him and wrote arrangements for McShann on the sly), and it has been suggested that Charlie somehow forced Leonard’s hand. During a Battle of the Bands between Leonard and McShann, Charlie asked Jay if he could go with him and was advised to give two weeks’ notice. Perhaps Charlie preferred not to wait two weeks and behaved accordingly. In any case, they were together again, and Charlie was delighted. Rebecca, with whom he briefly reconciled, noted an improvement in his mood during this period. She became pregnant again, but complications set in and she miscarried in July. During one visit to the hospital, while Charlie waited in the lobby, Rebecca asked Dr. Thompson about the needles her husband used. Thompson told her that if he continued, he would never see forty; he gave him, at best, eighteen to twenty years. Yet Addie refused to interfere and

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­ ebecca gave up harping on the subject. She and Charlie no longer R argued, and that was more important. Whatever he wanted, she acquiesced. They marked time. Later that year, he asked for a divorce. He told her, “If I were free, Rebec, I think I could become a great musician.” He had already asked Addie to allow Rebecca and Leon to continue living in the house. Rebecca remembered Duke Ellington coming through town and trying to recruit Charlie, who demurred, claiming he wasn’t up to a regimen of rehearsals and one-nighters. Yet he was ready to travel with McShann, the last great territory band. This was his conduit to recognition, as well as a nickname that stuck for the rest of his life and after. En route to a school date at the University of Nebraska, the car Charlie rode in hit a couple of farm chickens that ran onto the road. According to McShann, Charlie told the driver, “Man, go back, you hit that yardbird.” They turned around, and when they got to where a dead chicken lay, Charlie jumped out and returned with it cradled in his arms. Upon arriving in Lincoln, he asked the lady of the house where they boarded if she would cook it for dinner. She complied, much to the amusement of the other musicians, who began calling Charlie “Yardbird” or “Yard” or “Bird.” By the time he resurfaced in New York, he was generally known as Bird, which is how he often referred to himself. For the next three and a half years, he had a semipermanent home in McShann’s band. At Jay’s urging, he took occasional leaves of absence when the drugs had the best of him and he could not “make time.” As McShann put it, “Bird got to moving pretty fast, and every once in a while we’d tell him, ‘Why don’t you cool down and rest yourself up for a week?’ So he’d say, ‘OK, Hootie [his nickname],’ and a week later he’d come back and rejoin the band.” When he was feeling good, he was McShann’s right-hand man. He rehearsed the reed section, soloed, and kept everyone in good spirits with his jokes, wisecracks, general playfulness, and immense capacity for eating—two full dinners at a sitting was not unusual. Once he got the reed players high on a huge quantity of nutmeg,

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Charlie Parker, unknown, Duke Ellington, c. 1950.

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and when McShann cued their entrance, they simply fell out laughing. Yet as an example of his thoroughness as a musician, McShann told of his rivalry with the band’s expert lead altoist: We had a young cat called John Jackson—J.J., they called him. And Bird came to me once and told me, “Man, this cat is just reading circles around me.” He says, “I tell you what. I won’t make rehearsals for the next couple of days, because I’d rather go in the woodshed on this cat ’cause he’s making me look bad. But I’ll tell you what you do. When you play the date Friday night, if I miss a note you can fine me.” So sure enough, we’d been rehearsing on this stuff that Bird hadn’t seen. But Bird played it that night better than the cats that’d been rehearsing. McShann was solidly in Bird’s corner, and it disturbed him when audiences could not comprehend what he was playing. The farther they traveled from the Southwest, the less response his solos received. To his colleagues, however, Bird was another reason for living. Parker was achieving the kind of fluency that only the greats can claim: complete authority from the first lick and the ability to sustain the initial inspiration throughout a solo so that it has dramatic coherence. His tone became increasingly sure, waxing in volume despite the purposeful lack of vibrato. It was candid and unswerving, and it had a cold blues edge unlike that of any of his predecessors. The musicians in New York had tried to intimidate him into aping the clean, pear-shaped sound of Benny Carter or the rhapsodic lushness of Johnny Hodges. His contemporaries in McShann’s band knew what he was after. They were amused by how fast his mind worked, as he imitated sounds echoing in from the street—engines, backfiring tires, auto horns—and worked them into musical phrases. He not only mastered Tatum’s trick of juxtaposing discursive melodies so that they fit the harmonic structure of whatever song he played, but took it another step: he quoted

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Left to right: Jay McShann, Leonard Enois, Gene Ramey, Gus Johnson, Bob Mabane, Charlie Parker, Buddy Anderson, Bob Merrill, John Jackson, Orville Minor, Freddie Culiver, Lawrence Anderson, and Joe Baird, at the Savoy Ballroom, New York City, 1941.

melodies purely for their lyrical relevance to the moment. He might nod to a woman in blue with a snippet of “Alice Blue Gown” or to a woman in red with “The Lady in Red,” or acknowledge a woman headed for the ladies’ room with “I Know Where You’re Going.” He had a ripe eye for women. When the band reached Wichita, it recorded for the first time: broadcast transcriptions for station KFBI. Never intended for commercial release, they remained unknown outside a cabal of Parker collectors until 1974. To contemporary ears, Parker’s solos suggest an exercise in autobiography, replete with bows to those who influenced him as well as intimations of things to come. “Body and Soul” follows the format of the Chu Berry–Roy Eldridge recording, but in the second eight bars of his solo, Parker cites a passage from

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Dizzy Gillespie, c. 1945.

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Coleman Hawkins’s version. With “Lady Be Good,” he pays tribute to Lester Young, even as he undermines Young’s lyricism with his acidic timbre. On “Moten Swing,” however, he attempts a rococo conceit à la Chu Berry and loses his footing in the second eight bars. He later adapted the background riff on “Wichita Blues” as a new piece, “The Hymn.” Best of all, his express variations on an old friend, “Honeysuckle Rose,” unfold as a burst of melodic reverie, each turnback navigated with graceful aplomb. The band was now on its way. It boasted an elegantly aggressive rhythm section in McShann’s bluesy Hines-inspired piano, Gene Ramey’s bass, and Gus Johnson’s drums, and a powerful ensemble including John Jackson’s mighty lead alto and two good trumpet soloists. For singers, it offered two unknowns who became jukebox favorites. McShann first heard Walter Brown, who sang blues, on his arrival in Kansas City. After Brown sang a set, Jay followed him off the stand and paid him his last four bits to reprise a blues he had sung. He recruited ballad singer Al Hibbler in San Antonio, after the blind baritone crooner pestered him into letting him sit in. Above all, the band boasted Charlie Parker. When Dizzy Gillespie came through Kansas City with Cab Calloway’s band, McShann’s trumpet soloists Orville Minor and Buddy Anderson went to see him and were so impressed by Gillespie’s novel ideas that they invited him to the musician’s local to jam with Bird. They showed their man off like a prize marlin. By spring, McShann had an efficient management company behind him and a long tour mapped out that brought them eastward into the Deep South, where they would sample a kind of racism far more virulent than anything in Missouri. As their train pulled into the station in Jackson, Mississippi, the first thing they saw was a man walking with a ball and chain—a harbinger, as it turned out. One night Parker and Walter Brown were arrested for sitting on the porch of a boardinghouse with a light burning after “curfew.” After a couple of nights in jail, Bird memorialized the incident in a song he called “What Price Love.” In later years, he

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taught the lyric to Carmen McRae, Earl Coleman (who recorded it with Fats Navarro), and others, but it never caught on. The music, however, became instantly famous after he recorded it, in 1946, as “Yardbird Suite.” As they prepared to pull out of New Orleans, McShann learned that Decca Records wanted to record the band, now enlarged to eleven pieces, in Dallas. They turned west again and arrived in the studio on April 30, 1941. On the superb Willie Scott arrangement of “Swingmatism,” McShann turns the last two bars of his piano solo over to Parker as a pickup, and he uses it to launch a flowering invention. “Hootie Blues” proffers not only a Parker blues chorus (with a characteristic riff figure) that perked the interest of many young musicians around the country, but also shows off his wit as an arranger. Behind the opening theme, Bird had the ensemble play “Donkey Serenade,” which had recently been recorded by Artie Shaw (whose playing Parker and Buster Smith greatly admired). Parker did not perform on the number that ultimately guaranteed the band a ticket to New York: “Confessin’ the Blues” featured just the rhythm section and Walter Brown, and it became a runaway rhythm-and-blues hit, selling more than a half million copies. The band faced east again: Chicago (more recordings), Detroit, and finally the Savoy Ballroom in New York. The McShann band descended on New York in a caravan of three cars and a truck that held the instruments and the music. Bird rode in the truck and took over the wheel as they neared the city. On a whim, he decided on the scenic route and crossed illegally into Central Park. When a mounted officer stopped him, he went into his lost-rube routine, complete with stutter, and was told to get the hell out of there. They stayed at the Woodside Hotel, along with several other bands, and were greeted by Kansas City veterans who had beat them to the Apple. That night at the Savoy, billed opposite Lucky Millinder, whose band included Gillespie and Sister Rosetta Tharpe, McShann triumphed—as did Parker, at least as far

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Jam session at the Heatwave, New York City, 1944. Left to right: Eddie Dougherty, Jimmy Phipps, Hot Lips Page, Allen Tinney, Don Byas, Herbert Francis Jenkins (behind Byas), David Van Dyke, Dud Bascomb, Buck Jones (playing bass), Charlie Parker, Bill Spooner (standing in rear), Art Phipps, unknown trombone, and Johnny Hicks.

as the cognoscenti were concerned. He was featured in two blazing showstoppers, “Cherokee” and “Clap Hands, Here Comes Charlie.” Ben Webster ran downtown and told the musicians on Fifty-second Street to get up to the Savoy and take lessons. Many did and were no less impressed, including Jimmy Dorsey, a pioneering alto saxophonist whose impeccable technique had inspired several jazz players to study the instrument. He is said to have given Parker a few hundred dollars to buy a new alto. Others were put off by Parker’s visionary flair. Their reluctance to acknowledge his achievement confounded McShann,

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Kenny Clarke at Birdland, New York City, 1955.

who ­recognized Bird as primarily a blues player, “the greatest blues player in the world.” The lack of generosity in some musicians was nothing to the indifference of the audience, which preferred the rumbling, honking solos of tenor saxophonist Jimmy Forrest (hired by McShann on Bird’s advice)—“It used to bug me that it took so long for people to find out what was happening,” McShann said. “Bird would get through blowing everything there is to blow, and the people never clapped, never moved, nothing. But when Jimmy Forrest started, he’d tear the house up. People went crazy.” The swing audience never completely grasped Parker’s music, but

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Charlie Parker at the Royal Boost, New York City, 1949.

through the broadcasts emanating from the Savoy, most musicians quickly came around, as did a new generation of fans. Parker’s countless choruses on “Cherokee” were a call to arms for young players who’d been exploring similarly advanced ideas in improvisation. His technique and speed, logic and lyricism, fire and shrewdness added up to a way out of the woodshed and into the light of accomplishment. Although he appeared with McShann fitfully for nearly four years, there were few recordings: only one session in New York, on July 2, 1942. Parker’s solo on “Sepian Bounce,” a Jimmie ­Lunceford–

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influenced arrangement with a prescient flourish of brasses before the piano solo, is sure but rhythmically placid, exhibiting none of the volatility to come. (In a Down Beat Blindfold Test in 1948, Parker ­dismissed it as “dated, antiquated.”) On “The Jumpin’ Blues,” his chorus opens with a phrase later expanded by Little Benny Harris into a modernist anthem, “Ornithology” (patterned not on the blues, but on the song “How High the Moon”). Those solos scarcely ­capture the excitement Parker is said to have generated on the band’s broadcasts. Nor does the privately recorded version of “Cherokee,” made that year at Monroe’s; his performance is incandescent in parts, but his phrasing of the release is uncharacteristically contrived. The chance to record in a studio was squelched indefinitely when James Petrillo, the despotic head of the American Federation of Musicians, instigated a 1942 recording ban to settle the issue of a musicians’ trust fund. The strike lasted two years. As a result, the genesis of modern jazz—bebop, as it was known to the general public—was shrouded in an uncommon secrecy. Only the musicians themselves were privy to the making of a new musical movement, and for a couple of years their labors bore fruit chiefly in the confines of after-hours jam sessions. Parker was now received with a great deal more respect than when he first appeared in New York. Not yet twenty-two, he was a focal point at the dazzling contests at Monroe’s, where newcomer musicians and established ones dropped by to hear him and, if they had courage, share the stage. At Minton’s Playhouse, originally the dining area of the neighboring Hotel Cecil, a new music policy had been introduced in 1939 by Teddy Hill, the erstwhile bandleader who once employed such incipient modernists as Dizzy Gillespie and drummer Kenny Clarke. He chose Clarke and the pianist Thelonious Monk to lead a house band for Monday night jam sessions, which succeeded in drawing distinguished as well as aspiring musicians. Held in cheerful violation of prohibitive union rules, those sessions were a training ground for the new music. Clarke, Monk, Gillespie, and others shared and elaborated their musical discover-

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ies, often conspiring to scare musicians outside the clique by inserting passing chords or stomping off hair-raising tempos. In Gillespie’s autobiography, bassist Milt Hinton tells how he and Dizzy went up to the roof during intermissions at the Cotton Club, where they appeared with Cab Calloway’s orchestra, and prepared gambits for Minton’s. Gillespie would tell him, “Now look, when we go down to the jam session, we’re gonna say we’re gonna play, ‘I Got Rhythm,’ but we’re gonna use these changes.” He then ran down a complicated sequence of chords. At Minton’s, the hopeful players were “left right at the post . . . eventually they would put their horns away, and we could go on and blow in peace and get our

Thelonious Monk, Howard McGhee, Roy Eldridge, and Teddy Hill, at Minton’s Playhouse, New York City, 1947.

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little exercise.” Needless to say, resentments swelled. The young Turks were serving notice that old formulas were no longer good enough. They were in rebellion not only against the banalization of “our music” by commercial interests but also against the morass of clichés that governed so many improvisations. What they offered was not simply an elevated harmonic intricacy but rather a new articulation. It is now commonplace to view modern jazz as a logical outgrowth of the past, an evolution instead of a revolution. Hindsight is a great peacemaker, especially since no one can mistake the obvious

Thelonious Monk at Minton’s Playhouse, New York City, 1947.

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debts Parker, Gillespie, Monk, and Clarke owed such predecessors as Young, Eldridge, Teddy ­Wilson, and Jo Jones. Yet war there was. In the period of genesis, lines were drawn and angry barbs were hurled from both sides. Some of the animosity stemmed from the exclusionary practices at those fevered jam sessions, although they were implemented to discourage second-raters and not to foment a generation gap. While dull reviewers and promoters continued to revile bop, veteran musicians soon realized that the prank-happy beboppers were a little more than kin, if less than kind. Howard McGhee, one of the music’s earliBud Powell at the Open Door, New York City, 1953. est disciples, made the point with an anecdote: “When Bird first came on the scene, I asked Johnny Hodges, ‘What do you think of Charlie Parker?’ He said, ‘He don’t play nothing, he ain’t got no sound.’ Later when I got a chance to play with Ellington, I asked him again. ‘Oh, he was beautiful.’ ‘But Johnny, you told me he didn’t have no sound.’ ‘Well, I didn’t know what I was talking about.’” Parker had no such ambivalence concerning Hodges’s matchless ravishing sound. He called him “Johnny Lily Pons Hodges . . . ’cause he can sing with the horn.” When McShann took the band back to Kansas City on a tour, Parker chose to stay in New York and become actively involved in the sessions at Minton’s and elsewhere. Mary Lou Williams, living at a hotel in Dewey Square, created a kind of salon for young musicians. Informal workshops proliferated so that ideas could be exchanged in private and tested in public. Parker’s arrival in New

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York was a revelation to the easterners. His music was integrated and authoritative, his “sanctified sound” (in Gillespie’s phrase) an entity beyond the uncertainty of experimentation. Having done most of his laboratory work in Kansas City, while Gillespie and Monk exchanged their ideas in New York, he arrived on the scene with a finished product. According to Gillespie, “Charlie Parker was the architect of the new sound. He knew how to get from one note to another, the style of the thing. Most of what I did was in the area of harmony and rhythm.” It remained for the rest of the musicians in the ensemble to adapt Parker’s precepts. In an unpublished interview with Helen Oakley Dance, Duke Ellington’s renowned trumpet soloist Cootie Williams called Parker “the greatest individual musician that ever lived,” justifying his claim with the observation that “every instrument in the band tried to copy Charlie Parker, and in the history of jazz there had never been one man who influenced all the instruments.” His influence was felt immediately. Kenny Clarke and a magnificent teenage drummer from Brooklyn, Max Roach, shifted rhythmic accents from the skins to the cymbals, replacing the thud-thud-thud-thud of the bass drum with the sibilant pulse of the ride cymbal. Oscar Pettiford, picking up where Duke Ellington’s bassist Jimmy Blanton left off, showed how the bass could provide a melodic counterpoint to the primary solos, rather than the usual cycle of tonic notes. Bud Powell exemplified the new role of the pianist, who no longer replicated the full-bodied dimension of an orchestra but pared his accompaniment to a brisk, rhythmically jagged series of harmonies and soloed with the linearity of a wind instrument. All wind instrumentalists—including, during the next few years, such influential figures as Dexter Gordon and Stan Getz on tenor sax, J. J. Johnson on trombone, Fats Navarro on trumpet, and Buddy DeFranco on clarinet—emulated Parker’s vibratoless, unmannered tonal production, rhythmic and harmonic values, and emphatically emotional ideas, which transcended ground rhythms and chords, bringing the listener into a deeper communion with the music.

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Charlie Rouse, Ernie Henry, Tadd Dameron, and Theodore “Fats” Navarro, New York City, 1947.

Meanwhile, Parker’s erratic relationship with McShann continued when the band returned from Kansas City. There were memorable nights, such as the broadcast in Baltimore, when Parker’s “Cherokee” choruses so excited the announcer that he allowed the band to play overtime. But there were dissatisfactions on both sides. Bird occasionally asked tenor saxophonist Buddy Tate to get him into the Basie band. “Man,” he’d tell Tate, “I’m from Kansas City and I should be in there.” At that time Basie had only four reeds, and Tate argued Parker’s case: “He’s playing something different and he wants to come in tomorrow.” Basie’s rejoinder was, “I know he can play, but he looks so bad.” When his lead alto, Earle Warren,

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took time off for a minor operation, Basie and Tate went to hear Parker on what turned out to be a sorrowful night. He not only looked disheveled—wearing, in Tate’s recollection, loud fireman’s suspenders and trousers a few inches short of his ankles—but got sick onstage. The job went to Tab Smith. Parker’s tenure with McShann ended abruptly during a tour. McShann tried to keep the pushers away from Bird, and Gene Ramey had taken it upon himself to look out for him and see that he showed up straight and on time. Their best efforts were subverted when the band arrived at the Paradise Theater in Detroit. As Parker walked falteringly to the mike for his first solo, the audience laughed. McShann peered over and saw he wasn’t wearing shoes. Parker had overdosed. When he recuperated he took a job with Andy Kirk’s band, also playing Detroit, to earn passage back to New York. In Lansing, Michigan, the tenor saxophonist Big Nick Nicholas, in the audience to hear Kirk, heard Bird playing “Indian Summer” so fast that his father, also a saxophonist, commented, “He sounds like a machine.” When they met backstage, Parker let Nick play his alto and taught him Monk’s “Epistrophy.” Earl Hines had expressed interest in hiring Bird, had even kidded McShann that he could “make a man of him.” He got his chance in December 1942, when, with the help of Billy Eckstine and Benny Harris, he convinced Parker to take Budd Johnson’s chair and play tenor. (The alto chairs were already occupied by Scoops Carry and an old acquaintance, Goon Gardner.) Within a couple of months, Hines griped to McShann that the incorrigible Bird owed money to everyone in the band and every loan shark in town, and missed more than his share of shows. Yet he expressed astonishment at Parker’s ability to memorize an arrangement after a single reading. For Parker, the eight-month period with Hines meant a chance to get closer to Gillespie, Harris, and other modernists in the band, including the incredible Sarah Vaughan, whom Hines signed after she won an amateur contest at the Apollo Theater. She, in turn, was mesmerized by Parker and Gillespie and used

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Charlie Parker at the home of William Claxton, the photographer, then a teenager, who had invited Parker to stay with him while his parents were away for the weekend. Pasadena, California, June 1953.

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them on her first recordings. Hines also provided Parker a chance to defy the Petrillo recording ban, albeit on tenor saxophone and with amateur acoustics and purely for the delectation of a collector who sat on the recordings for the next forty-three years. In February 1943, while the band played Chicago, Eckstine introduced Parker to his friend and sometime valet and driver, Bob Redcross, who organized jam sessions in his room at the Savoy Hotel. Using a Silvertone disc recorder, which he learned to master while monitoring radio airchecks, Redcross documented those sessions. Rumors circulated about the discs for decades; only a small circle of friends knew they existed. As late as 1974, a standard Parker discography listed them as “unknown titles” recorded at the Ritz Hotel for the American Red Cross. When he noticed the wax beginning to flake, Redcross wrapped the discs in a 1949 issue of the Chicago Tribune and stored them until 1985, when steps were taken to issue them on an album. As the only samples of Parker’s playing during that crucial twenty-six-month period, they are illuminating. Geraldine Scott Parker. Performances include “Sweet Georgia Brown,” nearly eight minutes long and the first recorded joust between Parker and Gillespie, backed solely by Oscar Pettiford’s bass; the first of Parker’s several variations on “Embraceable You,” played as a duet with the 1942 recording by Hazel Scott; an improvisation on “I Got Rhythm” chords in which Parker alludes

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Billy Eckstine and Sarah Vaughan, 1947.

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Left to right, first row: Dizzy Gillespie, Benny Harris, Gail Brockman, Shorty McConnell, Earl Hines, Sarah Vaughan, A. Crump, Andy “Goon” Gardner, George “Scoops” Carry, John Williams, and Charlie Parker; second row: Benny Green, Gus Chappell, Howard Scott, Shadow Wilson, Jesse Simpkins, Clifton “Skeeter” Best, and Julie Gardner. Apollo Theatre, New York City, April 23, 1943.

to Ben Webster’s “Cottontail” solo and previews the riff that Tiny Grimes and Parker later recorded as “Red Cross”; and versions of “Boogie Woogie” and “Indiana” that intimate Parker’s musical antecedents even as they unveil bop licks that would not gain general currency for another two years. On April 10, 1943, while the Hines band toured Washington, D.C., Parker married Geraldine Marguerite Scott, a dancer and the only one of his wives whom he allowed to dabble in drugs. As she

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later noted, “When I met him, all he had was a horn and a habit. He gave me the habit.” The marriage lasted about a year, although no record of their divorce has been found. Little is known about her other than that she was subsequently jailed on a narcotics charge and died in New Jersey in the early 1980s. But Parker’s insouciance about ending the marriage echoed some of the ugliness surrounding his break with Rebecca and presaged the complications that would plague his estate. He was ailing and tired and moving too fast. His restlessness reflected turmoil in the Hines orchestra, itself in a state of revolt. When Eckstine quit with the idea of forming his own band, eight musicians left with him—the modernist contin­ gent. Dizzy remained in New York while they waited for Eckstine to organize, but Charlie returned to his mother’s house in Kansas City. Once again he worked for Tootie Clarkin in a Missouri suburb, waiting for the new music to negotiate a New York home. In the years immediately following Kansas City’s decline as a jazz mecca, no community promised as prestigious, exciting, and international a substitute as the strip of brownstones on New York’s Fifty-second Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. Known as The Street, it had become a banquet of small clubs, bars, and restaurants snuggled one against the other, offering jazz, pop music, comedy, and dancing. Budd Johnson, a tireless activist for venturesome jazz, helped to get some of the younger players employed there. In early 1944, with the recording ban over, he organized a historic ­record session for Coleman Hawkins that featured Gillespie (as composer as well as player) along with Pettiford, baritone saxophonist Leo Parker (no relation to Charlie), and, in his recording debut, Max Roach. Bird was represented in absentia with a lick from “The Jumpin’ Blues,” scored by Dizzy to back Hawkins’s improvisation on “Disorder at the Border.” Two months later, while Charlie worked in Kansas City, Eckstine recorded with a studio band that included Gillespie (his musical director), Johnson, trumpet player Freddie Webster, tenor saxophonist Wardell Gray, pianist

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Clyde Hart, ­Pettiford, and drummer Shadow Wilson. The success of those records enabled Eckstine to secure the financial backing to form his own orchestra. Eckstine located Parker in Chicago, where he’d gone to play a job with Noble Sissle, and asked him to take charge of the reed section. At first Parker took to his position eagerly, hiring Gene Ammons on tenor and Leo Parker on baritone. Onstage, he continued to dazzle listeners with pyrotechnic choruses of “Cherokee”; an intriguing new piece by Gillespie, “Max Is Making Wax”; and ballads with Sarah Vaughan. After a while, though, he handed in his notice, complaining that his lack of discipline was too much of a liability for the band. Eckstine refused to let him go, and in the fall the band whipped itself into shape during a two-week stay at the Riviera Club in St. Louis, where the eighteen-year-old Miles Davis, more enthusiastic than proficient, sat in. In her interview with Reisner, Addie Parker says that it was during that job that Parker wired Rebecca to join him and asked to remarry her. Rebecca insisted the incident took place a few years earlier, but since she also recalled that Parker was playing with Eckstine and that Miles Davis was in attendance, the earlier date seems unlikely. Rebecca never considered returning to him, but Charlie sent Rebecca a ticket and asked her to meet him in St. Louis, where he lodged her in a different hotel than the one in which the band stayed and gave her his key to the Olive Street house. He was breaking with Kansas City but could not bring himself to go back and say good-bye to Addie. By this time Rebecca’s life had been thrown into more turmoil than Charlie knew. Sometime after he had asked for their divorce, her brother Winfrey brought her and Leon back to Fanny Ruffin’s house in Leeds, a district of Kansas City. Months later they learned that Addie went to Leeds and filed a complaint against Rebecca for living with a man. It was Addie’s first blow in a custody battle over Leon. Winfrey and Rebecca were employed, respectively, by the Juvenile Authority and the National Youth Administration. She was too well known for the accusation to stick. Nevertheless, a judge

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put Leon in Fanny’s care for six months, and issued an ultimatum that Rebecca obtain her divorce from Charlie and remarry. Rebecca was outraged, but Fanny overruled her objections. She found someone who could obtain the divorce for twenty-five dollars and arranged a marriage that lasted just long enough for Rebecca to secure custody of her son. Charlie never knew about any of this, according to Rebecca. Nor was he interested; he hardly ever paid alimony or child support. He had a new life now in New York, intensified by his steadily escalating coterie, which paid tribute to a personal sway far beyond his years or his cultish renown. Always an expert mimic, he even spoke differently in New York, at times affecting Oxfordian plum tones. In divesting himself of his house key, he made the symbolic break that he hoped would deliver him the world.

Fifty-second Street, looking east from Sixth Avenue, 1948.

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T

he second world war severely altered the texture

and tempo of American life, and jazz reflected those changes more acutely and thoroughly than the other arts, with the arguable exception of painting. Popular music gave way to canned patriotism, sentimental bromides, and silly novelties. Hollywood divided its soul between the benedictions of Bing Crosby as a priest and crime stories (later called noir) of festering corruption. Broadway looked backward even when it was serious (The Glass Menagerie, The Skin of Our Teeth), though it preferred outright nostalgia (I Remember Mama, Life with Father). A popular appetite for poetry was requited by a virtual law firm of the trade: Benét, Benét, Millay, McGinley, and Nash. Though the novel fared better, particularly in the South, only Richard Wright’s Native Son successfully broached the agenda of race, which remained on the back burner until thousands of returning black servicemen who helped save the Charlie Parker, Tommy Potter, c. 1950.

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world for democracy demanded a little of the same. The new jazz set a comprehensive tone for black discontent and black accomplishment, tempering outrage with ebullience, sorrow with nobility, hurt with beauty, impudence with razzle-dazzle genius. Parker, Gillespie, Monk, and Powell were of the first generation born during the Harlem renaissance. History was on their side and they knew it. The world could not fail to take notice of their music. An elemental difference between popular and serious art is that the former gives society what it wants and the latter gives it what it must. The impact modern jazz had on American life is reflected not least in the number of people, including countless artists in other fields, who found themselves relearning their responses to music because of it. Indeed, bebop’s glittery blare reawakened many to

At a recording session in New York City by Sir Charles and His All Stars. Left to right: Sir Charles Thompson, Jimmy Butts, Dexter Gordon, Buck Clayton, J. C. Heard, Danny Barker, and Charlie Parker, September 4, 1945.

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the astonishing fact that much of what was best in American culture emerged from a formerly enslaved and often despised minority. Which is not to say that its proponents achieved a mastery or seriousness lacking in their predecessors. The music of Armstrong, Ellington, Bessie Smith, Hawkins, Young, Holiday, Basie, Tatum, Eldridge, and many others of the 1920s and 1930s, was every bit as expert, personal, and willful. The choices they made were in all important respects singularly musical, even in the arena of commercial concessions. They represented the first wave of accomplishment, when jazz and popular music reinforced each other. The modernists knew that that marriage was no longer tenable. Jazz in the Swing Era was so frequently compromised by chuckleheaded bandleaders, most of them white, who diluted, sentimentalized, and undermined the work of dedicated musicians, that a bold new virtuosity was essential—and the modernists brandished it like a weapon. They confronted social and musical complacency in a spirit of dauntless romanticism. Their art was a relentless celebration of self. That modem jazz disenfranchised conservative listeners no one can doubt. Yet its leaders were not the sort of apostates who thrive as a clique, snubbing bourgeois acceptance. They were pioneers who cultivated their contemporaries on their own terms. “Don’t play what the public wants,” Monk advised, “you play what you want and let the public pick up on what you are doing—even if it does take them fifteen, twenty years.” Monk eventually found a permanent international audience, as Gillespie had earlier, as Parker did posthumously. It was easy for the impish Gillespie to exploit the publicity value of the bebop-rebop-hipster-hepster jive that Parker disdained. (“Let’s not call it bebop. Let’s call it music,” he pleaded.) But Parker was no less intent on securing public approval. His insistence on performing with an ensemble of strings betrayed less of a debt to Stravinsky and Hindemith than to the sugary backdrops Armstrong favored for his interpretations of pop songs nearly ­twenty years earlier. Yet he was accused of alienating the jazz following, of scorning dancers and entertainment values.

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The truth is more complicated. Parker paid his dues in dance bands, admired great dancers (he named the tap dancer Baby Laurence as an influence), and relished the rare opportunities when he could play ballrooms. He was himself a good dancer, like Gillespie, who could cut a rug onstage well into his seventies. (Monk also danced onstage, though his terpsichorean skills were somewhat more eccentric.) The idea that modernists spurned dance is as fallacious as the idea that swing bands played entirely for lindy hoppers. Even Glenn Miller, a shrewd judge of pop fashions who once complained to a critic that it was unfair to rate him as a musician because he was primarily a businessman, confided to a colleague that he sometimes brightened his tempos to force dancers to stand still and listen. Still, as a head music, modern jazz contributed—along with the war, cabaret laws, inflation, television, and rock and roll, all of which combined to destroy big bands, ballrooms, and night life—to the ultimate split between jazz and colloquial dance. Modernism’s presumed rejection of entertainment values also requires a closer look. Gillespie, an instinctive comedian, is the bestknown jazz clown since Armstrong and Waller. Parker was no less ready to demonstrate antic wit and irreverence, usually in a strictly musical context. Gillespie spoke of how funny Yard could be. In the 1945 recording of “Warming Up a Riff,” we hear Gillespie guffaw at Parker’s outlandish digression into inapposite song fragments. Significantly, Parker did not realize that the performance was being recorded. This was the sort of thing he did nightly to regale musicians and fans. At black theaters around the country, he was known to sing, mug, joke, and encourage congregational responses to his playing. The distancing effect of modern jazz stemmed not from any desire to estrange audiences but from difficulties inherent in a music that, for all its emotional qualities, necessitated concentration and empathy. The new jazz could not be apprehended entirely through toe-tapping physical responses—not in the 1940s, anyway. When a Charlie Parker at the Three Deuces, New York City, 1948.

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generation of disciples eventually turned Parker’s innovations into maxims, the music was obliged to take more drastic steps to force an intellectual response. Within fifteen years jazz was ready to jettison all the familiar signposts: countable time, chord changes, even the tempered scale. But that’s another story, almost another world. In 1944, the jazz audience could still be nettled by a flatted fifth—an interval (for example, F-sharp against C-natural) useful for suggesting bitonality, which soon became just another blues note. At the outset of bop, it was considered a terrible dissonance, a symptom of modem jazz’s frantic assault on decency and good taste. Consequently, no nightclub booking in jazz history sparked more anticipation or controversy than the long-awaited teaming of Diz and Bird on Fifty-second Street. At long last, the music was coming out of hiding. Gillespie had already paved the way. After leaving Eckstine’s band (he brought in Fats Navarro as his replacement), he teamed with Oscar Pettiford to lead a band at the Onyx, with pianist George Wallington, tenor saxophonist Don Byas, and Roach. He had wired Parker in Kansas City to join them, but Bird never got the telegram. Parker also left Eckstine (replaced by John Jackson) and made his debut on The Street in a group led by Ben Webster. Then Sammy Kaye, the owner of the Three Deuces, a narrow little club just off Sixth Avenue, agreed to take a chance on the founders of the new movement for an eight-week stint. Gillespie was the contractor and leader. He hired drummer Stan Levey (Roach was on tour with Benny Carter), bassist Curley Russell, and (because Bud Powell was unavailable) an immensely gifted pianist from Newark, Al Haig, who showed an immediate receptivity to the music. They rehearsed afternoons, either at the Deuces or at Gillespie’s home. When they opened, with Erroll Garner playing intermission piano, they established bop as a permanent item on The Street’s bill of fare. With a seating capacity of about 125, the Deuces was usually packed. Many listeners admitted they did not understand the new music, with its furious, barbed ensemble themes and flaring solos,

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Charlie Parker, Tommy Potter, and Dizzy Gillespie, at Birdland, New York City, 1951.

but they found it enticing all the same and came back for more. The uncanny responsiveness between Parker and Gillespie recalled the era of the early twenties, when King Oliver and Louis Armstrong completed each other’s phrases at Chicago’s Lincoln Gardens. They seemed to ad lib the theme statements in perfect unison, and their reeling exchanges of four- and eight-bar passages brought time to a stop and audiences to a roar. Parker didn’t always show up on time— or at all—but when he hit the stand his playing was amazingly consistent. On an average night as many as a dozen ace bands played on

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The Street, and most of the musicians eventually dropped in at the Deuces or sidled over to Bird at the White Rose, where they relaxed between shows. Looking back, few of them could believe Bird was not yet twenty-five; there was a luminous, aged quality about him. He magnetized people with his beguiling charm and gold-toothed smile, increasing his circle of converts nightly. The rumored disparity between his majesty onstage and a furtively erratic private life served as grist for the legend aborning. Bird flourished in the bustling, integrated atmosphere of The

Left to right: Milt Jackson, Al Haig, unknown, Charlie Parker, Nicole Barclay, Max Roach, Mrs. Kenny Dorham, and Kenny Dorham, at the Royal Roost, New York City, 1949.

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Street, engorging himself on drugs, women, drink, food, and music in any order they came. His appetite for life exhilarated his friends and made him an easy mark for parasites and pushers who dogged his steps as relentlessly as his fans. With mobsters like Frank Costello running things, Fifty-second Street was something of a safe house from the police, though not from such peculiarly American treacheries as the white servicemen who taunted black musicians on the stand or in the bars, especially when they were in the company of white women. Still, for the most part, New York was a movable feast, and Bird tasted of it fully, fusing with people of every sort and storing motley bits of information. He seemed able to discuss everything, from science to chess to politics. Just as you could never tell what he would play from one set to the next, you couldn’t predict where his conversation would turn. He had a way of discerning the subjects that were of interest to people, especially young musicians. “He spoke beautifully, and he was very kind,” Al Cohn said. “He could talk to intellectuals about music and art and turn around and talk to street people as though he were one of them.” Pepper Adams was only sixteen when he met him in Detroit, and they became friends because of a mutual fascination with Honegger. When Bird’s opinions appeared in print, fans sprang into action. “After I read that he liked Schoenberg,” Phil Woods recalled, “I started to listen to Schoenberg. Whatever Bird said, that was it, you had to check it out.” Yet his habit worsened, and his absences increased to the point that Gillespie was regularly making excuses and carrying the show. Genius doesn’t know its own worth, Sartre wrote. By most accounts, Bird knew his, but the knowledge was never enough to still the demons. One night Gillespie unwittingly incited a rift between them. As Curley Russell described the incident to Crouch, Bird arrived at the Deuces late and locked himself in the john. After a long while, Gillespie angrily told Roach that Parker was in there with a needle in his arm. Gillespie did not realize he was standing next to an open mike. Everyone in the room heard him, including Parker, who

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felt betrayed. Yet despite his illness, he not only continued at the Deuces but also jammed down the block at Tondelayo’s, where Tiny Grimes, the four-string guitarist and a mainstay of Art Tatum’s Trio, led the band. As far as Grimes was concerned, Bird “couldn’t be beat. No problem, no arguments, no nothing. He was glad to play and I played everything that I could to back him up.” He showed up so often that they worked out head arrangements. When the small label Savoy signed Grimes for a record session, he unhesitatingly called Parker. The session with Grimes (in September 1944) was the first of seven that Parker made in the course of a year, all as a sideman. It was his first time in a studio in two years—since McShann— and though the context was swing rather than bop, the maturity of Parker’s sound was unmistakable. Of the four pieces, two were Grimes vocals, supported by Parker’s fluent obbligato, and two were instrumentals that demonstrated Bird’s incomparable affinity for the basic song structures he played unswervingly throughout his life: twelve-bar blues (“Tiny’s Tempo”) and the thirty-two-bar pop song with “rhythm” harmonies (“Red Cross”). His loyalty to those foundations, notwithstanding his dauntless chord substitutions, is one of the enduring ironies of Parker’s music. On “Red Cross,” he used the same mop-mop figure (two quarter notes followed by a two-beat rest) that he’d played in jam sessions in Bob Redcross’s hotel room. But “Tiny’s Tempo” was the track that startled people who happened upon it inadvertently, say, on the radio. No one in 1944 would have been disconcerted by the head, a typical swing blues with notable piano fills that might lead one to assume it was the pianist Clyde Hart’s session (it was his tune). But then Parker tears in with a sound and energy that ignites the air and deconstructs the rhythm, his phrases ricocheting like bullets, his authority absolute. Parker’s sideman sessions stopped plenty of people in their tracks, musicians and fans who expected to hear one thing and stumbled onto something else entirely. Jazz is speckled with moments like that, bands working with the conventions of the day ­until one

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player renders a solo, perhaps no longer than a few seconds, that neutralizes the surrounding landscape while pointing the way to fresh rapture: Louis Armstrong’s articulation of the trio passage in King Oliver’s “Chimes Blues” (1923), Bix Beiderbecke’s eight-bar idyll near the finish of Paul Whiteman’s “The Love Nest” (1928), ­Dizzy Gillespie’s blazing half chorus on Les Hite’s “Jersey Bounce” (1942). Bird’s next session was contracted as Clyde Hart’s All Stars, but the discs were released under the names of various participants, including the trombonist Trummy Young, who built a following for his work with the Jimmie Lunceford Orchestra. Jackie McLean, one of Parker’s most intense and original acolytes, was a thirteen-yearold music student, helping his stepfather unpack discs at his 141st Street record shop, when the new one by Young arrived: two swing sides with novelty vocals Charlie Parker at the Three Deuces, New York City, 1948. by Trummy and solos by an ensemble made up of proven and upcoming musicians. The stepfather, invariably on Jackie’s case (Johnny Hodges was “what an alto is supposed to sound like, not what you’re doing”) put “Seventh Avenue” on the phonograph, a negligible effort with a solid Don Byas tenor solo, then flipped it to hear “Sorta Kinda.” Thirty years later, McLean remembered: “When I heard the alto solo, I stopped working. I just couldn’t

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­believe it, and I said, ‘Listen to that alto.’ He said, ‘That’s a tenor.’ I said, ‘That’s an alto!’ He took the record off, looked at it and said, ‘Somebody named Charlie Parker; you’re right, it’s an alto. I don’t think I like that.’ I was in love, you know.” The Clyde Hart session, which also included excellent work by Dizzy, had been conceived to feature the blues singing of an overbearing, oversized character named Henry “Rubberlegs” Williams, who left home at sixteen to tour the minstrel circuit as a female impersonator and later achieved recognition for his eccentric dancing, a mixture of tap, shimmy, and high kicks known as “legomania.” He had a voice like Jimmy Durante with strep under the best of circumstances; this time he got blasted on cheap whisky and demanded coffee. The producer grabbed a full cup—the one in which Parker was soaking a Benzedrine inhaler containing about 250 milligrams of amphetamine. Complaining of its bitter taste, he drank it all, broke into a sweat, shook and screeched through his vocals (which, incredibly, were issued), and threatened to hammer Parker and “Miss Gillespie” for playing wrong notes. They hustled him out, and when their laughter subsided, continued with the Trummy Young numbers. Thus bebop’s rollout: parlous and tentative. And so it went, with Parker and Gillespie appearing on ses­sions led by the pianist Sir Charles Thompson (“The Street Beat,” yet another mop-mop variant) and the vibraphonist Red Norvo (Parker offered an impressive solo on “Hallelujah,” a tune he had practiced with Biddy Fleet). Of greater significance were one session with Sarah Vaughan (Roach and Dameron participated) and two with Gillespie. Despite the presence of swing drummers, Dizzy’s sessions for Guild firmly established the new style on records. The original Gillespie pieces became classics of the repertory— “Groovin’ High,” “Dizzy Atmosphere,” “Salt Peanuts,” “Shaw ’Nuff ”—as did Tadd Dameron’s “Hot House,” all based on the blueprints of pop songs but remade with fiercely contrary rhythms and aggressive melodies that accommodated the dissonances of farflung harmonies. The band replicated the Deuces quintet with one

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At Massey Hall, Toronto: Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker (with plastic alto), May 1953.

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exception (Big Sid Catlett, a crucial Swing Era drummer, replaced Levey) and captured the magic of Gillespie and Parker breathing as one, for example, the slurred phrases in the middle section of “Shaw ’Nuff.” Even so, Parker sounds at times vaguely inhibited, as if holding back. Finally, on November 26, 1945, Savoy gave him his own session, his first as a leader. It’s not difficult, all these decades later, to perceive the original impact of “Ko Ko.” To this day, unprepared listeners hear Parker’s streak of musical lightning, his magnificent cri de coeur, as an explosion of sound, a scramble, an incomprehensible provocation. Repeated listening reveals the logic and coherence, the indelible secret: it’s all melody. Based on the chords of “Cherokee,” the specialty feature of Parker’s apprenticeship, “Ko Ko” heralded a new point of departure for jazz in the postwar era, an effect paralleling that of Armstrong’s “West End Blues” in 1928. Armstrong began with a clarion cadenza; “Ko Ko” opens with an equivalent jolt—a blistering eight-bar unison theme of daunting virtuosity, coupled with improvised eight-bar arabesques by Parker and Gillespie. Then Parker takes off for two choruses of engulfing originality, as though putting everything he knew into this single performance, imposing his will on the music and the musicians, setting forth a novel code with redoubtable nerve. Though improvised at tremendous velocity, his solo is colored with deft conceits: the clanging riff in the first eight bars, the casual reference to “High Society” at the outset of the second chorus, the chromatic arpeggios in the release. And his sound!—so deeply, profoundly human; fat and sensual, yet jagged and hard; inflamed with a gleeful audacity. Braced by the cold winds of Max Roach’s drums, “Ko Ko” struck with the violence and calm of a hurricane. It was, it remains, thrilling. Yet “Ko Ko” capped an oddly bedeviled session. Parker had agreed to record two blues and variants on “Cherokee” and “I Got Rhythm” with a quintet that included Bud Powell and Miles Davis. At the last minute, Powell couldn’t make it, so Bird brought Dizzy and Argonne Thornton (aka Sadik Hakim), who had neither a

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union card nor a firm grasp of modern piano. Bird was plagued with reed problems, and Davis had difficulties with the themes, which Parker notated shortly before the session. Still, they recorded two classic F major blues, “Billie’s Bounce” and “Now’s the Time,” with Parker solos that were dissected and imitated for years. On “Now’s the Time,” backed by Gillespie’s provoking piano chords, Parker’s phrases erupt unpredictably but with an inviolable poise. His melodic figures bleed new life into the most basic of jazz songs. Davis’s chorus lacks rhythmic interest, compensating with a broad sound and advanced harmonies that fix a memorably melodic response, in the manner of Freddie Webster, a trumpet player who Telegrams from Dizzy Gillespie and Mercer and Duke Ellington. worked with Lunceford and died young. Parker further extemporized on the chords of “Embraceable You” (“Meandering”), “I Got Rhythm” (“Thriving on a Riff”), and “Cherokee” (“Warming Up a Riff ”). By the time he was ready to tackle the final version of “Cherokee” (“Ko Ko”)—after a frenzied hunt for new reeds— Davis had passed out and Dizzy, assisted by Thornton, doubled

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Charlie Parker, c. 1947.

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on trumpet and piano. At first Parker intended to use the actual melody of “Cherokee,” but no sooner did they start to play than he changed his mind. Whether he discarded it to circumvent mechanical royalties (a bugbear at Savoy) or because it took too long to play or because he realized—as the listener, hearing the false take, is bound to realize—that it simply did not belong, his decision helped to confirm jazz’s emergence from the shadows of Tin Pan Alley, swing, and anything that could remotely be regarded as easy-listening music. Ironically, Bird’s assault on jazz conventions proved to be his parting shot to New York for two years. Nor did it confer critical recognition. Down Beat excoriated the “Ko Ko” session for reflecting the “bad taste and ill-advised fanaticism of Dizzy’s uninhibited style,” characterized as “the sort of stuff that has thrown innumerable impressionable young musicians out of stride, that has harmed many of them irreparably.” Two weeks later Parker left with Gillespie for an engagement in Los Angeles. He probably relished the change in scenery. For several months now his life had mirrored the disorganization of his first recording date. He had taken up with both of the women who would play prominent roles in his remaining years. Chan Richardson (stage name Beverly Berg), a chic erstwhile dancer who had been brought up on the fringes of show business, shared with her mother (a graduate of the Ziegfeld Follies) a brownstone on The Street, where they established a casual salon for musicians. Doris Sydnor, a gangly, unassuming Midwesterner, worked as a hatcheck girl at the Spotlite and was introduced to Bird by the violinist Stuff Smith. Although he dated Chan, he moved in with Doris. Bird had been boarding all over town, most recently with Miles Davis, who had come to New York at eighteen for the stated purpose of studying at Juilliard and the secret purpose of studying with Bird and Diz. Davis not only invited Parker to live with him but gave him a weekly percentage of his father’s allowance. Parker took him under his wing, introduced

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Left to right: Doris Parker, Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, and Jerry Lester (television host, Broadway Open House), New York City, January 1949.

him to the practice sessions at Dizzy’s home and the ways of The Street, and ultimately, after Gillespie left the quintet to launch his big band, hired him for a gig at the Deuces. Their friendship was edgy, however, and gradually Bird moved his belongings to Doris’s apartment on 117th Street and Manhattan Avenue. The first time she walked in on him while he shot up, she got sick, but she grew used to it. She loved him and, not realizing the full potency of his habit, accepted the fact that he seemed more in control under the influence of narcotics than of liquor. By late 1945, mobster primacy on The Street was under siege by the vice squad, for reasons similar to those that closed New Orleans’s fabled Storyville district. Too many servicemen were getting into trouble, and the military demanded a crackdown. Many of the downtown clubs were shuttered, some for good, and musi-

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cians scrambled for work. A deal was struck: Gillespie would form a sextet to play Billy Berg’s in Los Angeles. Bird would be featured, but the vibraharpist Milt Jackson would go along in case he missed a night. As it happened, he missed so many that the tenor saxophonist Lucky Thompson was recruited to fill out the band. Desperately in need of heroin, Parker settled for inferior goods that frayed his nerves and wore him down. The punishing atmosphere of Central Avenue brought home how strung out he was. He soon took a fall he had postponed for nearly a decade. Yet he did not come apart at once. The Los Angeles nightmare began disarmingly, then reached the panic stage familiar to all addicts, and finally turned to horror as he found himself pressed hopelessly at the cliff’s edge. Pincus the doorman, who became known as “the Mayor” Before he jumped, Parkof Fifty-second Street, New York City, 1948. er had his ­triumphs. A few months ­earlier, Howard McGhee had brought the new music to the coast and found a generation of young jazz players—Dexter Gordon, Art Pepper, Hampton Hawes, Wardell Gray, Jimmy Knepper, Sonny Criss, Gerald ­Wilson, Chico Hamilton, among dozens of others, including almost the entire personnel of Stan Kenton’s orchestra— fully in tune with it. For them the ­arrival of Bird and Diz was cause for celebration, and opening night at Billy Berg’s was likened by some to the debut of The Rite of Spring, a comparison validated not least by the responses of patrons who tittered derisively from the

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Left to right: Charlie Parker, Harry Babison, Chet Baker, and Helen Carr, at the Tiffany Club, Los Angeles, California, June 1953.

opening notes, disdainful critics, and a few commissars of radio who pronounced the music “degenerate” and banned it from the air. It was heard nevertheless, on radio broadcasts (a few of them produced by the Armed Forces Radio Service) and records (including a jocular session with the jivey singer, pianist, and guitarist Slim Gaillard) and at the Jazz at the Philharmonic concert series. JATP put Dizzy and Bird on the same stage as Lester Young and Willie Smith,

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and it is difficult to imagine how anyone hearing Gillespie’s glorious rendering of “The Man I Love” or Parker’s sweeping descants on “Sweet Georgia Brown” could have questioned their legitimacy. Ross Russell, the proprietor of a local record shop and a small label called Dial, signed the easterners for a recording session. After completing one number, “Diggin’ Diz,” Parker disappeared. The band recorded a second session without him and, after a fruitless search for the wayward Bird, returned to New York. They later learned that Parker had cashed in his plane ticket and gone on a binge. Why he chose to strand himself in a hostile city without a job is a mystery. He became dependent on a paraplegic pusher known as Moose the Mooche, who made his way to nightclubs in a wheelchair. While the heroin was forthcoming, he was able to take care of business. Miles Davis was there, having traveled west with Benny Carter’s Los Angeles–based band, so Bird formed a rhythm

Charlie Parker and two fans at the Tiffany Club, Los Angeles, California, June 1953.

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section and found the quintet work at the Finale Club. He also made another appearance with Jazz at the Philharmonic: on March 25, 1946, he created one of his most influential solos in a performance of “Lady Be Good,” alongside Lester Young. Entering on the heels of a Teddy Wilson–inspired piano solo by Arnold Ross, Bird delivers two choruses that alchemize the Gershwin ballad into a near-feral blues. Although he actually plays the first four notes of the melody, he voices them with such ardent command that the phrase is transfigured into a plea more impassioned than anything the mincing lyric could suggest. That first salvo is sustained through inspired variations. The number had to be divided as two sides of a 78, but few people paid attention to anything beyond Parker’s stunning invention: every phrase and idea became part of the grammar of modern jazz. His caustic transfiguration of an overly familiar pop song into an expressive blues was so widely imitated that Young’s superb follow-up solo was generally overlooked.* Three days later Bird led his first session at Dial, a tour de force. Driving to the studio, with drummer Roy Porter at the wheel, he composed a tribute to his connection, “Moose the Mooche,” an upbeat theme on which he improvised a slyly economical chorus that peaks with a quotation from Hawkins’s version of “Body and Soul.” He also unveiled his winsome melody from 1941, “Yardbird Suite”; Benny Harris’s expansion of his early blues lick, “Ornithology”; and Gillespie’s exotic “A Night in Tunisia.” On the last, Parker launched his improvisation with a four-bar break of extravagant complexity and numbing speed. It actually stymied the rhythm section, which was unable to coordinate a return. For the next take, Davis walked to the side, counted the measures, and conducted the reentry. Bird’s exultation was short-lived. Uneasy about sustaining a source of drugs, he signed away half his royalties to the Mooche,

* Though not by King Pleasure, who adapted its poignant melody as a song called “Golden Days.” Eddie Jefferson, who wrote a lyric to Parker’s “Now’s the Time,” also wrote one to his “Lady Be Good” solo, which he named “Disappointed.”

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who was arrested in April. He drank heavily and lived in a converted garage. Only six months had passed since “Ko Ko,” and Charlie Parker was coming apart at the seams. Howard McGhee found him work and, in July, helped organize the Dial session that all too vividly documented his collapse. Parker’s sound is parched, his articulation blurred, his timing inchoate. On “Lover Man,” he founders in shallow water, tossing about in a dilatory muddle, as though the shore were always one stroke beyond his grasp. Yet the performance is strangely sensitive and moving, especially a heartbreaking arpeggio in the twenty-fourth bar. After a disastrous, pointless attempt at a fast piece, he crumpled into a chair. When Russell released the recording, an indiscretion for which Bird never forgave him, callow musicians fetishized it, mistakes and all. That night at the Civic Hotel, he twice wandered into the lobby naked. Later, he fell asleep smoking a cigarette that ignited his mattress. Despite billowing smoke and braying sirens, fire fighters had to roust him from sleep. When he protested, the police blackjacked and handcuffed him. They jailed him for ten days, until Russell managed to have him transferred to Camarillo State Hospital, where he was incarcerated for six months. Parker emerged in the spring of 1947 and returned to New York, temporarily reformed. A few weeks later, in its May issue, Harper’s published a short story, ­Elliot Grennard’s “Sparrow’s Last Jump,” dramatizing the “Lover Man” session with a fatal aftermath; it won the O. Henry award.

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he restored, revitalized Charlie Parker of 1947

is the illustrious Bird, the fabled Bird of a thousand acquaintances, numberless funny and harrowing anecdotes, and a profusion of masterpieces. The period of his ascension dates from his quietly triumphant return to New York in April and continues almost until his deliverance eight years later, all of it chronicled in passionate, contradictory, and wistful testimony. Like loosely assembled fragments of a shattered mirror, they reflect a shimmering, deceptive mosaic. The image looms elusively, assuming a different temper in each ray of light. Even the photographs indicate a magic show. His weight billows and recedes, his face—a potato from one perspective, a stone carving from another—transmogrifies, as the boyish spark is quenched and revived. Only the eyes are candid, registering cockiness, intensity, wit, detachment, pain, pleasure, concentration, anger, and more. The premature creases speak less

Tommy Potter, Charlie Parker, and Max Roach, at the Three Deuces, New York City, 1948.

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Left to right: Charles Mingus, Charlie Parker, and Symphony Sid Torin at Birdland, New York City, 1953.

of sickness and self-abuse than of a life that never knew youth, or one that sustained the veneer of youth to cloak an unseasonable knowledge. (Rebecca: “Charlie was always old.” Chan: “I couldn’t believe he was just twenty-six.”) He might almost have been born a sachem. The music, too, defies easy apprehension. Only in jazz is the official work so frequently qualified by ancillary discoveries. Sketches do not supersede a painting; first drafts do not supplant the published novel or musical score. But jazz records, the art’s one sure covenant with posterity, are definitive only by default. They document random performances, especially in the case of a musician as committed to improvisation as Bird. Even a cursory examination of his alternate takes shows the degree of serendipity involved in

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producing work that is soon considered classic. How many thousands of potential classics, then, were performed in the absence of recording engineers? Beginning with his 1947 homecoming, sixty pounds heavier and lustrous with good health, Parker was stalked by amateur recordists intent on preserving every fugitive solo. Singleminded and thrifty, they sometimes recorded Parker alone, turning off the disc, wire, or tape machine when other members of his band soloed. Some preserved radio airchecks, others followed him into clubs, others had access to private jam sessions. The technology that domesticated entertainment makes every consumer a potential producer. Leaving aside the issue of theft, which remains thorny because American copyright laws are stubbornly inhospitable to improvised music, those low-fidelity mementos vastly enlarge our understanding of Parker’s accomplishment. More than 350 Parker improvisations recorded privately between 1947 and 1954, excluding posthumously discovered studio performances, surfaced in the thirty years after his death, and they constitute a treasure with few parallels in musical history.* (One thinks of the countless hours of “new” Ellington, and of the manuscripts in Schubert’s attic.) They afford us far more than extended solos or versions of compositions that he never officially recorded, and substantiate the claims of his contemporaries, who insist that the records, magnificent though they are, do not tell the whole story. They are proof that the formalist, who structures his inventions with sovereign care in the confines of a three-minute 78 rpm record, raged luminously, almost recklessly, for the pleasure of an * This number now figures as absurdly low. In 1990, Mosaic Records released the legendary cache of Parker solos and snippets privately documented by Dean Benedetti in 1947 and 1948: more than 265 excerpts, some seven hours of crudely recorded but not infrequently thrilling music. Other discoveries added to the treasure, notably, from Uptown Records in 2005, a previously unknown 1945 Town Hall concert by the Three Deuces band (Parker, Gillespie, Al Haig, Curley Russell, Sid Catlett alternating with Max Roach, and a brief appearance by Don Byas), including a version of “Salt Peanuts” with four rapturous Parker choruses—the kind of solo that makes you wonder how we presumed to know this man without having known this performance.

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eager audience; that, notwithstanding his lexicon of trademark licks and transitions, he rarely repeated himself; that he was witty, irreverent, and impulsive; that he could play any piece in any key; that although his virtuosity may occasionally have been impaired by stimulants, it never withered into glibness; that every solo was a direct expression of the moment in which it was played; and that the source of his inspiration was unfettered. It abided almost until the end. Consider one example among the many, “All the Things You Are,” by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II, written in 1939 for the stage show Very Warm for May. Its substitute chords and key

Left to right: Tommy Potter, Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, and John Coltrane at Birdland, New York City, 1951.

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Left to right: Bud Powell, Charles Mingus, Max Roach, Dizzy Gillespie, and Charlie Parker, at Massey Hall, Toronto, May 1953.

changes appealed to the modernists, and Gillespie turned it into a bop theme at a 1945 session with Parker, who played only the eightbar release. The introductory vamp they fashioned is still standard in jazz versions of the tune. Parker performed the song often with his own quintet, and in his years with Chan affectionately called it “Yatag,” an acronym of his favorite phrase from the lyric, “You are the angel glow.” When, in 1947, he recorded it for Dial, three takes were made, on all of which the vamp was dramatized as a kind of surrogate theme. On the first take, Parker plays Kern’s melody with embellishments, departing from it only toward the end of his chorus. On the second, he improvises freely at once, justifying a title change to “Bird of Paradise.” On the third (the master take),

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he improvises a startlingly original variation that owes nothing to Kern’s melody and that, despite a waggish reference to Chopin right before the release, has the integrity of deliberated composition. His later performances of the song include those from Sweden in late 1950 and from the celebrated concert at Massey Hall, in Toronto, in 1953. Yet perhaps the most remarkable version was hidden for twenty-seven years after being recorded at a jam session in 1950, where Parker, the honored guest, regaled a group of white disciples. Released on an album called Apartment Sessions, it alone finds Parker playing the piece capaciously (a four-chorus solo spliced to a two-chorus solo), as he combines embellishment and improvisation for an extraordinarily intricate invention. The years 1947–48 seem almost a period of grace, or at least a respite from overt turbulence. He attempted a stable home life with Doris, who traveled to California and visited him at Camarillo State Hospital daily. Chan had also flown to California, but she was pregnant by another man and left when Bird asked her to have an abortion. Eventually released into Doris’s care, he seemed optimistic. And although he remained furious with Ross Russell for releasing “Lover Man,” an unforgivable wound to his vanity, Bird recorded two sessions for him in L.A.: the first, a blues and ballads affair with Erroll Garner and a singer Bird encouraged, Earl Coleman; the second (with McGhee and Wardell Gray), a health report conveyed in song titles: “Relaxin’ at Camarillo,” “Cheers,” and “Stupendous,” and the first of his two contrapuntal compositions, “Carvin’ the Bird.” (He introduced the second, “Ah-Leu-Cha,” in 1948.) After he resettled in New York, Parker organized his most steadfast band—with Miles, Max, pianists Duke Jordan or Al Haig, and bassist Tommy Potter—for extended residencies at the Royal Roost and Three Deuces. With Billy Shaw managing him, he embarked on successful tours to Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., and elsewhere. Critics continued to snipe at him (Leonard Feather and Barry Ulanov were the notable exceptions), and salaries were at best middling. But his fame among musicians

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Left to right: Charles Mingus, Thelonious Monk, Roy Haynes, and Charlie Parker, at the Open Door, New York City, January 1953.

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Left to right: Charlie Parker, Ross Russell, Harold West, Earl Coleman, and Shifty Henry, at a Dial Records session, Los Angeles, February 1947.

was absolute, and his ever-growing coterie was enthusiastic to the point of worship. At a 1948 concert with Gillespie’s big band at Chicago’s Pershing Ballroom (privately taped but unreleased for decades), his scrupulously paced alto elicits congregational responses from the audience of three thousand as though he were preaching a sermon to reverent followers. During this period, he never faltered in the studio. He could now call upon a generation of bebop adherents who understood him perfectly. The generation of modernists went its individual ways, but he did not need Dizzy or Bud or Miles. His recordings are sparked with discerning piano introductions by Duke Jordan, Dodo Marmarosa, Al Haig, and Hank Jones and luminously corresponding solos by such trumpet players as Red Rodney and Kenny Dorham. An entire generation is ready for Bird, reflecting back at him the music he instilled in them. He surprises even himself. At a session in which he is set to record yet another variation of “Embrace-

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able You,” his pet ballad and as such a complement to “Cherokee,” he lights (we will never know why) on a rather banal pop song he heard on an Artie Shaw record, “A Table in the ­Corner,” and transfigures its initial phrase into a yearning motif with which to explore Gershwin’s melody, building a cathedral of thirty-second notes at an impossibly slow tempo. On another occasion, he transforms “Embraceable You” into a bracingly winged countermelody he called “Quasimodo.” As late as 1953, backed by Al Haig, Max Roach, and a relative newcomer, bassist Percy Heath, he revisits his endlessly parroted 1945 blues, “Now’s the Time” and, far from imitating himself, raises the stakes on blues playing. He can write an irresistibly bright and songful piece with an original chord progression and a melody that never repeats (“Confirmation”), and he can jam with the most honored of his predecessors, including Johnny Hodges and Benny Carter, and deliver more than they on the implied promise of the title “Funky Blues.” He is, in such moments, untouchable. He tried to free himself from narcotics and did not submit easily to the baseness of the life ordained by addiction. Gerry Mulligan believed he hated having to ask for handouts and masked his mortification with arrogance, as

John Lewis with Dizzy Gillespie Orchestra, at the Savoy Ballroom, New York City, 1946.

Unknown, Billie Holiday, and Charlie Parker.

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though he were demanding his rightful due, donations to underwrite his genius. As dozens of younger musicians would soon learn, heroin was a sedative that relieved the stimulation of staying up all night every night—a requisite of the jazz life that wasn’t necessarily in tune with each musician’s metabolism. It grieved Parker to see musicians imitating him, and he told them as well as interviewers that he played best straight, that he wished they would do as he said and not as he did, that he’d been hooked since the age of twelve and therefore could not help himself. He provided a more graphic lesson to Mulligan, who occasionally stayed with Bird at his 140th Street apartment. “He kept drugs away from me, but after we’d spent a lot of time together, he injected himself in my presence and said, ‘This is something that I have to do. It’s terrible, but I’m stuck with it.’ It was terrifying to watch my hero doing that. He made it as revolting as possible, as though it were a lecture on what not to do.” In attempting to substiCharlie Parker eating lobster in back of the Apollo Theatre, 126th Street, New York City, August 17, 1950. tute alcohol for drugs, Parker gave himself a bleeding ulcer. Omnipresent pushers thwarted his attempt at withdrawal by surreptitiously dropping powdery plastic bags in his coat pockets. One striking aspect of Parker’s addiction is that it never entire­ ly subverted his personality. He remained dignified, open, generous,

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curious, concerned. His pleasure in encouraging young ­musicians, in sharing his comprehensive fund of information, is a com­mon­ place in the recollections of those who knew him. Few 1940s musicians, if any, ­completely understood the hellish­ness of heroin, but all addicts quickly learned— and many were attracted by— the intricacies of cop­ping, a time-consuming occupa­tion that structured their lives. Given the energies Bird expended on his habit, it is all the more remarkable that he could sustain constancy in his music, hold the loyalties of an increasing band of grateful disciples, and wear all the masks necessitated by a daily circuit that involved furtive connections, middle-class propriety, and bravura inspi­ration. Small wonder he wore himself out by thirty-four. The assuagement of any addiction is private, morbid, and Gerry Mulligan and Zoot Sims, 126th Street, New York City, August 17, 1950. dull. Only the evidence of personality vanquishing obsession can interest posterity. Never noted for stability or punctuality, Parker’s professional behavior grew so erratic that club owners would book him for single evenings, sometimes single sets. But nothing enfeebled his devotion to the community of musicians or his passion for increasing his knowledge of music. Mulligan’s example is instructive. They met in Philadelphia when Parker and Gillespie were set to play a concert opposite the Elliot Lawrence radio orchestra, for which Mulligan wrote arrangements. Only nineteen, he

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knew Parker’s recordings with Red ­Norvo—“Imagine what it did to a young kid to hear Bird play on that blues. His clean, precise statements shone like gems.” On the day of the concert, Lawrence asked Mulligan to fill in on tenor saxophone after a member of the band broke his wrist. Bird came to the rehearsal; he “was lovely and charming and gracious to the band and Elliot. He was complimentary about the music and about my charts.” He invited everyone to the Downbeat Club for a postconcert jam session. Mulligan arrived at the club, checked the tenor in the coatroom, and listened to two sets of Bird, Diz, and Don Byas. “Can you see me playing with them?” he recalled. “Don Byas would have cut me five new belly buttons.” He told Bird how much he enjoyed it and prepared to leave. “What do you mean?” Bird said. “Wait a minute.” He strode to the coatroom, retrieved the tenor, put it together, blew a scale, handed it to Mulligan, and insisted he play. “He had such dignity about him and command. His way of speaking was so correct, with none of the jive we associate with musicians.” Roland Hanna was another beneficiary, whose first experience with Bird “was like a revelation.” Bird and Al Haig were late for the set at the Paradise Ballroom in Detroit, and Hanna was asked to fill in. He sat down at the piano and played “How High the Moon.” “All of a sudden this great wind passed through my ears and I looked around and it was Charlie Parker. Hearing his first few notes I got so small I felt I was in the eye of a hurricane, but he told me to continue.” Another time in Detroit, a group of the top local musicians—Hanna, Barry Harris, Tommy Flanagan, Hugh Lawson, Doug Watkins—went to see Bird, and he spent his entire intermission talking to them about “bass lines and chords and the whole idea of orchestration. It was a tremendous teaching experience. He didn’t keep anything to himself. He felt that the information he had everyone should have, and he sat with us from the matinee to the show that night at eight.” In his autobiography Vibrations, David Amram provided a proto­typical portrait of Bird befriending a young fan. As a twenty-

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Charlie Parker at the Open Door, New York City, January 1953.

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two-year-old musician, composer, and gym teacher, dangling in anticipation of the draft, Amram talked, jammed, and partied with Bird, who triggered his interest in Delius and demonstrated telepathic powers concerning the presence of police. Yet as generous as Bird was to young hopefuls, he could also express displeasure with caustic economy. Muhal Richard Abrams heard him at the Bee Hive in Chicago on a night when Bird had trouble with the local rhythm section. He went over to each of the three musicians with one finger raised to his lips and the other hand motioning for them to desist playing. When all was quiet, he resumed and completed the set unaccompanied. He knew how to handle cocky players. Buddy De Franco, one of the rare clarinetists who played bop, recalled a young saxophonist who challenged Bird on “All the Things

The Metronome All Stars at RCA Studios, New York City, 1949.

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You Are.” Bird welcomed him to the stand, counted off the number, and played in a key that nobody played. “The kid was devastated. Bird could do that to anybody. He taught me that trick of playing in all the keys because it forces you away from your basic patterns, from what we call fail-safe jazz.” He was intent on getting friends to listen to everything, high and low. He told Amram, with what level of playfulness we can imagine, “If you want to understand my music, listen to the Clovers.” He advised others to listen to country songs. When his friend Julie Macdonald, a sculptress, referred to an “unctuous sounding” saxophonist who appeared on stage with him, he smiled and said, “Oh, his sound is a good contrast to mine, a perfect foil for me.” Conversation with De Franco often turned to Prokofiev, because Bird knew that Prokofiev was his favorite composer: Every time he’d get a new recording of Prokofiev, he’d say let’s go to my place and listen. He knew about so many things. We were in New York in the winter, working some concert together, and we’d been up all night. It was snowing, freezing cold, and I wanted to get back to the hotel and sleep, but we passed the Salvation Army Band, and he says, “Wait a minute, let me hear this.” I can’t believe this is Charlie Parker standing in the snow listening to this horrible band— I missed whatever cues he found in there. Finally I said, “OK, I’ll catch you later.” It wasn’t until next spring that I got a job on Fifty-second Street. He was playing at another club and I’d go down during my breaks to hear him. The first time I walked in I sat very close to the stage; he gave me a little nod, pointed his sax at me, and played one of those pieces from the Salvation Army. De Franco saw another side of Bird when they finished a gig in Providence and visited a friend of the clarinetist. Talking and drinking, they missed the last train to the city. Just before daylight, a couple of neighbors came by. They had been hunting for four days and had

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Left to right: Tommy Potter, Charlie Parker, Max Roach, Miles Davis, and Duke Jordan, at the Three Deuces, New York City, 1948.

a slew of rabbits they did not know how to dress. Bird said, “Wait a minute, I know how to dress them.” He put on an apron, took the rabbits down to the cellar, and cleaned and fixed them all. Parker imparted a telling lesson about overwriting to John Lewis at Miles Davis’s 1947 Savoy session. Raised in Albuquerque, Lewis recognized the purity and clean melodicism of Parker’s conception as an outgrowth of the Southwestern style. It was less selfconscious than the New York approach to progressive harmonies. Yet Lewis was himself given to laboring over a score. To celebrate his friendship with Miles, he made him the gift of a harmonically intricate new piece called “Milestones.” (Davis later used the title for his own 1958 modal composition.) At the rehearsal, Bird, who played tenor on the date, told him, “John, I can’t play this—too many changes going by too fast. I’ll just play the bridge,” which is

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what he did. Lewis took the lesson to heart, and began paring down his harmonies in favor of melodic clarity. Five weeks later, Lewis played piano at a Dizzy Gillespie concert at Carnegie Hall. Parker was added at the last minute, without benefit of rehearsal. “Everyone was too excited, the tempos ran away,” Lewis remembered, yet Parker’s lusty attack was beguiling, blinding—as proven by the bootleg recordings made that night. Dizzy told Lewis, “If I had the money, I’d take care of Yard permanently. I’d build him a home and take care of him.”

Left to right: Buddy Rich, Ray Brown, Charlie Parker, Max Hollander, Mitch Miller, and unknown, at Mercury Records session, first date with strings (“Just Friends”), November 30, 1949.

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Left to right: Hot Lips Page, Tommy Potter, unknown, Big Chief Russell Moore, Sidney Bechet, Al Haig, Charlie Parker, Max Roach, Miles Davis, and Kenny Dorham, arriving in France, 1949.

His home life fluctuated, his personal tempo quickened just as he began to achieve worldwide recognition among musicians. Bird’s first visit abroad, in 1949, a rousing success, confirmed his international reputation. Chan later accounted his reception in Paris as the highlight of his professional life. He attended a concert by Segovia, who exemplified his belief that an artist should be able to hold an audience without theatrics. His own concerts in Paris underscored his certainty that he, and jazz itself, could receive the kind of respect reserved for classical recitalists at home. When he returned he took Doris to Detroit and visited Rebecca, who had graduated from a dress design school, and her husband and Leon.

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Rebecca thought he looked slender and healthy, and he came bearing gifts: an alto sax for Leon, and for her perfume and the album he had recorded with strings. Later, she realized that in bringing her that particular album, Charlie was working out a pun: his name for her, Rebec, is the name for the bowed string instruments that predate the violin (from the Latin ribeca). He made other gestures that evening. Playing at the Mirror Ballroom, he dedicated “Body and Soul,” the song that undid him at his first Kansas City jam session, to “my first love and the mother of my son.” He dedicated “April in Paris” to her husband. Before summer’s end, he broke off with Doris and moved in with Chan on the Lower East Side. He adopted her daughter Kim as his own and had two more children with Chan: Pree, a daughter, and a son, Baird. The only one of his wives, licensed or common law, who called him Bird instead of Charlie,

Paris Jazz Festival audience, Pleyel, Paris, 1949.

Charlie and Chan Parker, c. 1951.

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Chan was a fan who also recognized Bird’s desire for bourgeois ­stolidity. To her, his life “was a joyous thing—he lived his life fully, loved his kids, music, movies—westerns, shoot-’em-ups. Simple things, Bird liked simple things. He was the strongest man I ever met in my life.” Their brownstone was in a neighborhood famed for its ethnic mix, and Bird occasionally invited musicians over to hear the exotic music, though his catholic tastes took a more popular turn at home. When he wasn’t listening to modern classics, he repeatedly played a few current hits, singing along in stentorian tones to Kay Kyser’s “On a Slow Boat to China” (a song he performed several times at the Royal Roost) or Mario Lanza’s “Be My Love” or Peggy Lee’s “Lover Man.” Leonard Feather contended that part of Bird longed to be a square, and Phil Woods, whom Chan subsequently married, agrees that when Bird and Chan took their place in New Hope, he “played the role, commuting to Trenton with his newspaper.” Yet Bird was not one for solitude, and he found the shorter commute from the East Side to midtown jazz clubs a more satisfying way to fulfill his hunger for people, music, and other stimulants. One night at the Roost he gushingly des­cribed a new Stravinsky recording to the drummer Ed Shaughnessy. The next night he told him, “Eddie, you’ve got to come up to Aimé Barelli and Charlie Parker, backstage at the Paris Jazz Festival, Pleyel, Paris, 1949.

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this Rumanian restaurant with me. They have this fantastic folk group with some authentic stringed instruments and percussion and, you know something, they swing more than we do!” On a beautiful May afternoon, he ran into Al Cohn at the Turf Restaurant on Fortyninth Street and invited him home, too:

Charlie Parker and Big Chief Russell Moore, Pleyel, Paris, 1949.

He even paid for the cab, which was quite an honor—being treated by Bird. They had a very nice place. After a while, he told Chan we were going out to have a few drinks. It was a Ukrainian neighborhood and we went to three or four different bars. All the Ukrainians, working-class guys, knew him as Charlie. I don’t think they knew he was a musician, but it was obvious they liked him and were glad to see him. I saw a different side of him: he was like a middle-class guy with middle-class values. Chan recalled his hurt at the lack of recognition—the articles about modern jazz that ignored him or treated his music as a fad, a by-product of hipster jive and voguish hype. Yet his influence was everywhere. He made the jazz ensemble a leaner, hungrier thing. The very qualities that made modern jazz difficult for those grounded in the stable four/four of big band swing liberated the postwar generation. You did not have to understand what he was doing to know it was wild, spontaneous, expressive, mind-blowing. If you took the next step, delving deeper into the mechanics of the music, you could not fail to get caught up in the intellectual component. You had to focus on it, the way you did with poetry, to hear the

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Charlie Parker and Max Roach at the train station in Marseilles, 1949.

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melodic continuity and the way it related to the harmonic scrim; the way an improvisation, if it was any good at all, told an intensely personal story; the way each musician in the band related to the others so that they were all on the same roller coaster. In 1950, New York’s largest jazz club, on Fifty-second Street and Broadway, named itself after him: Birdland, “the jazz corner of the world.” The appropriation of his moniker made it sound cool and fashionable, though he owned no part of it. Nor did he work there very often, and four years later he was banned from the premises, reportedly for mooching money. But he turned in several extraordinary performances at Birdland between 1950 and 1953, which were broadcast live and recorded off the radio. They present him in the company of the ingenious pianist Bud Powell, Dizzy, and the equally riveting trumpet player Fats Navarro, and include one of his defining variations on “Embraceable You” and

Left to right: Charlie Parker, Billy Strayhorn, and Roy Eldridge, Sweden, 1950.

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a ­sensationally fast “Anthropology,” pumped by the young drummer Roy Haynes (on leave from the army), in which he cites a succession of pop songs like “Temptation” and “Tenderly.” Bird made at least three appearances on television, of which only one has survived. Norman Granz, the producer of JATP and most of Bird’s later records, arranged to make a film of him, but the sound track was lost for decades. Older musicians, stars, began to echo his ideas. Benny Goodman, who called him “certainly one of the most brilliant men in the whole Edgard Varèse. field of jazz music,” made a handful of bop records, including one based on “Stealin’ Apples,” the song that inspired Charlie back on Olive Street. So did Count Basie. So did Ellington. Down Beat ran a bizarre letter from a soldier in Korea who took a Parker record from “a Chinese Communist” he claimed he had killed. “He must have been a hip fellow to have a carefully wrapped recording of Parker’s ‘Bird of Paradise.’ It hurt me pretty bad to remember how he clutched the record in his hands.” Did soldiers really take fragile 78s into battle? In November 1950 Bird was back in Europe, including a week in Sweden, though his addiction was more debilitating than ever. The trumpet player Joe Newman recalled that Parker was insufficiently paid in Stockholm and spent all his money on fixes. A Swedish musician told of driving through farm country in a car full of musicians, one of whom remarked to Bird that cows love music. Bird asked the driver to pull over. He assembled his horn, walked into the field, bowed formally to a cow as though requesting the next dance, and gave her a taste of modern jazz. His own tastes

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were changing. The passion for classicism and his regrets at never having formally studied theory soured into irritation. He had grown impatient with blues and pop-song forms; they had been his musical gravity but now he felt constrained by them. He hoped to commission a work by Stefan Wolpe. He implored Edgard Varèse to take him as a student. Varèse told Reisner of Parker’s visits: “He’d come in and exclaim, ‘Take me as you would a baby and teach me music. I only write in one voice. I want to have structure. I want to write orchestra scores.’ [He] spoke of being tired of the environment his works relegated him to. ‘I’m so steeped in this and can’t get out.’”

Charlie Parker and strings.

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Although he persuaded Norman Granz to help him launch an ensemble of strings, with which he toured and recorded (“Just Friends” was his best-selling record), the initial arrangements were by dance-band veterans and made little use of the modern ideas he relished. In truth, a few of those orchestrations were better than they sounded on the recordings, as they were inadequately rehearsed and conducted. Had he lived, he surely would have changed direction. He asked Jimmy Mundy to write a new arrangement of “Easy to Love,” and gratefully accepted a theme for strings by George Russell and a couple of challenging new pieces by Mulligan. A chance to perform them came in 1952, when he was hired for a dance at Harlem’s Rockland Palace, a memorable evening. The event was a benefit for Benjamin Davis, an attorney and city council member, and the last Communist to hold elected office in the United States. In a trial that flagrantly violated due process and became a cause célèbre for the left, Davis was sentenced to five years for advocating the violent overthrow of the country. Bird played four or five sets that night, with his quintet as well as the strings, and he was robust. The prospect of leading his ensemble before thousands of dancers had greater appeal than the political solemnity of the occasion, which did not stifle his sense of the absurd. As Paul Robeson sang “Water Boy,” Bird trotted to the stage with a glass of water. Chan brought along the tape recorder Bird had bought her as a birthday present and preserved much of the evening’s music, which was exceptional. Charlie and Chan Parker. If his extended rapid-fire

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solo on “Lester Leaps In,” backed by the phenomenally reflexive Max Roach, represents the evening’s zenith, the performances with strings embody the tension between banal formulas and Bird’s unrequited vision, among them a rare version of “Star Dust” and the Mulligan originals “Goldrush” and “Rocker.” It was one of Parker’s last great nights. Mulligan introduced Bird to his psychologist, who agreed to see him for sessions in his car. The doctor, though bound by confidentiality, readily admitted he thought Bird “wonderful,” and was amused when Bird told him he would only get paid if he came down to the club where he was working and had a drink with him, which he did. Yet a series of crushing events ensued, and the final descent gathered vertiginous speed. Although never arrested on a narcotics charge (a miracle that prompted an unsubstantiated rumor that he collaborated with the police), Bird’s cabaret license was arbitrarily

Left to right: Rebecca, Rebecca’s husband Ross, Teddy Blume, Charlie Parker, and Leon Parker.

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revoked for nearly two years. In that time, he could not perform in a New York jazz club. Suffering severely from bleeding ulcers, humiliated by promoters who would no longer hire him because of various disputes that he took to the union for arbitration, seized by exhaustion and depression, Parker began to crumble. That he could summon forth strength and radiance until nearly the end is borne out by tapes that document his playing through the end of 1954. Still, there were nights when devoted admirers turned away in embarrassment. An album of Cole Porter songs proved disastrous. When Rebecca and her husband, living in Detroit, read the issue of Ebony that portrayed him as the happy patriarch of an integrated family, dining with Chan and Kim on a meal prepared especially for the story, they filed charges of nonsupport. Admitting that he had not paid for Leon’s upbringing in fourteen years, Parker was jailed in Detroit until he came up with $350, a tenth of the debt. Shortly afterward, Bird and Chan visited Rebecca and he apologized. Early in 1954, King Pleasure released his vocal adaptation of “Parker’s Mood,” one of Bird’s consummate blues performances. The lyric prophesies his imminent death and concludes: “Don’t cry for me / ’Cause I’m going to Kansas City.” A nonplussed Parker told Chan, “Don’t let them bury me in Kansas City.” On March 7, 1954, while he visited Julie Macdonald in California, he learned that his daughter Pree, not yet three years old, died of a congenital Baird and Charlie Parker, Washington Square Park, New York City. heart condition. He broke.

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Left to right: Benny Carter, Barney Kessell, Flip Phillips, Charlie Shavers, Ray Brown, Charlie Parker, Oscar Peterson, J. C. Heard, Ben Webster, and Johnny Hodges, at a Clef recording session, Hollywood, California, July 1952.

The details of Parker’s final months have been rehearsed end­lessly. Many witnesses have told how he and the strings were booked into Birdland as soon as his cabaret card was returned, and an argument ensued that ended with Bird getting fired, going home, and—after an altercation with Chan—swallowing iodine; how he was twice hospitalized in Bellevue; how his relationship with Chan deteriorated and they separated near the close of 1954; how during the rootless months in the West Village, his consumption of cheap wine exacerbated his ulcer, which prevented him from getting much sleep. Mulligan went to hear him for the last time in mid1954: “He was faltering. I cried. His playing had exuberance at best,

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Charlie Parker at the Bee Hive in Chicago two weeks before his death, 1955.

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at worst a manic velocity, but always a musical control. What was missing was the kind of gentleness he could project.” After playing in the backup band on a popular singer’s record session, Buddy Tate ran into him on the street and bought him a drink. When Tate told him about the recording date, Bird asked him why they never called him for gigs like that. “Bird, everybody probably thinks your price is too high.” “Oh man, I’d love to do those things.” He sometimes played in joints that were little more than storefronts, usually with minor musicians. During intermission at a Village bar that later became the Café Bohemia, Ahmed Basheer, with whom he temporarily boarded, and Nat Lorber, a trumpet player known as Face, stood outside smoking a joint. Bird joined them and said, “Let’s all go down to the Brooklyn Bridge, hold hands, and jump off.” One night Bird made a panicky late-night visit to the 103rd Street apartment of a woman who had managed him, Maely Daniele, a Czechoslovakian-born jazz enthusiast formerly married to the actor Freddie Bartholomew and now keeping company with

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William Dufty, a reporter for the New York Post and her future husband. They awoke to a slamming in the inner doorway. Dufty feared it might be trouble relating to a story he wrote until the concierge called up, “It’s only Parker.” He wrapped himself in a towel and opened the door: It was a typical midnight visitation when someone comes by to unburden himself. Charlie’s conversation was infra dig about being strung out, looking for drugs or money. He spoke of Moishe Levy and Oscar Goodstein, the Birdland heavies. He talked about poems he wrote and made a joke about visiting people late at night and reciting a poem. He said that the females who were smart enough to keep the poems realized their value. His language was succinct and distilled—things he’d brooded over and reduced to rhythmic, comic word-riffs. As a writer, I was very impressed. During that time he was gigging for a few bucks a night with pickup bands at various joints, no publicity. He was fat and in very bad shape. Christ on the cross is not an image I carry with me, but the image of that man’s face—it seemed to be bleeding, you just wanted to apply a tourniquet. He recapped the business about the child Pree. What could you do? You didn’t have the drugs or the money. You listened. There was a final confrontation at Birdland, a bandstand fight between Parker and Bud Powell. Days later he agreed to play at Storyville in Boston. He never made the trip. Instead he dropped by the Stanhope Hotel, on March 9, to visit Baroness Pannonica de Koenigswarter, a wealthy jazz enthusiast who befriended musicians and stubbornly flouted racist conventions. She realized how sick he was when he refused a drink. She phoned a doctor but made no attempt to move him; none of his friends was notified. He phoned Addie in Kansas City, who told him not to go to the hospital, that he would die there, that he should come to her. On March 12, a Saturday night, he died while watching jugglers on the Tommy

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Dorsey television program Stage Show. “At the moment of his going, there was a tremendous clap of thunder,” the baroness later said. An autopsy attributed cause of death to lobar pneumonia. For reasons never adequately explained, the body arrived at Bellevue more than five hours after he died, marked John Parker, age fifty-three. Two days later, the baroness held a late-night press conference and explained that she decided not to report his death until she could locate Chan. But word was already out. Gene Ramey told Doris, who called Addie. Moreover, the scrawled legend “Bird Lives!” began appearing on Greenwich Village walls that weekend. If his death was little noted in newspapers, the gossip rags plummeted to a level of­

Charlie Parker and Maely Dufty, c. 1952.

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scurrility that makes contem­ porary journalism seem rela­tively pristine. The fact that a black musician died in the home of a wealthy, titled white woman was of far greater interest than his achievements as a musician. The farce that followed—Doris and Chan fought over the body, causing its removal from one funeral parlor to another, and the burial was in Kansas City, complete with a tombstone engraved with the wrong date—added more fuel to the scandal, as did the endless court battle over his estate. As Auden wrote of Yeats, Parker’s gift survived it all: “The parish of rich women, physical decay, yourself.” He triumphed over contempt, neglect, and mindless worship; over the nexus of commercial interests that usually marketed him haplessly, greedily, or not at all. His life and personality are subjects of great passion; his women especially were caught in the play, each championing her own gospel. In many respects, the music also

Baroness Pannonica “Nica” de Koenigswarter.

Charlie Parker’s wrongly dated gravestone, Lincoln Cemetery, Kansas City, Missouri.

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Charlie Parker, publicity photograph, mid-1940s.

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remains a private passion. Despite its incalculable influence, the specific legacy of Parker’s genius is known to a relatively small but international cult. Admirers wonder at the absence of civil honors (statues, streets, parks, stamps), though a more acute absence is that of adequate recognition in studies that purport to evaluate “serious” music. While the philistines guard the gates of culture, the immediacy of Parker’s achievement continues to astonish. You hear him, perhaps unexpectedly, when you walk into a friend’s house, on the car radio, or worked into a film score, and you are struck by the relentless energy and uncorrupted humanity of his music. It is never without direction. This most restive, capricious of men is unequivocal in his art. He never deigns to impress with mere virtuoso moonshine. He draws you in, raises you up. His ballads are stirringly candid, his fiery free flights ruled with zeal, desire, rage, love. Was he more enthralled by life or terrified by it? Dead at thirty-four, played out like a bad song, looking twenty years his senior. Yet Bird lives. Bird is the truth. Bird is love. Bird is thousands of musical fragments, each a direct expression of a time and place—a mosaic burst into radiant bits. As with Mozart, the facts of Charlie Parker’s life make little sense because they fail to explain his music. Perhaps his life is what his music overcame. And overcomes.

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acknowledgments

Celebrating Bird first appeared in 1987 in an oversized

format as part of a book and documentary film series produced by Toby Byron/Multiprises. At that time, we were locked into 128 pages and a strict deadline that resulted in a few excisions of content and a few baggy sentences that needed trimming. I am grateful to Erik Anderson and everyone at the University of Minnesota Press, notably production coordinator Rachel Moeller and editorial assistant Erin Warholm-Wohlenhaus, for the opportunity to modify and correct the text and to update the bibliography and discography. Sometimes, as Edward Albee wrote, you’ve got to go a long distance out of the way to come back a short distance correctly. I am much happier with this revised edition. Back when I agreed to write this brief life, I consulted with my friend and colleague Stanley Crouch, who had been working for years on an exhaustive study of Parker’s life and art. Shortly afterward, he dropped by my apartment toting a knapsack, which

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he emptied on the living room floor: an avalanche of cassette tapes of his interviews, and an act of extraordinary generosity. He said it was to help me “get it right,” and although I accessed only a­ frac­tion of his prodigious research, it led me in a different direction. Chiefly, it introduced me to Parker’s first wife, Rebecca Parker Davis, whom Stanley interviewed extensively; until then, she had been ignored by jazz historians. In the first edition of this book, I predicted Stanley’s biography would be a milestone in the literature of American music. In the intervening years, he has produced a body of work answering to that description. His Kansas City Lightning: The Rise and Times of Charlie Parker will be published by the time this book appears. As the key to Parker’s apprenticeship years, Rebecca had the story I wanted to tell, and from the time we met, her candor and enthusiasm confirmed my intention to focus on the mystery of how the unprepossessing son of Addie and Charles Parker Sr. came to be the legendary Bird of postwar America who revolutionized the music of his time. Rebecca’s sharp memory re-created moments with photographic clarity, and she never hesitated to telephone when she recalled yet another incident that might help unravel the puzzle. Except for one incorrect concert date, which had us chasing our tails a while, her stories always checked out, and I trusted her implicitly. The complexity of Parker’s life is nowhere more apparent than in the conflicting claims of his remarkably diverse and devoted wives, legal and common law. I concentrated on Rebecca’s perspective because my interest in his early years dovetailed with her resolve to nail down details and because it had been utterly neglected. In Ross Russell’s Bird Lives!, as much roman à clef as biography, her name is misspelled. Of Parker’s later wives, Geraldine Scott had died; Doris Sydnor had related her view in Robert Reisner’s Bird: The Legend of Charlie Parker; Chan Parker had related hers to Russell (she wrote the introduction to the French edition of

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Bird Lives!) and in her massive photojournal To Bird with Love (compiled with Francis Paudras) and also in her memoir in progress, which appeared as Life in E-Flat in 1999. Doris declined to be interviewed; she said she had already told everything to Stanley. I did interview Chan, whom I found alternately charming and defensive. Almost all my biographical material was drawn from or confirmed by original research, including that of Crouch and the oral history archive at the indispensable Institute of Jazz Studies at Rutgers University. Nothing in this project proved more gratifying than conversing about Parker with those who knew him or had firsthand knowledge of him. Most are now gone. I am blessed to have known them all: Muhal Richard Abrams, David Amram, Benny Carter, Maxwell T. Cohen, Al Cohn, Earl Coleman, Ted Curson, Rebecca Parker Davis, Buddy DeFranco, Bevan Dufty, William Dufty, Gil Evans, Leonard Feather, Dizzy Gillespie, Ira Gitler, Dexter Gordon, Johnny Griffin, Dr. H., Al Haig, Roland Hanna, Roy Haynes, Woody Herman, Budd Johnson, Hank Jones, Thad Jones, Lee Konitz, John Lewis, Rolf Ljungquist, Jay McShann, Dan Morgenstern, Gerry Mulligan, Joe Newman, Big Nick Nicholas, Chan Parker, Art Pepper, Roy Porter, Robert Reisner, Red Rodney, Don Schlitten, Ed Shaughnessy, Buddy Tate, Mary Lou Williams, Phil Woods. I benefited from the research assistance of Angela Gaudioso, Norman Saks, Ira Berger, Steve Futterman, and Burt Korall, as well as the Institute of Jazz Studies, administered by Dan Morgenstern, Ed Berger, and Marie Griffin; and the Schomburg Center for Black Studies, to which Ernie Smith bequeathed his great library of films. Celebrating Bird features an extraordinary collection of pho­to­ graphs and illustrations keyed to the narrative; the list of photog­ra­ phy credits speaks for itself, boasting masters of the art, among them Herman Leonard, William Claxton, Bob Parent, and William P. Gottlieb. Many thanks, as always, to my agents Georges and Anne

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Borchardt and Kate Johnson. Deborah Halper, to whom this book is dedicated, is my guiding hand in everything. Our daughter Lea Giddins was not yet born and Elora Beth Duffer (1972–2013) had not yet become my indispensable assistant and friend of fourteen years when the first edition of this book was published, but they have played a role in everything that followed, including this revised edition. I continue to celebrate the genius of Charlie Parker. Ever since I heard the album Bird Symbols twenty-three—no, make that fifty— years ago, his music has been a bottomless source of pleasure and a faithful paradigm of cultural endeavor. G. G.



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a selected discography

the discography in the original edition of Celebrating

Bird consisted entirely of long-playing vinyl albums and has little value today as a guide, though the general observations and breakdown still hold true. It is reprinted here as the catalog of music available at the time the book was first written and as a reminder that the legal rights (or lack thereof) to performances produced for legitimate record companies as well as those privately captured (or stolen) by fans and pirates regularly change corporate hands, creating rival editions of the same material and wholesale confusion for consumers. The confusion has increased exponentially in the intervening years, thanks to legal and technological developments that have combined to all but destroy copyright sanity and the recording industry along with its now quaint infrastructure of shops, franchises, clubs, producers, engineers, annotators, and collectors, to say nothing of musicians to whom it once contributed a respectable livelihood. The updated discography that follows the

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original attempts to penetrate the fog regarding the current state of the Charlie Parker reissue parade. Discography from 1987

Many sessions are available, whole or in part, on competing labels; I chose editions that duplicate as little material as possible. Of the numerous Parker tapes that remain unreleased, two of unusual historical importance (marked with asterisks) were unissued as of publication. Each listing begins with the title of the album and the catalog number, followed by a few principal musicians who play on it and information regarding locations, dates, and circumstances, such as whether the music was recorded in a studio, in radio or television broadcasts, or privately. Entries for Parker’s three important label affiliations (Savoy, Dial, and Verve) begin with inclusive editions, followed by anthologies culled from them. The Apprentice Years: Sideman Recordings * “Honeysuckle Rose/Body and Soul.” Unaccompanied. Missouri;

c. 1937–39; private. First Recordings! (Xanadu ORI 221). With Jay McShann and His Orchestra, Clyde Hart’s All Stars, the Cootie Williams Sextet. Kansas, New York; 1940–45; broadcast, private, studio. Jay McShann: The Early Bird (MCA 1338). With McShann’s Orchestra (and quartet without Parker). Texas, Illinois, New York; 1941–42; studio. Birth of the Bebop (Stash ST 260). With Dizzy Gillespie, Oscar Pettiford, Don Byas, Miles Davis, Roy Haynes, the Chet Baker Quartet. Illinois, New York, California; 1943–53; private. Dizzy Gillespie: In the Beginning (Prestige 24030). Two discs. With the Dizzy Gillespie Sextet, Quintet (and other bands without Parker). New York; 1945; studio. Every Bit of It / Charlie Parker 1945 (Spotlite SPJ-150D). Two discs. With Clyde Hart’s All Stars, Cootie Williams

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Sextet and Orchestra (no Parker solos), Sarah Vaughan, Sir Charles Thompson and His All Stars, Slim Gaillard and His Orchestra. New York, California; 1945; studio, broadcast. Red Norvo: Fabulous Jam Session (Spotlite 127). With Norvo, Dizzy Gillespie, Teddy Wilson, Flip Phillips, Slam Stewart, Specs Powell. New York; 1945; studio. Miles Davis: Collector’s Items (Prestige 7044). With Davis, Sonny Rollins, Walter Bishop, Percy Heath, Philly Joe Jones. New York; 1953; studio. The Savoys

The complete Savoy studio recordings consist of thirty master takes and seventy-six false starts and alternate takes. Except for a few scraps of “Marmaduke,” they are collected in a boxed set of five discs. The Complete Savoy Studio Sessions (Savoy SJ5 5500). Five discs. With the Tiny Grimes Quintet, the Miles Davis All Stars, Dizzy Gillespie, Bud Powell, John Lewis, Duke Jordan, Sadik Hakim, Curly Russell, Tommy Potter, Max Roach. New York, Detroit; 1944–48; studio. Bird / The Savoy Recordings (Master Takes) (Savoy SJL 2201). Two discs. Thirty master takes. Encores (Savoy SJL 1107). Sixteen alternate takes. Encores Vol. 2 (Savoy SJL 1129). Fifteen alternate takes, including four false starts on “Marmaduke” inadvertently omitted from the “complete” edition. The Dials

As issued by Spotlite, Warners, and Stateside, the most complete editions of the Dial recordings consist of thirty-five master takes, forty-eight alternate takes, three home recordings, and an alternate take from the Sideman recording of Red Norvo’s Dial session (see Spotlite 127 above). They are collected on six discs.

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Charlie Parker on Dial, Vol. 1 (Spotlite 101). With Miles Davis, Lucky Thompson, Dodo Marmarosa, Arv Garrison, Dizzy Gillespie, Howard McGhee. California; 1946; studio. Charlie Parker on Dial, Vol. 2 (Spotlite 102). With Erroll Garner, Earl Coleman, Red Callender, Doc West. California; 1947; studio. Charlie Parker on Dial, Vol. 3 (Spotlite 103). With Howard McGhee, Wardell Gray, Dodo Marmarosa, Barney Kessel, Russ Freeman. California; 1947; studio, private. Charlie Parker on Dial, Vol. 4 (Spotlite 104). With Miles Davis, Duke Jordan, Tommy Potter, Max Roach. New York; 1947; studio. Charlie Parker on Dial, Vol. 5 (Spotlite 105). With Miles Davis, Duke Jordan, Tommy Potter, Max Roach, Red Norvo, Lucky Thompson, Earl Coleman. New York, California; 1945–47; studio. Charlie Parker on Dial, Vol. 6 (Spotlite 106). With Miles Davis, J. J. Johnson, Duke Jordan, Tommy Potter, Max Roach. New York; 1947; studio. Bird Symbols (Charlie Parker 407). Twelve master takes, with the long A-take of “Embraceable You.” The Very Best of Bird (Warner Bros. 3198). Two discs, twenty-six selections—seven alternates were mistakenly substituted for the master takes. The Verves

The complete Verves consist of eighty-seven master takes and seventeen alternates, in addition to eleven concert performances with Jazz at the Philharmonic and four “jam session” vehicles by an all-star studio band. They are collected in a boxed set of ten discs. Charlie Parker on Verve (Verve OOMJ 3268177). Ten discs. With Jazz at the Philharmonic, Neal Hefti, Machito, Kenny Dorham, Red Rodney, Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, Ben

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Webster, Johnny Hodges, Benny Carter, Benny Harris, Al Haig, Hank Jones, Thelonious Monk, Walter Bishop, Jr., John Lewis, Oscar Peterson, Tommy Potter, Ray Brown, Teddy Kotick, Max Roach, Buddy Rich, Roy Haynes, Kenny Clarke; big band, strings. California, New York; 1946–54; studio, concert. Night and Day / The Genius of Charlie Parker, Vol. 1 (Verve 8003). Twelve master takes with big band and strings. April in Paris / The Genius of Charlie Parker, Vol. 2 (Verve 8004). Twelve master takes with strings. Now’s the Time / The Genius of Charlie Parker, Vol. 3 (Verve 8005). Eight master takes and four alternates with quartet. Bird and Diz / The Genius of Charlie Parker, Vol. 4 (Verve 8006). Six master takes and five alternates with quintet. Cole Porter / The Genius of Charlie Parker, Vol. 5 (Verve 8007). Six master takes and three alternates with quintet. Fiesta / The Genius of Charlie Parker, Vol. 6 (Verve 8008). Ten master takes and two alternates with quintet, sextet. Jazz Perennial / The Genius of Charlie Parker, Vol. 7 (Verve [J] MV-2617). Nineteen master takes with various groups. Swedish Schnapps / The Genius of Charlie Parker, Vol. 8 (Verve 8010). Nine master takes and four alternates with quintet. The Cole Porter Songbook (Verve 823 250–1). Eleven master takes with quintet, strings, big band. The Verve Years (1948–50) (Verve VE2–2501). Two discs. Twenty-one master takes and one alternate with various groups.

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The Verve Years (1950–51) (Verve VE2–2512). Two discs. Twenty-nine master takes with various groups. The Verve Years (1952–1954) (Verve VE2–2523). Two discs. Thirty master takes with various groups. Jazz at the Philharmonic / Bird and Pres: Carnegie Hall 1949 (Verve 815 150 1). Four selections. Norman Granz Jam Session (Verve VE2–2508). Two discs. Four selections with all-star ensemble. Afro-Cuban Jazz (Verve VE2–2522). Two discs. Eleven selections with Machito (others without Parker). Broadcasts, Concerts, Private Recordings

With a couple of exceptions, the following records—some of them slovenly edited and packaged “bootleg” albums—are listed in chronological order according to the earliest performance in the package. The exceptions are those in which only one selection is from an earlier year than the bulk of the album’s music. Yardbird in Lotus Land (Spotlite SPJ 123). With Dizzy Gillespie and His Rebop Six, Miles Davis, Joe Albany, Nat Cole, Buddy Rich. California; 1945–46; private, broadcast. Lullaby in Rhythm (Spotlite SPJ 107). With Barry Ulanov’s All Star Modern Jazz Musicians, Howard McGhee Quintet. California, New York; 1947; private, broadcast. It Happened One Night (Natural Organic 7000). With Dizzy Gillespie, John Lewis, Al McKibbon, Joe Harris (Ella Fitzgerald). New York; 1947; private. Anthropology (Spotlite SPJ 108). With Barry Ulanov and His All Star Metronome Jazzmen (Sarah Vaughan, Tadd Dameron). New York; 1948; broadcast. Bird on 52nd Street (Jazz Workshop JWS 501). With Duke Jordan, Tommy Potter, Max Roach, Miles Davis. New York; 1948; private. * Charlie Parker with Dizzy Gillespie and His Orchestra at the Pershing Ballroom. Illinois; 1948; private.

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The Complete Royal Roost Performances, Vol. One (Savoy SJL 2259). With Miles Davis, Kenny Dorham, Tadd Dameron, Al Haig, Curly Russell, Tommy Potter, Max Roach. New York; 1948–49; broadcast. The Complete Royal Roost Performances, Vol. Two (Savoy SJL 2260). With Kenny Dorham, Lucky Thompson, Milt Jackson, Al Haig, Tommy Potter, Max Roach, Joe Harris. New York; 1949; broadcast. Bird on the Road (Jazz Showcase 5003). With Kenny Dorham, Lucky Thompson, Brew Moore, Milt Jackson, Al Haig. New York, Montreal; 1949–53; private, broadcast. Bird in Paris (Spotlite SPJ 118). With Kenny Dorham, Al Haig, Tommy Potter, Max Roach, Maurice Mouflard. Paris; 1949– 50; private, broadcast. 1949 Unissued Performances by Charlie Parker (Jazz Live BLJ 8004). With Red Rodney, Al Haig, Tommy Potter, Max Roach. New York; 1949; broadcast. Bird at St. Nick’s (Jazz Workshop JSW 500). With Al Haig, Tommy Potter, Roy Haynes, Red Rodney. New York; 1950; private. Rappin’ with Bird (Meexa Discox). A twenty-minute interview of Parker by Marshall Stearns and John Maher, plus his quintet, strings. New York, California; 1946–50; private, broadcast. Apartment Sessions (Spotlite SPJ 146). With John Williams, Phil Brown, Frank Isola. New York; 1950; private. One Night in Birdland (Columbia JG-34808). Two discs. With Fats Navarro, Bud Powell, Curly Russell, Art Blakey. New York; 1950; broadcast. Bird at the Apollo (Charlie Parker CP-503). With strings, Al Haig, Roy Haynes, Sarah Vaughan (Stan Getz, Timmy Rogers). New York; 1950; private. At the Pershing Ballroom (Zim ZM-1003). With Chris Anderson, George Freeman, Bruz Freeman. Illinois; 1950; private.

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One Night in Chicago (Savoy SJL 1132). With Claude McLin, Chris Anderson, George Freeman. Illinois; 1950; private. Bird in Sweden (Spotlite SPJ 124–5). Two discs. With Rolf Ericson, Gosta Theselius, Jack Noren. Sweden; 1950; private. Bird with Strings (Columbia 34832). With strings, Al Haig, Roy Haynes, Candido. New York; 1951; broadcast. Live at Christy’s (Charlie Parker Pl0-402). With Howard McGhee, Joe Gordon, Wardell Gray, Dick Twardzik, Nat Pierce, Charles Mingus. Two different gigs with different personnel inadvertently combined. Massachusetts; 1951–52; broadcast. Summit Meeting at Birdland (Columbia 34831). With Dizzy Gillespie, Bud Powell, Tommy Potter, Roy Haynes, Milt Buckner, John Lewis, Kenny Clarke. New York; 1951–53; broadcast. Bird Flies with the Herd (Main Man 617). With the Woody Herman Orchestra (Clifford Brown). Missouri; 1951; private. On the Coast (Jazz Showcase 5007). With the Harry Babasin All Stars, Sonny Criss, Chet Baker. California; 1952; private. Live at the Rockland Palace (Charlie Parker 502). Two discs. With Walter Bishop, Mundell Lowe, Teddy Kotick, Max Roach, strings. New York; 1952; private. Duke Ellington Concert at Carnegie Hall (Vee Jay DJD 28023). Two discs. With strings, Dizzy Gillespie, Roy Haynes (Ellington, Stan Getz, Billie Holiday). New York; 1952; broadcast. One Night in Washington (Musician p-11184). With The Orchestra. Washington, D.C.; 1953; private. Charlie Parker (Queen-disc 002). With Kenny Dorham, Bill Harris, Lucky Thompson, Bud Powell, Charles Mingus, Max Roach. New York; 1949–53; broadcast. Charlie Parker at Storyville (Blue Note BT 85108). With Herb Pomeroy, Red Garland, Sir Charles Thompson,

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Roy Haynes, Kenny Clarke. Massachusetts; 1953; broadcast. Jazz at Massey Hall (Debut 124). With Dizzy Gillespie, Bud Powell, Charles Mingus, Max Roach. Toronto; 1953; private. New Bird: Hi Hat Broadcasts (Phoenix 10). With Herbie Williams, Rollins Griffith. Massachusetts; 1953; broadcast. New Bird Volume 2 (Phoenix Jazz 12). With Herbie Williams, Rollins Griffith, Dizzy Gillespie, Dick Hyman. Massachusetts, New York; 1952–54; broadcast. Kenton and Bird (Jazz Supreme 703). With the Stan Kenton Orchestra (Dizzy Gillespie). California; 1954; broadcast. Birdland All Stars at Carnegie Hall (Roulette 127). Two discs. With John Lewis, Percy Heath, Kenny Clarke (Count Basie, Billie Holiday, Lester Young, Sarah Vaughan). New York; 1954; private.

Discography from 2013

What a difference a quarter century makes. The absorption of virtually every record company into a few multinational trusts, along with the culturally destructive and Constitution-violating Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998, proved ruinous for small American companies that once competed in marketing the public domain. The public domain has been ceded to corporations that have no interest in or understanding of a trim listenership. Happily for music lovers, the Internet evens the playing field. In the past, jazz collectors seeking classic recordings that American companies declined to release traveled abroad or found mail-order companies in countries where shorter copyright terms prevailed. An examination of Charlie Parker discs presently distributed in the United States shows that most of the broadcast, concert, and apprenticeship work listed in 1987 is now out of print. With a little surfing, one can locate most of it in foreign editions.

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What’s more, a generation disinclined to purchase discs and conditioned to reduced expectations in audio fidelity (a by-product of iPod) can find almost anything on cut-rate MP3 compilations. In 2013, a twenty-dollar bill bought The Complete Charlie Parker Sessions, Vols. 1 and 2, an assemblage of two hundred download­ able MP3 files, mostly studio master takes. As the transfers are slapdash and the lack of personnel, dates, and other information is confounding, one wonders whom this enticing deal will satisfy. CDs, domestic and foreign, prolong problems that plagued LPs; beyond customer reviews and teaser excerpts, you often don’t know what you’re getting. This list is oriented toward domestic (and tried) releases. The album title is followed by the label and the year(s) in which the selections were recorded; the now pointless catalog numbers have been dropped. The same classification is used as in the 1987 list. Significant recordings presently out of print (OP) are noted; they’ll be back, in our children’s lifetime if not our own, and much of that material can be found online. The Apprentice Years: Sideman Recordings

Charlie Parker: Early Bird with Jay McShann (Stash, 1940–44). The illuminating 1940 Wichita transcriptions, plus Savoy Ballroom and Armed Forces Radio Service broadcasts and more. OP. Charlie Parker: The Complete Birth of the Bebop (Stash, 1940–45). Bad title, revelatory amateur apprenticeship recordings from Kansas City and Bob Redcross’s Chicago hotel room. OP. Jay McShann Orchestra: Blues from Kansas City. The Decca recordings. OP. The Continental Sessions, Vol. 1 (Storyville, 1945). The Clyde Hart session with the Rubberlegs Williams fiasco, plus nonParker sessions by clarinetist Edmond Hall and bassist Slam Stewart.

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Dizzy Gillespie: Odyssey (Savoy, 1945–52). Three discs collecting sixty-four Gillespie tracks made for various small labels. All three of the (1945) sessions with Parker—eleven tracks including the comical Hollywood date led by Slim Gaillard—are also on The Complete Savoy and Dial Studio Recordings. Red Norvo on Dial: All Existing Takes (Spotlite, 1945). Norvo’s date with Bird, Dizzy, Teddy Wilson, and Flip Phillips is vexingly not on The Complete Savoy and Dial Studio Recordings. OP except as MP3. Sarah Vaughan 1944–1946 (Classics). Four 1945 selections with Bird and Diz. OP. Miles Davis: Collector’s Items (Prestige, 1953). Bird, near the end, pickled in vodka, returned to the tenor saxophone for Davis’s launch session at Prestige, also involving Sonny Rollins; they barely got through three tunes. The Savoys and the Dials

In the 1980s, Herman Lubinsky’s Newark-based jazz, blues, and gospel label Savoy, founded in 1942, was owned by Arista Records. During the same decade, Ross Russell’s Hollywood- and later New York–based modern jazz label Dial, founded in 1946, licensed its Charlie Parker catalog to the English company Spotlite, which released the Dials on six exemplary LPs. In 1990, Spotlite bought them outright. The next year, Nippon Columbia, based in Tokyo, bought Savoy. In 2000, Spotlite licensed the Dials to Savoy, which merged the two Parker catalogs for the first time: a mixed blessing, as it turned out. Charlie Parker: The Complete Savoy and Dial Studio Recordings (Savoy, 1944–48). Savoy’s acquisition of the Dials ought to have triggered one of the most treasurable reissue compendiums in recording history. While the integrity of the Dials and Savoys suggest dissimilar production values

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that, along with the sheer quantity of material, might warrant reissuing them separately, as in the past, the expediency of the collated edition is hard to resist—or would be, had it been accomplished with the requisite taste and care. This package is overpriced, shoddy, unattractive, ineptly sequenced, and user-unfriendly (and contained a defective disc 4 in the initial release). It is hard to believe this is what we have at this late date. Still, one can remove the ill-fitting eight discs and the booklet, toss the binder, and pray they try again and get it right for Parker’s centenary. Charlie Parker: The Complete Savoy and Dial Master Takes (Savoy, 1944–48). Three discs, flawed only by the inclusion of the shorter B-take of “Embraceable You,” instead of the more famous A-take, which was no less a “master,” as both versions were released simultaneously in 1947. Charlie Parker: A Studio Chronicle 1940–48 (JSP). This British label also collected the Dial and Savoy masters (again with the B-take of “Embraceable You”). The quality of the transfers is below standard for a company once renowned for innovative remastering, but the selection is enhanced: five discs factor in Bird’s early work with Jay McShann, Sarah Vaughan, Dizzy Gillespie, Trummy Young, and others. Charlie Parker: The Best of the Complete Savoy and Dial Studio Recordings (Savoy, 1944–48). An irresistible selection of twenty tracks. It finally gets “Embraceable You” right but uses the inferior take of “Parker’s Mood.” Go figure. The Genius of Charlie Parker (Savoy, 1944–49). A two-disc anthology culled mostly from Savoy and Dial master takes, with a few live performances as well, thirty-five tracks in all: a splendid introduction. Charlie Parker: The Complete Live Performances on Savoy (Savoy, 1947–50). The Royal Roost airchecks, previously

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issued on a plethora of bootlegs and none of it actually recorded by Savoy, are handily collected in a four-disc set, along with a private recording from Chicago and the momentous, widely available 1947 Carnegie Hall performance with Dizzy Gillespie. This is essential Bird. The Roost material captures his working quintet (Miles Davis or Kenny Dorham, Al Haig, Tommy Potter, Max Roach) in riveting elaborations of studio classics plus a sensational “Hot House,” a thrilling “Anthropology,” three versions of “Slow Boat to China,” and a deliciously spontaneous arrangement of “White Christmas.” Much of the radio patter has been edited out, but except for snippets of Parker himself, it is not missed. Charlie Parker: Best of The Complete Live Performances on Savoy (Savoy, 1948–49). One disc; a conventional selection of twelve numbers. Go for the Complete. The Verves

The big box is still available, along with several anthologies drawn from it, but many of the individual albums have disappeared. The most lamented of them are listed as OP. Bird: The Complete Charlie Parker on Verve (1946–54). Ten discs, 178 tracks in chronological order. Expensive but handsomely, expertly done. No indication of his precipitous decline could be more heartbreaking than the transition on the last disc from track eleven, “Confirmation,” to (eight months later) track twelve, “I Get a Kick out of You.” Charlie Parker: The Complete Verve Master Takes (Verve, 1947–54). Three discs of the master takes recorded under his name (the great JATP solos are not here), encased in an irritating tin box from which they must be shaken loose. Here are the Verves in one bite: the strings, the quartets with Hank Jones or Al Haig, the quintet with Dizzy and Monk,

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Red Rodney, and the less rewarding material that followed. Complete isn’t always better; see Confirmation below. Charlie Parker: Confirmation, Best of the Verve Years (Verve, 1946–53). Sometimes, not often, they hire an expert rather than a completist or a company hack to make the selections and annotate them, for example, James Patrick, who organized this consummate two-disc set, the best of many Verve compilations. It has all the highlights plus key JATP performances (yes, “Lady Be Good”), “Funky Blues,” and “Repetition.” It is less than half the price of the complete master takes, and vastly more rewarding. The Essential Charlie Parker (Verve, 1947–53). A nice little Verve compilation, eleven numbers, including Neal Hefti’s orchestral “Repetition” and the expected “Confirmation,” “Now’s the Time,” “Just Friends,” and “Star Eyes,” at a bargain price. Bird and Diz (Verve, 1950). The quintet with Thelonious Monk, Curley Russell, and Buddy Rich. Six master takes (twenty minutes), five alternates, thirteen false starts. Charlie Parker with Strings: The Master Takes (Verve, 1947– 52). Still controversial, still growing in critical stature, still among his best-loved recordings. The arrangements by Joe Lipman and Jimmy Carroll are problematic, but the Bird flights are often gratifying and “Just Friends” is a masterpiece. Charlie Parker (Verve, 1949–53). Solid one-disc compilation of quartet sessions with Hank Jones and Al Haig, plus a few ringers (“Ballade,” with Coleman Hawkins) and false starts; it includes several late masterworks available on other collections: “Now’s the Time,” “Confirmation,” “Kim,” and “Star Eyes.” OP except as MP3. Charlie Parker Jam Session (Verve, 1952). With Johnny Hodges, Benny Carter, Ben Webster, Oscar Peterson, Barney Kessel. OP.

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Charlie Parker: 1946 Jazz at the Philharmonic Concert. (Verve) With Dizzy Gillespie, Lester Young, Coleman Hawkins, Buck Clayton, Howard McGhee. OP. Charlie Parker: Ken Burns Jazz (Verve, 1942–1953). On Verve but not exclusively of Verve: a sampling of the career in sixteen cannily selected tracks, undone by a static-storm of inept transfers. Broadcasts, Concerts, Private Recordings

Much of this material is in legal limbo, which means anyone can put it out, which means it often falls into the hands of bottomfeeders who counterfeit releases by other bottom-feeders, further degrading the audio quality. On the other hand, how unimaginably bereft would we be without those amateur recordists who captured and preserved thousands of hours of jazz works, many now regarded as classics, that otherwise would have disappeared with the memories of those who heard them performed? Gratitude must go as well to those who lovingly produced decent commercial editions of them. Still, recordings in which musicians had no artistic input and their estates no financial participation present a moral quandary. It needn’t be so: consider all the music by Parker alone that has been legitimately collated, restored—in some instances, discovered—by Bird lovers at Blue Note, Columbia, Mosaic, Savoy, Spotlite, Uptown, and other labels. One wishes they would expand, but with copyrights running out in most of the world, there isn’t much incentive for them to do so. This list is loosely ordered by chronology and painfully incomplete, but it hits most of the high points. Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker Town Hall, New York City, June 22, 1945 (Uptown). A historic discovery. Hardly anyone knew about this concert, let alone the fact that a quality recording existed. The audio imbalance is, in part, a good thing, allowing us to hear the particulars of Max Roach’s

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revolutionary drums. Dizzy is magnificent, especially on the early tracks. But then comes “Salt Peanuts” and Bird is free. The Complete Dean Benedetti Recordings of Charlie Parker (Mosaic, 1947–48). Apparently recorded for the purpose of notation and study, this nonstop chain of Parker solos can be exhausting in extended doses, but, of course, it isn’t meant to be taken in all at once. Although the audio quality is uneven, most of it is surprisingly good, clean and penetrating. These seven discs offer an uncanny, perhaps unequaled, sense of how incredibly professional and consistent Parker was, set after set. At the same time, it forces one to empathize with his increasing despair over the limitations of the popular song and blues formats. An astonishing gift from beyond the veil. Charlie Parker & Dizzy Gillespie: Diz ’n’ Bird at Carnegie Hall (Roost, 1947). The five selections recorded at the fabled September 29 concert, pirated for decades, represent a summit of their work together. Never mind the boxy PA-system sound—Bird, in particular, is electrifying, more so than at Massey Hall. (These performances are also contained in the speciously titled The Complete Live Performances on Savoy.) The disc is filled out with Gillespie’s big band at the same concert, with arrangements by Tadd Dameron, George Russell, Gil Fuller, and an early work by John Lewis that he dismissed as “juvenilia” and hoped would disappear. Charlie Parker, Washington, D.C., 1948 (Uptown). A curio released sixty years after the event: Bird meets Dixielanders, avoids train wreck. He uses his 1945 “Ko Ko” improvisation as the compositional starting point here, ornamenting his original variations. Charlie Parker and the Stars of Modern Jazz at Carnegie Hall, Christmas 1949 (Jass). Ignored by the press in its day and unreleased in its entirely until 1989. Parker’s twenty-fiveminute set (Rodney, Haig, Potter, Haynes) includes a version

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of “Cheryl” superior to the original and celebrated for its roguish paraphrase of Louis Armstrong’s “West End Blues” cadenza. The rest of the disc presents Bud Powell, Sarah Vaughan, Stan Getz, the Lennie Tristano / Lee Konitz sextet, and a jam session featuring Miles Davis, Serge Chaloff, Sonny Stitt, and Roach. OP—how is that possible? Bird at St. Nick’s (Jazz Workshop OJC, 1950). Parker’s quintet privately recorded (on tape, a recently marketed invention) at the St. Nicholas Arena in New York: theme statements and Bird solos only. Charlie Parker and Arne Domnérus in Sweden, November 22, 1950 (Oktav). Parker and his Swedish disciple did not play together at the Malmö concert; each fronted the same Swedish quintet, with Rolf Ericson on trumpet. Parker’s four numbers, which include a sublimely breezy exorcism of “Lover Man,” are also on Charlie Parker in Sweden 1950: The Complete Recordings, along with another hour of music, but Oktav offers slightly superior sound. One Night in Birdland (Columbia, 1950). With Fats Navarro, Bud Powell, Curly Russell, Art Blakey, and a vocal by Little Jimmy Scott. OP. Summit Meeting at Birdland (Columbia, 1951–53). With Dizzy Gillespie, Bud Powell, Tommy Potter, Roy Haynes, Milt Buckner, John Lewis, Kenny Clarke. OP. Complete Live at Birdland (Rare Live Recordings, 1950–53). A two-disc import collecting the radiant performances from the two preceding albums. One might prefer to patronize the Columbia label because it paid to restore and legitimize these recordings, but Columbia would have to keep them in print. Bird with Strings: Live at the Apollo, Carnegie Hall, and Birdland (Columbia, 1950–52). A measure of what Parker hoped to achieve with this ensemble; includes the Jimmy Mundy arrangement of “Easy to Love,” a surprise appearance by Candido, a brief radio chat with Bird. OP.

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Charlie Parker with Quartet and The Orchestra: Washington Concerts (Blue Note, 1952–53). An expanded edition of One Night in Washington, first brought to light in 1982. Without benefit of rehearsals (he skipped them), Bird teamed up with Joe Timer’s justifiably apprehensive fifteenpiece orchestra and nailed every piece, turning Bill Potts’s “Willis” into an impromptu concerto and slyly rasping his way into Gerry Mulligan’s “Roundhouse.” Remarkable performance. OP. Charlie Parker Live with the Big Bands (Jazz Factory, 1951–54). What you cannot find on this continent, you can usually find in Spain. This disc combines the eight main selections from Washington Concerts (above) along with Bird’s guest appearances at Woody Herman and Stan Kenton concerts. Charlie Parker: The Complete Legendary Rockland Palace Concert (Jazz Classics, 1952). Bird alternates between the strings ensemble and his quintet (Walter Bishop, Mundell Lowe, Teddy Kotick, Max Roach), going for broke and then some on “Sly Mongoose” and a scarifying “Lester Leaps In.” OP. Charlie Parker Boston 1952 (Uptown, 1952–54). Another major find from this label. Bird in clover, backed by a notable band: trumpet player Joe Gordon, Charles Mingus, Roy Haynes, and the young pianist Dick Twardzik, who takes almost as many risks as Bird. The 1954 set returns him to the High-Hat group (see below), but it is January and Bird is still blazing. Charlie Parker: Bird at the High-Hat (Blue Note, 1953–54). The sound is dicey and you may be inclined to fast-forward through the intervening solos, but Bird is bracing in the 1953 numbers; we also get to hear him speak. The superior trumpet solos on “Cheryl” and the second “Ornithology” are by an uncredited Herb Pomeroy.

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Charlie Parker: Complete Jazz at Massey Hall (Jazz Factory, 1953). A fabled concert because of the personnel (Parker, Gillespie, Powell, Mingus, Roach) and its strange history as merchandise. It was initially released on a small label (Verve, to whom Parker was contracted, rejected it) as a concert by The Quintet, with Bird appearing as Charlie Chan. Mingus messed with the sound, overdubbing heavy new bass lines. The Jazz Factory import, which includes the savory Bud Powell Trio portion of the program, dispenses with the overdubs and is thus preferable to the Debut edition. Can music be scorching and serene at the same time? Massey Hall says yes.

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the literature on Charlie Parker is voluminous and

grow­ing. This bibliography includes works accessed in the writing of Celebrating Bird along with relevant books that appeared in the intervening years. Amram, David. Vibrations. New York: Macmillan, 1968. Balliett, Whitney. “Bird.” New Yorker, March 1, 1976. Brown, Tony. “Interview with Baroness de Koenigswarter.” Melody Maker, February 16, 1957. Chambers, Jack. Milestones 1. New York: Beech Tree/Morrow, 1983. Coda, no. 181, December 1981. Various writers. Collier, James Lincoln. The Making of Jazz. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1978. Crouch, Stanley. Considering Genius. New York: Basic Civitas Books, 2006. Charlie Parker’s horn.

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Crow, Bill. From Birdland to Broadway. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992. Dance, Stanley. The World of Count Basie. New York: Scribners, 1980. ———. The World of Earl Hines. New York: Scribners, 1977. DeVeaux, Scott. The Birth of Bebop: A Social and Musical History. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999. Dexter, Dave, Jr. The Jazz Story. New York: Prentice-Hall, 1964. Down Beat, March 11, 1965. Various writers. Dufty, Maely Daniele. “The ‘Bird’ Has Flown but Not the Vultures.” New York Citizen Call, July 23, 1960. Ellison, Ralph. Shadow and Act. New York: Random House, 1964. Feather, Leonard. Inside Jazz. New York: Robbins, 1949. ———. “Parker Finally Finds Peace.” Down Beat, April 10, 1955. ———. “Yardbird Flies Home.” Metronome, August 1947. Giddins, Gary. Riding on a Blue Note. New York: Oxford University Press, 1981. ———. Visions of Jazz: The First Century. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. Giddins, Gary, and Scott DeVeaux. Jazz. W. W. Norton, 2009. Gillespie, Dizzy, and Al Fraser. To Be or Not to Bop. New York: Doubleday, 1979. Gitler, Ira. Jazz Masters of the ’40s. New York: Macmillan, 1966. The reprint has a new introduction and discography. New York: Da Capo Press, 1984. ———. Swing to Bop. New York: Oxford University Press, 1985. Harrison, Max. Charlie Parker. New York: A. S. Barnes, 1961. Haydon, Geoffrey. Quintet of the Year. London: Aurum Press, 2002. Heath, Jimmy, and Joseph McLaren. I Walked with Giants. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2010. Hentoff, Nat. Jazz Is. New York: Random House, 1976. Hodier, Andre. Jazz: Its Evolution and Essence. New York: Grove Press, 1956.

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Hultin, Randi. Born under the Sign of Jazz. London: Sanctuary Publishing, 1998. Jazz Discography Project. “Charlie Parker Discography.” Revised 2013. At http://www.jazzdisco.org/charlie-parker/discography/. Jones, LeRoi. Blues People. New York: William Morrow, 1963. Karner, Gary. “Interview with Pepper Adams, Part 2.” Cadence, February 1986. Kastin, David. Nica’s Dream. New York: W.W. Norton, 2011. Keepnews, Orrin. “Charlie Parker.” In The Jazz Makers, edited by Nat Shapiro and Nat Hentoff. New York: Rinehart, 1957. Kelly, Robin D. G., Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original. New York: Free Press, 2009. Koster, Piet, and Dick M. Bakker. Charlie Parker 1940–1955. 4 vols. Holland: Micrography, 1976. Macdonald, Julie. “Bird Lives!” Follies, May 1979. Mack, Gerald, and Horace Mansfield Jr. “Interview with Roy Porter.” Be-Bop and Beyond, August–September, 1985. Maggin, Donald L. Dizzy: The Life and Times of John Birks Gillespie. New York: Harper Collins, 2005. Martin, Henry. Charlie Parker and Thematic Improvisation. Lanham, Md.: Scarecrow Press and Institute of Jazz Studies, Rutgers University, 1996. Meadows, Eddie S. Bebop to Cool: Context, Ideology, and Musical identity. Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2003. Miller, Mark. Cool Blues: Charlie Parker in Canada, 1953. London, Ontario: Nightwood, 1989. Morgenstern, Dan. Liner note, One Night in Birdland. Columbia 34808, 1977. ———. Living with Jazz. New York: Pantheon, 2004. Owens, Thomas. Bebop: The Music and the Players. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995. ———. Charlie Parker: Techniques of Improvisation. 2 vols. Ann Arbor, Mich.: University Microfilms International, 1974.

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Parker, Chan, and Francis Paudras. Paris: To Bird with Love. Editions Wizlov, 1981. Patrick, James. Liner note, Charlie Parker: The Complete Savoy Sessions. Savoy 5500, 1978. Pearson, Nathan W. Goin’ to Kansas City. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987. Priestly, Brian. Charlie Parker. New York: Hippocrene, 1984. ———. Chasin’ the Bird: The Life and Legacy of Charlie Parker. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. Reig, Teddy, with Edward Berger. Reminiscing in Tempo: The Life and Times of a Jazz Hustler. Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press and Institute of Jazz Studies, Rutgers University, 1990. Reisner, Robert George. Bird: The Legend of Charlie Parker. New York: Citadel Press, 1962. Russell, Ross. Bird Lives! New York: Charterhouse, 1973. ———. Jazz Style in Kansas City and the Southwest. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973. Shapiro, Nat, and Nat Hentoff. Hear Me Talkin’ To Ya. New York: Rinehart, 1955. Shaw, Arnold. The Street That Never Slept. New York: Coward, McCann, and Geoghegan, 1971. Shipton, Alyn. Groovin’ High: The Life of Dizzy Gillespie. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. Stearns, Marshall. The Story of Jazz. New York: Oxford University Press, 1956. Szwed, John. So What: The Life of Miles Davis. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2002. Tate, Buddy. Interview by Gary Giddins. Unpublished, Jazz Oral History Project, Institute of Jazz Studies, Rutgers University, 1972–1983. Taylor, Arthur. Notes and Tones. New York: Perigee Books, 1982. Ulanov, Barry. A History of Jazz in America. New York: Viking Press, 1952.

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Wire, no. 13, March 1985. Various writers. Weston, Randy, and Willard Jenkins. African Rhythms. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2010. Williams, Cootie. Interview by Helen Oakley Dance. Unpublished, Jazz Oral History Project, Institute of Jazz Studies, Rutgers University, 1972–83. Williams, Martin. The Jazz Tradition. New York: Oxford University Press, 1970 (Rev. 1983). Wilson, John S. Jazz: The Transition Years 1940–1960. New York: Appleton Century Crofts, 1966. Woideck, Carl. Charlie Parker: His Music and Life. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996. ———. The First Style Period (1940–1943) and Early Life of Saxophonist Charlie Parker. Graduate School of the University of Oregon, 1989. Yamoto, Akira, “A Discography of Charlie Parker.” Liner note, Charlie Parker on Verve 1946–1954, Verve, 1984. Young, Trummy. Interview by Patricia Willard. Unpublished, Jazz Oral History Project, Institute of Jazz Studies, Rutgers University, 1972–83.

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photography credits

p. ii: Courtesy Gary Giddens Collection; p. xviii: Photograph by William Claxton; p. 3: Courtesy Frank Driggs Collection; p. 4: Courtesy Jack Bradley Collection; p. 5: Photograph by Duncan Schiedt; p. 7: Photograph by Thomas H. Murtaugh. Courtesy Institute of Jazz Studies, Rutgers University; p. 9: Photograph by Herman Leonard. Courtesy Francis Paudras Archives; p. 10: Photograph by Bob Parent; p. 11: [Top] Courtesy Gary Giddins Collection. [Bottom] Photograph by Bruce Jaffe. Courtesy Schomburg Center For Black Studies, New York City; p. 12: Photograph by Herman Leonard. Courtesy

Francis Paudras Archives; p. 13: Photograph by William P. Gottlieb (Edward J. Gottlieb Collection); p. 14: Courtesy Don Lanphere; p. 15: Courtesy To Bird with Love, Chan Parker; p. 17: Photograph by Bob Parent; p. 18: Photograph by Popsie Randolph. Courtesy Don Lanphere; p. 20: Courtesy Institute of Jazz Studies, Rutgers University; p. 21: Courtesy Institute of Jazz Studies, Rutgers University; p. 25: Courtesy Francis Paudras Archives; p. 26: Courtesy Frank Driggs Collection; p. 27: Courtesy Frank Driggs Collection; p. 28: Courtesy Duncan Schiedt; p. 30: Photograph by Popsie Randolph. Courtesy Don Lanphere; p. 31:

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photography credits

Courtesy Duncan Schiedt; p. 32: Courtesy Rebecca Parker Davis; p. 33: Courtesy Frank Driggs Collection; p. 35: Courtesy Frank Driggs Collection; p. 36: Photograph by Bruce Jaffe. Courtesy Rebecca Parker Davis; p. 37: Courtesy Frank Driggs Collection; p. 38: Courtesy Frank Driggs Collection; p. 41: Courtesy of the Kansas City Museum; p. 42: Photograph by Bruce Jaffe. Courtesy Charlie Parker Estate; p. 44: Courtesy Duncan Schiedt; p. 46: Courtesy Mary Lou Williams Foundation (Peter F. O’Brien, S. J.); p. 47: Courtesy Gary Giddins Collection; p. 48: Courtesy Francis Paudras Archives; p. 50: Courtesy Charlie Parker Estate; p. 52: Courtesy Frank Driggs Collection; p. 54: Courtesy Duncan Schiedt; p. 57: Courtesy Ernie Smith Collection; p. 58: Courtesy Duncan Schiedt; p. 60: Photograph by Pete Armstrong. Courtesy Frank Driggs Collection; p. 63: Courtesy Maely Daniele Dufty, Bevan Dufty Collection; p. 65: Courtesy Charlie Parker Estate; p. 66: Courtesy Duncan Schiedt; p. 69: Courtesy Frank Driggs Collection; p. 70: Photograph by Popsie Randolph. Courtesy Frank Driggs Collection; p. 71: Photograph by Herman Leonard. Courtesy Francis Paudras Archives; p. 73: Photograph by William P. Gottlieb (Edward J.

178

Gottlieb Collection); p. 74: Photograph by William P. Gottlieb (Edward J. Gottlieb Collection); p. 75: Photograph by Bob Parent; p. 77: Photograph by William P. Gottlieb (Edward J. Gottlieb Collection); p. 79: Photograph by William Claxton; p. 80: Photographer unknown; p. 81: Photograph by William P. Gottlieb (Edward J. Gottlieb Collection); p. 82: Courtesy Duncan Schiedt; p. 85: Photograph by William P. Gottlieb (Edward J. Gottlieb Collection); p. 86: Photograph by Popsie Randolph. Courtesy Don Lanphere; p. 88: Courtesy Frank Driggs Collection; p. 90: Photograph by William P. Gottlieb (Edward J. Gottlieb Collection); p. 93: Photograph by Duncan Schiedt; p. 94: Courtesy Charlie Parker Estate; p. 97: Photograph by William P. Gottlieb (Edward J. Gottlieb Collection); p. 99: Courtesy Duncan Schiedt; p. 101: Photograph by Bruce Jaffe. Courtesy Charlie Parker Estate; p. 102: Courtesy Institute of Jazz Studies, Rutgers University; p. 104: Photograph by Herman Leonard. Courtesy Francis Paudras Archives; p. 105: Photograph by William P. Gottlieb (Edward J. Gottlieb Collection); p. 106: Photograph by William Claxton; p. 107: Photograph by William Claxton;

photography credits

p. 110: Photograph by William P. Gottlieb (Edward J. Gottlieb Collection); p. 112: Courtesy Francis Paudras Archives; p. 114: Courtesy Frank Driggs Collection; p. 115: Courtesy Duncan Schiedt; p. 117: Photograph by Bob Parent; p. 118: Courtesy Frank Driggs Collection; p. 119: [Top] Courtesy Frank Driggs Collection. [Bottom] Courtesy To Bird with Love, Chan Parker; p. 120: Photograph by Don Lanphere; p. 121: Photograph by Don Lanphere; p. 123: Photograph by Bob Parent; p. 124: Courtesy Charlie Parker Estate; p. 126: Photograph by William P. Gottlieb (Edward J. Gottlieb Collection); p. 127: Courtesy Otto Hess Collection; p. 128: Courtesy Francis Paudras Archives; p. 129: [Top] Photograph by J. P. Charbonnier. Courtesy Eole Photo. [Bottom] Courtesy To Bird with Love, Chan Parker; p. 130: Photograph by J. P.

Charbonnier. Courtesy Eole Photo; p. 131: Photograph by J. P. Charbonnier. Courtesy Eole Photo; p. 132: Courtesy Thierry Trombert; p. 133: Courtesy Francis Paudras Archives; p. 134: Courtesy Francis Paudras Archives; p. 135: Courtesy Maely Daniele Dufty, Bevan Dufty Collection; p. 136: Courtesy Charlie Parker Estate; p. 137: Courtesy Robert Reisner Collection; p. 138: Courtesy To Bird with Love, Chan Parker; p. 139: Courtesy Francis Paudras Archives; p. 140: Photographs: Frank Malcolm; p. 142: Courtesy Maely Daniele Dufty, Bevan Dufty Collection; p. 143: [Top] Courtesy Berit de Koenigswarter and Nica de Koenigswarter. [Bottom] Photograph by Allan Coleman, first published in 1975; p. 144: Courtesy Gary Giddins Collection; p. 170: Courtesy To Bird with Love, Chan Parker.

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index

“CP” in subentries refers to Charles Parker Jr. Abrams, Muhal Richard, 124 Adams, Pepper, 95 “Ah-Leu-Cha” (song): CP’s composition of, 116 “Alice Blue Gown” (song): CP’s performance of, 65 “All God’s Chillun Got Rhythm” (song): CP’s performance of, 59 “All the Things You Are” (song): CP’s performance of, 124–25; CP’s recording of, 114–16 Ammons, Gene, 84 Amram, David, 14, 122, 124 Anderson, Buddy, 7, 60, 65, 67 Anderson, Lawrence, 65 Andrews, Patty, 15

“Anthropology” (song): CP’s recording of, 134 Apartment Sessions (album), 116 Apollo Theatre (New York City), 44, 82, 120 “April in Paris” (song): CP’s performance of, 129 Armstrong, Louis, 4; CP compared to, 4–5, 91; music of, 89, 100; solos by, 93, 97 arrangements, musical: big band, 29, 61, 72, 136; CP’s, 52, 53, 68, 78; creating, 34, 121; head, 29, 96; pop, 13; rock-androll, 13. See also composers; improvisations, jazz art and artists: community of, 10; CP’s influences on, 15; 1920s, 21; post–World War II, 87–88

181

index

Art Tatum’s Trio, 96. See also Tatum, Art Attucks, Crispus, 24 Auden, W. H., 143 Babison, Harry, 106 Baird, Joe, 65 Baker, Chet, 106 ballrooms, xiii, 56, 65, 68–71, 91, 118, 136. See also dance halls Bandbox (club, New York City), 17 bands: territory, 29, 62; touring, 29; white, 11. See also big bands; individual bands and orchestras Barclay, Nicole, 94 Barelli, Aimé, 130 Barker, Danny, 88 Bartholomew, Freddie, 140 Bartok, Béla: CP’s admiration for, 3–4 Bascomb, Dud, 69 Basheer, Ahmed, 140 Basie, Count, 28, 44, 53; band led by, 77–78; at Carnegie Hall, 12; influence on CP, 52, 134; in Kansas City, Missouri, 29, 34, 39; music of, 49, 89 Bass, Charles, 27 Bauer, Billy, 9, 12 bebop music: CP’s playing of, 2, 13, 82, 96, 115, 118; creation of, 72, 92; criticisms of, 75; influence of, 14, 88–89; Life magazine article on, 16; modern jazz’s association with, 2, 72; recordings of, 98, 134 “Be-Bop Spoken Here” (song), 15 Bechet, Sidney, 128

182

Bee Hive Lounge (Chicago), 140 Beiderbecke, Bix, 97 “Be My Love” (song), 130 Benedetti, Dean, 113n Benny Moten’s Band, 28 Benton, Thomas, 37 Berg, Beverly. See Parker, Chan Richardson Bernstein, Elmer: jazz compositions by, 13 Berry, Leon “Chu,” 6, 52, 65; influence on CP, 43–44, 47, 51, 67 Berry, Leroy, 28 Best, Clifton “Skeeter,” 82 Bigard, Barney, 52 big bands: arrangements for, 29, 61, 72, 136; demise of, 91 “Billie’s Bounce”: CP’s recording of, 101 Billy Berg’s (club, Los Angeles), 105 Bird. See Parker, Charles “Bird,” Jr. (CP) Birdland (club, New York City), xiii, 16, 17, 93, 112, 133 “Bird of Paradise” (song): CP’s recording of, 115 Bird Symbols (album), xii, xiii blacks. See jazz, modern: blacks’ appreciation of; racism; soldiers, black Blanton, Jimmy, 76 blues music, xiii, 29, 92, 98; CP’s playing of, 64, 68, 70, 96, 108, 119, 122, 135 Blume, Teddy, 137 “Body and Soul” (song): CP’s performance of, 65, 129; CP’s recording of, 46, 108

index

“Boogie Woogie” (song): CP’s recording of, 82 bop. See bebop music Broadway: post–World War II changes in, 87 Brockman, Gail, 82 Brown, Ray, 127, 139 Brown, Walter, 37, 67, 68 Brubeck, Dave, 16 Bryant, Sterling, 32, 33 Burney, Banjo, 60 Butts, Jimmy, 88 Byas, Don, 6, 69, 92, 97, 113n, 122 Calloway, Cab: orchestra led by, 73 Camarillo State Hospital (Los Angeles): CP’s incarceration in, 109, 116 Capone, Al, 28 Carr, Helen, 106 Carry, George “Scoops,” 78, 82 Carter, Benny, 64, 92, 119, 139; bands led by, 107–8 “Carvin’ the Bird” (song): CP’s composition of, 116 Cassavetes, John: CP’s influences on, 15 Catlett, Big Sid, 100, 113n Chappell, Gus, 82 Charlie Parker Records (label), xii–xiii “Cheers” (song): CP’s composition of, 116 “Cherokee” (song): chord changes in, 59, 100; as CP’s favorite piece, 52, 119; CP’s performances of, 61, 69, 71, 77, 84; CP’s recordings of, xiii–xiv, 72, 101, 103

Cherry Blossom (club, Kansas City, Missouri), 34 Chicago: CP in, 55–56, 118, 140; mafia in, 28 “Chimes Blues” (song): Armstrong’s solo on, 97 chords, jazz: changes in, 59–60, 100; in CP’s compositions, 92, 119; improvisations with, 73, 80, 96, 101; substitute, 61, 114–15 “Clap Hands, Here Comes Charlie” (song): CP’s performance of, 69 Clark, Chester, 27 Clarke, Kenny, 70; and Minton’s Playhouse jam sessions, 72–73; modernist influence of, 15, 75, 76 Clarkin, Tutty, 51–52, 83 Clark Monroe’s Uptown House (club, New York City), 57, 59 Claxton, William, 79, 142 Clayton, Buck, 88 Clef Records: recording session, 139 Club Downbeat (New York City), 13 Clyde Hart’s All Stars: recordings by, 97, 98 Cohn, Al, 95, 131 Coleman, Earl, 68, 116, 118 Coleman, Ermir “Bucket,” 37 Coltrane, John, 114 composers: CP as, 4, 14–15, 52, 67–68, 108, 116, 119, 126, 135; modernist, 3–4, 13, 89, 95, 108, 119, 125, 130–31. See also arrangements, musical; individual songs

183

index

“Confessin’ the Blues” (song): McShann band’s recording of, 68 “Confirmation” (song): CP’s composition of, 119 Coolidge, Calvin, 19 corruption: mob, 28, 104–5; political, 19–21, 30, 53 Cotton Club (New York City), 73 “Cottontail” (song): Webster’s solo on, 82 Cox, James, 19 Criss, Sonny, 105 Crosby, Bing, 15, 87 Crump, A., 82 Culliver, Freddie, 37, 65 Dameron, Tadd, 61, 77, 98 dance halls, 11, 24, 28–29, 34, 39, 51. See also ballrooms Daniels, Ernie, 44–45 Dante’s Inferno (club, Kansas City, Missouri), 41 Dan Wall’s Chili House (New York City), 59 Davis, Benjamin, 136 Davis, Clarence, 46 Davis, Miles: at Carnegie Hall, 12; in CP’s bands, 107, 116; CP’s mentoring of, 13, 84, 103–4; in Paris, 128; recordings by, 100–101, 126; at the Three Deuces, 5, 126 Deans of Swing (band), 27, 36, 37–39, 45. See also Keyes, Lawrence “88” DeArango, Bill, 48 Decca Records: McShann band recorded by, 68 DeFranco, Buddy, 7; CP’s influence on, 6–7, 76, 124–25 184

Deluxe Nightclub (Kansas City, Missouri), 41 Detroit: CP in, 3, 78, 95, 122, 128, 138 Dexter, Dave, Jr., 50 Dial Records: CP’s recordings for, xii–xiii, 107, 108–9, 115, 118 “Diggin’ Diz”: CP’s recording of, 107 “Disappointed” (song), 108n “Disorder at the Border” (song): Hawkins’ recording of, 83 “Dizzy Atmosphere” (song): Gillespie’s recording of, 98 “Donkey Serenade” (song): McShann band’s recording of, 68 Dorham, Kenny, 94, 118, 128 Dorham, Mrs. Kenny, 94 Dorsey, Jimmy, 69 Dougherty, Eddie, 69 Douglas, Tommy: septet led by, 45, 47 drugs: CP’s addiction to, 8, 50–51, 121; origins of, 25, 40, 45; overdoses, Addie Parker’s response, 48, 51, 61; Geraldine Parker’s involvement with, 82–83, 78; Rebecca Parker’s response, 47–48, 61–62; rehabilitation attempts, 109, 111, 113, 119–20, 121; worsening, 95–96, 104, 105, 108–9, 121, 134, 137–41 Duchin, Eddie, 13 Dufty, Daniele Maely, 140–41, 142 Dufty, William, 141 Durham, Eddie, 28 “Easy to Love” (song): Mundy arrangement of, 136

index

Eckstine, Billy, 55, 78, 80, 81; orchestra led by, 83–84, 92 Eldon, Missouri: CP’s appearances in, 45, 47, 48–49 Eldridge, Roy, 73, 133; as jazz trailblazer, 75, 89; recordings by, 43, 65 election, 1920 presidential, 19–20 Ellington, Duke, 63; at Carnegie Hall, 12; influence on CP, 52, 134; as jazz trailblazer, 75, 89; in Kansas City, 62; telegram from, 101 “Embraceable You” (song): CP’s recordings of, 80, 101, 118–19, 133 Enois, Leonard, 65 “Epistrophy” (song), 78 estate: CP’s, fight for control of, xii, 83, 143 Europe: jazz’s success in, 11, 21. See also Paris; Sweden Evans, Herschel, 34 Famous Door (club, New York City), 53 Feather, Leonard, 116, 130 Fifty-second Street (New York City), 83, 85, 105; CP’s performances on, 92, 94; mobster’s control of, 95, 104–5 films: jazz music in, xiii, 13, 14; post–World War II changes in, 87 Finale Club (Los Angeles), 108 Flanagan, Tommy, 122 Fleet, Bill “Biddy,” 57, 59, 98 Floyd, Pretty Boy, 28 Forrest, Jimmy, 70 France. See Paris

Frankie and Johnny’s (club, Kansas City, Missouri), 39 “Funky Blues” (song): CP’s recording of, xiii, 119 Gaillard, Slim, 106 Gardner, Andy “Goon,” 55, 56, 78, 82 Gardner, Julie, 82 Garner, Bob, 27 Garner, Erroll, 92, 116 Garvey, Marcus, 21 Gavan, Shipley, 36 George E. Lee Singing Novelty Orchestra, 27 Germany: defeat in World War I, 21 Gershwin, Ira: songs by, 108, 119 “Get Happy” (song): CP’s renditions of, 59 Getz, Stan, 12, 76 Gillespie, Dizzy, 66, 75, 76, 91, 103, 104; at Apollo Theatre, 82; bands led by, 14, 92, 104, 105–7, 118, 119; at Birdland, 93, 114; at Carnegie Hall, 127; and CP’s drug use, 95–96; CP’s duets with, 7, 16, 80, 92–93, 98, 99, 100, 106–7, 121–22; in Hines’s band, 78; influences of, 14, 15, 88, 89; in Kansas City, 67; at Massey Hall, 115; in Millinder band, 68; and Minton’s Playhouse jam sessions, 72–73; recordings by, 83, 97, 98, 101–2, 103, 115, 133; in Teddy Hill’s band, 72; telegram from, 101; in Three Deuces band, 113n “Golden Days” (song), 108n “Goldrush” (song), 137 185

index

Goodman, Benny, 11–12, 13, 134 Gordon, Dexter, 76, 88, 105 Granz, Norman, 134, 136 Gray, Wardell, 83, 105, 116 Green, Benny, 82 Grennard, Elliot: “Sparrow’s Last Jump” (story), 109 Grimes, Tiny, 82, 96 “Groovin’ High” (song): Gillespie’s composition of, 98 Haig, Al, 94, 122; in CP’s band, 116; on CP’s recordings, 118, 119; in Paris, 128; in Three Deuces band, 92, 113n Hakim, Sadik. See Thornton, Argonne “Hallelujah” (song): CP’s recording of, 98 Hamilton, Chico, 105 Hammerstein, Oscar, II, 114 Hanna, Roland, 122 Harding, Warren G., 19 Harlan Leonard and His Rockets (band), 36, 61 Harlem Nightclub (Kansas City, Missouri), 41 Harlem Renaissance, 21, 88 Harris, Barry, 122 Harris, Little Benny, 72, 78, 82, 108 Harris, Thursto “Sox,” 27 Hart, Clyde, 84, 96; band led by, 97, 98 Hawes, Hampton, 105 Hawkins, Coleman, 6, 34, 38; influence of, 43, 47, 67, 89; recordings by, 83, 108 Hayes, Thamon, 28 Haynes, Roy, 10, 117, 134 Heard, J. C., 88, 139 186

Heath, Percy, 119 Heatwave (club, New York City), 69 Helen Morgan Story, The (film), 14 Henderson, Fletcher, 43 Henry, Ernie, 77 Henry, Shifty, 118 heroin, 120, 121. See also drugs: CP’s addiction to Hey-Hay Club (Kansas City, Missouri), 41 Hibbler, Al, 67 Hicks, Johnny, 69 “High Society” (song), 100 Hill, Teddy, 73; band led by, 72 Hindemith, Paul: CP’s admiration for, 3–4, 89 Hines, Earl: band led by, 78, 80, 82, 83 Hinton, Milt, 73 Hite, Les, 97 Hitler, Adolf, 21 Hodges, Johnny, 64, 75, 97–98, 119, 139 Holiday, Billie, 89, 119 Hollander, Max, 127 Hollywood: post–World War II changes in, 87 “Honeysuckle Rose” (song): CP’s performance of, 36; CP’s recordings of, 46, 67 “Hootie Blues” (song): McShann band’s recording of, 68 “Hot House” (song): CP’s recording of, 98 “How High the Moon” (song), 72, 122 “Hucklebuck, The” (song), 14 Huxley, Aldous, 25–26 “Hymm, The” (song): CP’s recording of, 67

index

“I Got Rhythm” (song): CP’s recording of, 80, 101 “I Know Where You’re Going” (song): CP’s performance of, 65 improvisations, jazz, 15, 29, 49, 74, 83; CP’s mastery of, 36, 52, 71, 80, 101, 108, 112–16, 133. See also riffs, jazz “Indiana” (song): CP’s recording of, 82 “Indian Summer” (song): CP’s recording of, 78 isolationists, 20–21 Jackson, John “J. J.,” 64, 65, 67, 92 Jackson, Milt, 94, 105 jam sessions: “Bird of Paradise” recording, 116; Minton’s Playhouse, 72–75; Savoy Hotel, 80, 82 jazz: CP’s innovations in, xii, 4–5, 14–15, 92, 101, 103; fail-safe, 125; lack of recognition in the United States, 11–12, 21; lifestyle of, 120; origins of, 24, 103; pop music’s relationship to, 13, 89, 98; post–World War II changes in, 15, 87, 88, 100; recordings of, 112–13; success in Europe, 11, 21; swing music’s relationship to, 89, 91; Time magazine article on, 16. See also chords, jazz; improvisations, jazz; Kansas City, Missouri: jazz in; melodies, jazz; riffs, jazz; solos, jazz jazz, modern: bebop’s association with, 2, 72; blacks’ appreci­ ation of, 88–89; CP’s influence on, xii, 5, 13, 78, 88, 108, 131,

134; as head music, 91–92; impact of, 88–89; origins of, 74–75; younger generation, 105, 118 Jazz at the Philharmonic concert series (JATP), 106, 108, 134 Jefferson, Eddie, 108n Jenkins, Herbert Francis, 69 “Jersey Bounce” (song): Gillespie’s performance of, 97 Jimmie Lunceford Orchestra, 97 Jimmy’s Chicken Shack (club, New York City): CP’s work at, 56–57 Johnson, Budd, 55–56, 83 Johnson, Gus, 60, 65, 67 Johnson, J. J., 76 Johnson, Pete, 34 Jones, Buck, 69 Jones, Hank, 118 Jones, Jo, 39–40, 44, 46, 75 Jones, Thad: CP’s influence on, 7 Jordan, Duke, xiii; in CP’s band, 116, 118; at the Three Deuces, 5, 126 “Jumpin’ Blues, The” (song): CP’s recording of, 72; Gillespie’s recording of, 83 “Just Friends” (song): recordings of, 127, 136 Kansas City, Missouri: CP’s break with, 84, 85; jazz in, 2, 27, 28–30, 34, 39–40, 49, 53, 83; nightclubs in, 24, 41; Parker family moves to, 23, 24, 25; political corruption in, 20, 28; racism in, 11, 16 Kaye, Sammy, 92 Keith, James, 36, 61 187

index

Kenton, Stan: orchestra led by, 105 Kern, Jerome, 114, 116 Kerouac, Jack: CP’s influences on, 15 Kessell, Barney, 139 Key, Francis Scott: CP’s son named after, 51 Keyes, Lawrence “88,” 26–27. See also Deans of Swing King Kong Lair (club, Kansas City, Missouri), 41 Kirk, Andy, 29, 46, 78 Kirk, Mary, 45–46 Knepper, Jimmy, 105 Koenigswarter, Baroness Pannonica de, 141, 142, 143 “Ko-Ko” (song): CP’s recordings of, xiii–xiv, 100, 101, 103 Kolax, King: quintet led by, 55 Kyser, Kay, 130 “Lady Be Good” (song): CP’s performance of, 61, 108; CP’s recording of, 67 “Lady in Red, The” (song): CP’s performance of, 65 Lanza, Mario, 130 Latin music: CP and Gillespie’s influences on, 14 Laurence, Baby, 91 Lawrence, Elliot: orchestra led by, 121, 122 Lawson, Hugh, 122 “Lazy River” (song): CP’s performance of, 36 Lee, George E.: appearances in Eldon, Missouri, 6, 45, 48–49; orchestra led by, 27 Lee, Julia, 27

188

Lee, Peggy, 130 Leonard, Harlan, 28; band led by, 36, 61 Lester, Jerry, 104 “Lester Leaps In”: CP’s performance of, 137 Levey, Stan, 92, 100 Lewis, Alonzo, 26, 34 Lewis, Ed, 28, 44 Lewis, John, 13, 14, 119, 126–27 Lewis, Willie, 37 Lincoln Hall (dance hall, Kansas City, Missouri), 34; CP’s appearances at, 39, 51 Lorber, Nat “Face,” 140 Los Angeles: CP in, 33, 54, 79, 105–9, 106, 107, 116; Gillespie in, 105–7 “Love Nest, The” (song): Beiderbecke’s solo on, 97 “Lover Man” (song): CP’s recording of, 109, 116; Peggy Lee singing, 130 Lowe, Mundell, xiii Lunceford, Jimmie: arrangements by, 71–72; orchestra led by, 97 Mabane, Bob, 60, 65 Macdonald, Julie, 125, 138 Mancini, Henry: jazz compositions by, 13 Mandel, Johnny: jazz compositions by, 13 “Man I Love, The” (song): Gillespie’s performance of, 107 Marmarosa, Dodo, 118 Massey Hall (Toronto), 115, 116 “Max Is Making Wax” (song), 84 Mayfair (club, Kansas City, Missouri), 51–52

index

Mayhew, Aubrey, xii McConnell, Shorty, 82 McGhee, Howard, 73; CP’s recordings with, 109, 116; as jazz trailblazer, 75, 105 McLean, Jackie, 97–98 McRae, Carmen, 68 McShann, Jay, 49, 53, 58; admiration for CP, 2, 6, 46, 70; band led by, 37, 60, 65; CP traveling with, 61, 62, 64–65, 67–68, 71–72, 77–78; radio broadcasts, 71, 72, 77; recordings by, 68, 71–72; at the Savoy Ballroom, 7, 68–71 McWashington, Willie, 28 “Meandering” (song): CP’s recording of, 101 melodies, jazz: CP’s playing of, 5, 64–65, 67, 115–16, 133 Mercer, Johnny: telegram from, 101 Mercury Records recording session, 127 Merrill, Bob, 65 Metronome All Stars (orchestra), 9, 12, 124 “Milestones” (song): CP’s composition of, 126–27 Mili, Gjon: film by, 57 Miller, Glenn, 13, 91 Miller, Mitch, 127 Millinder, Lucky: band led by, 68 Mingus, Charles, 12–13, 112, 115, 117 Minor, Orville “Piggy,” 60, 65, 67 Minton’s Playhouse (club, New York City), 73, 74; jam sessions at, 72–75 mobsters, 28, 104–5

modernists. See composers: modernist; jazz, modern Monk, Thelonious, 73, 74, 76, 89; dancing ability, 91; debts owed to predecessors, 75; influence of, 15, 88; and Minton’s Playhouse jam sessions, 72–73; at the Open Door, 117; songs by, 78 Moore, Big Chief Russell, 128, 131 Moose the Mooche, 107, 108–9; CP’s song for, 108 mop-mop music, 96, 98 Mosaic Records: recordings of CP’s solos, 113n Moten, Bennie, 28 Moten, Bus, 28 “Moten Swing” (song): CP’s solo on, 67 movies. See films Mulligan, Gerry, 13, 119–20, 121; compositions by, 136, 137; CP’s influence on, 121–22, 139–40 Mundy, Jimmy, 136 music. See specific types of music Navarro, Theodore Fats, 68, 76, 77, 92, 133 Newman, Joe, 7, 134 New York City: CP in, 48, 56–60, 68–78, 71, 88, 104, 111–27, 129–45. See also Fifty-second Street (New York City) Nicholas, Big Nick, 78 Nicholson, Eddie, 48 nightclubs, 2, 15, 91; in Kansas City, Missouri, 24, 41. See also individual clubs “Night in Tunisia, A” (song): CP’s recording of, 108

189

index

Noble, Ray, 52 Norvo, Red: CP’s recordings with, 122 novelists and novels: CP’s influences on, 15; 1920s, 21; post–World War II, 87 “Now’s the Time” (song), 108n; CP’s composition of, 14; CP’s recordings of, xiii, 101, 119 Oliver, King, 93, 97 “On a Slow Boat to China” (song): CP’s performance of, 130 O’Neill, Eugene: The Emperor Jones, 21 “One O’clock Jump” (song), 29 Onyx Club (New York City), 48, 92 Open Door (club, New York City), 10, 75, 117, 123 orchestras. See individual bands and orchestras Original Oklahoma City Blue Devils (orchestra), 37 Orioles (group), xiii “Ornithology” (song): CP’s recordings of, 72, 108 Owens, Thomas Bill, 37 Page, Hot Lips, 30, 37, 69, 128 Page, Vernon, 28 Page, Walter, 37 Palmier, Remo, 46 Paris: CP in, 30, 47, 128, 129, 130, 131, 132 Parker, Addie Boxley (mother of CP), 22–23; boyfriend, 33–34; and CP’s drug use, 48, 51, 61; CP spoiled by, 23–24, 27, 33, 37; and custody battle over

190

grandson, 84–85; Indian ancestry, 32; nickname, 33; and wedding of CP and Rebecca Ruffin, 40, 43 Parker, Baird (son of CP), 129, 138 Parker, Chan Richardson (common-law wife of CP), 103, 116, 129, 136, 139, 143; descriptions of CP by, 112, 128; home life with CP, 129–30 Parker, Charles “Bird,” Jr. (CP): apprenticeship as musician, 2–4, 36–37, 39–40, 43–47, 49–50, 51–52; as autodidact, 5, 7, 49; awakening to music, 25–27, 30, 31; bands led by, 116, 136; birth, 19; cabaret license revoked, 137–38; at Carnegie Hall, 12, 127; charm of, 50, 94, 122; childhood, 23–25; comic side of, 68, 91; coterie of followers, 1–2, 4, 8, 85, 94, 97, 118, 122, 124; criticisms of, 8, 10–12, 69–70, 75, 116; dancing ability, 34, 91; death, xii, 1, 12, 16, 83, 141–42, 143; desire for stability, 116, 130–31; destructive lifestyle, 8, 32, 45, 50, 94, 103, 121; education, 23–24, 33, 34; friendships, 32, 33, 38; genius of, 4, 5–6, 8, 17, 88, 95, 143, 145; in high school band, 26, 34, 36; incarcerations, 53, 67, 109, 116, 138; influence of, 1–2, 4, 6–7, 12–17, 116, 121–22, 124–25, 131; international reputation, 89, 128; lack of recognition, xiv, 10, 16, 70, 131; marriages, 40, 42, 43, 51,

index

61–62, 82–83, 84; mimicking ability, 50, 85; nickname, xii, 62; personality, 95, 120–21; reconciliation attempts with Rebecca, 61–62, 84; sideman sessions, 96–98; sound of, 75–76, 100; study of music, 121, 135; style and technique, xiv, 7, 46, 64, 71, 96; tastes in music, 3–4, 89, 95, 125, 130–31, 134–35; testimonials to, 6–7, 16–17, 76. See also drugs: CP’s addiction to; Gillespie, Dizzy: CP’s duets with; photographs of CP; recordings: CP’s; individual compositions, performances, and recordings by Parker Parker, Charles, Sr. (father of CP), 8, 21–22, 23, 32, 43, 60 Parker, Doris Sydnor (commonlaw wife of CP), 104, 128, 129; fight over CP’s estate, xii, 143; home life with CP, 103–4, 116 Parker, Francis Leon (son of CP), 51, 84–85, 128, 129, 137, 138 Parker, Geraldine Marguerite Scott (wife of CP), 80, 82–83 Parker, John “Ikey” (half-brother of CP), 20, 23, 33, 43 Parker, Kim (adopted daughter of CP), 129 Parker, Leo, 83, 84 Parker, Pree (daughter of CP), 129; death of, 138, 141 Parker, Rebecca Ellen Ruffin (wife of CP), 30–33, 137; and CP’s drug addiction, 47–48; CP’s visits to, 128–29, 138; and custody battle over

son, 84–85; description of Addie Parker by, 22–23, 84; description of CP by, 112; high school graduation, 24, 33, 34, 36; marriage to CP, 1, 40, 42, 43, 51, 61–62, 83, 84 “Parker’s Mood” (song), 4; CP’s recording of, 138 pawning: CP’s habit of, 45, 50, 51, 53, 56 Payne, Cecil, xiii Pendergast, Tom, 28; incarceration of, 30, 53 Pepper, Art, xiii, 105 Pershing Ballroom (Chicago): CP in concert at, 118 Peterson, Oscar, 139 Petrillo, James: recording ban instigated by, 72, 80, 83 Pettiford, Oscar, 76, 80, 83, 84, 92 Phillips, Flip, 139 Phipps, Art, 69 Phipps, Jimmy, 69 photographs of CP, xvi, 18, 86, 102, 119, 137, 144; at Apollo Theatre, 82, 120; with Baird, 138; at the Bee Hive Lounge, 140; at Birdland, 93, 112, 114; childhood, 20, 21, 23; Clef recording session, 139; at Club Downbeat, 13; in Detroit, 3; Dial Records session, 118; with Maely Duffy, 142; with Duke Ellington, 63; with Dizzy Gillespie, 99; from Gjon Mili film, 57; gravesite, 143; at the Heatwave, 69; in Los Angeles, 33, 54, 79, 106, 107; at Massey Hall, 115; in Jay McShann’s band, 65; at Mercury Records

191

index

session, 127; with Metronome All Stars, 9, 12; in New York City, 65, 71, 88, 104; at the Onyx club, 48; at the Open Door, 10, 117, 123; in Paris, 30, 47, 128, 129, 130, 131, 132; with Chan Parker, 129, 136; at the Royal Roost, 71, 94; string quintet led by, 135, 138; in Sweden, 133; at the Three Deuces, 5, 90, 97, 110, 126; in Wichita, Kansas, 31, 60 Pincus (doorman at Fifty-second Street), 105 Pleasure, King, 4, 108n, 138 poetry and poets: CP’s influences on, 15; post–World War II, 87 politics: corruption in, 19–21, 30, 53 Pollack, Jackson: CP’s influences on, 15 pop music: CP’s renditions of, xiv, 59, 108, 134, 135; jazz’s relationship to, 13, 89, 98; post–World War II changes in, 87 Porter, Roy, 108 Potter, Tommy, 86; at Birdland, 93, 114; in CP’s band, 116; in Paris, 128; at the Three Deuces, 5, 110, 126 Powell, Bud, 12, 75, 92, 115, 141; jazz legacy, 15, 76, 88, 133 Powell, Carrie, 49 press, mainstream: CP ignored by, xiv, 16, 131 Price, Abe, 27 Price, Jesse, 34, 49, 61 prohibition, 19–20, 28 Prokofiev, Sergei, 125

192

“Quasimodo” (song): recording of, 119 racism, 8, 10, 11, 16, 21, 67, 87–88 Ramey, Gene, 31, 60, 65, 67, 78, 142 recordings: CP’s, 118–19, 122, 127, 138; Dial sessions, xii–xiii, 107, 108–9, 115, 118; first, 46–47; improvisations, 113–16; Savoy Hotel jam sessions, 80, 82, 96; Savoy Records, xiii, 96–98, 100–101, 103, 126; Uptown Records, 113n; Verve Records, xiii–xiv. See also Petrillo, James; individual recordings of songs and albums Red and Dutch (club, Kansas City, Missouri), 41 Redcross, Bob, 80, 96 “Red Cross” (song): CP’s recording of, 82, 96 “Relaxin’ at Camarillo” (song): CP’s recording of, 116 Reno Club (Kansas City, Missouri), 34, 49; CP’s failed audition at, 39–40, 46 rhythm-and-blues music, xiii, 68. See also blues music Rich, Buddy, 127 riffs, jazz: in big band arrangements, 29; CP’s mastery of, 68, 82, 100. See also improvisations, jazz Riviera Club (St. Louis), 84 Roach, Max, 12, 76, 83, 92, 94, 115; on CP’s recordings, 98, 100, 119, 137; in Paris, 128, 132; at the Three Deuces, 5, 110, 113n, 126

index

Robeson, Paul, 136 rock-and-roll music: jazz’s influences on, 13, 91 “Rocker” (song): CP’s playing of, 137 Rockets (band), 36, 61 Rockland Palace (ballroom, New York City), xiii, 136 Rodney, Red, 6, 13, 118 Roosevelt, Franklin D., 19 Ross, Arnold, 108 Ross, James, 36, 37, 61 Rouse, Charlie, 77 Royal Roost (club, New York City): CP’s appearances at, xiii, 71, 94, 116 Ruffin, Fanny (mother of Rebecca Ruffin Parker), 32, 40, 85 Ruffin, Marcus W. (father of Rebecca Ruffin Parker), 32 Ruffin family, 22n, 31 Rushing, Jimmy, 28 Russell, Curley, 92, 95, 113n Russell, George, 136 Russell, Ross, 107, 109, 116, 118 Safranski, Eddie, 9, 12 salsa music: CP’s influence on, 14 “Salt Peanuts” (song): recordings of, 98, 113n Sartre, Jean-Paul, 95; “The Prisoner of Venice,” xiv Satan in High Heels (film), xiii Savoy Ballroom (New York City), 7; CP’s performances at, 56, 65, 68–71, 119 Savoy Hotel (New York City): jam sessions at, 80, 82, 96

Savoy Records: CP’s recordings on, xiii, 96–98, 100–101, 103, 126 Schifrin, Lalo: jazz compositions by, 13 Schoenberg, Arnold: CP’s admiration for, 3–4, 95 Schuller, Gunther, 14–15 Scott, Hazel, 80 Scott, Howard, 82 Scott, Willie, 68 Segovia, Andrés, 128 “Sepian Bounce” (song): CP’s solo on, 71–72 “Seventh Avenue” (song): CP’s solo on, 97 Shaughnessy, Ed, 130–31 Shavers, Charlie, 139 Shaw, Artie, 68, 119 Shaw, Billy, 116 “Shaw ’Nuff” (song): CP and Gillespie duet on, 7, 98, 100 Simpkins, Jesse, 82 Simpson, Robert, 38, 39 Sims, Zoot, 121 Sir Charles and His All-Stars (band), 88 Sissle, Noble, 84 65 Club (Chicago), 55 Smith, Bessie, 89 Smith, Buster “Prof,” 37, 50; band led by, 49; in New York City, 53, 56, 59 Smith, Stuff, 103 Smith, Tab, 78 Smith, Willie, 106 soldiers, black: demonstrations by, 21, 87–88. See also racism

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solos, jazz, 76, 96–97; CP’s, 14–15, 46–47, 61, 64, 65, 97–98, 113n, 116 “Sorta Kinda” (song), 97–98 Southwestern musical style, 126 Spooner, Bill, 69 “Star Dust” (song): CP’s performance of, 137 Stars of Modern Jazz (band), 12 “Star Spangled Banner, The”: CP’s playing of, 34, 51 “Stealin’ Apples” (song): CP’s performance of, 43; recordings of, 134 Stravinsky, Igor: CP’s admiration for, 3–4, 89, 130–31 Strayhorn, Billy, 133 “Street Beat, The” (song): recordings of, 98 strike, recording. See Petrillo, James “Stupendous” (song): CP’s recording of, 116 Subway Club (Kansas City, Missouri), 34, 49 Sullivan, Ed, 14 Sunset (club, Kansas City, Missouri), 34 Sweden: CP in, 116, 133, 134 “Sweet Georgia Brown” (song): CP’s performance of, 80, 107 “Swingmatism” (song): McShann band’s recording of, 68 swing music, 70, 91, 96; jazz’s relationship to, 89, 103 “Table in the Corner, A” (song): recording of, 119 Tate, Buddy, 77–78, 140 Tatum, Art, 56, 57, 59, 64–65, 89; trio led by, 96 194

television: CP’s appearances on, 2–3, 134; jazz music on, 13, 14 tempos, jazz, 57, 73; CP’s mastery of, 37, 59, 96, 119; modern jazz’s changes to, 91, 92 “Temptation” (song): CP’s performance of, 134 “Tenderly” (song): CP’s performance of, 134 territory bands, 29, 62 Tharpe, Sister Rosetta, 68 Theater Owners Booking Association (T.O.B.A.), 22 Third Stream concept, 14–15 Thompson, Lucky, 105 Thompson, Sir Charles, 88, 98 Thornton, Argonne, 100–101, 103 Three Deuces (club, New York City), 104, 110, 113n, 126; CP’s appearances at, 5, 90, 92–96, 97, 110, 116, 126 “Thriving on a Riff” (song): CP’s recordings of, 101 Tiffany Club (Los Angeles), 106, 107 Tinney, Allen, 69 Tintoretto: Sartre’s essay on, xiv “Tiny’s Temp” (song): CP’s recording of, 96 Todd, Oliver, 39 Tondelayo’s (club, New York City): CP’s appearances at, 96 Torin, Symphony Sid, 112 Toulouse-Lautrec, Henri Marie Raymond de, 25–26 touring bands, 29 Town Hall (New York City): Three Deuces band at, 113n Tristano, Lennie, 9, 12 Turner, Joe, 34

index

Ulanov, Barry, 116 Universal Negro Improvement Association, 21 Uptown Records: recordings of CP, 113n Van Dyke, David, 69 Varèse, Edgard, 16, 134, 135 vaudeville, 22, 23 Vaughan, Sarah, 12, 78, 80, 81, 82, 84, 98 Verve Records: CP’s recordings, xiii–xiv Volstead Act (National Prohibition Act of 1919), 19–20, 28 Walder, Woodie, 28 Walker, Vernon, 37 Waller, Fats, 43, 91 Wallington, George, 92 Ware, Efferge, 49 “Warming Up a Riff” (song): CP’s recordings of, 91, 101 Warren, Earle, 77–78 Washington, Booker, 28 Washington, Jack, 28 “Water Boy” (song): Robeson’s performance of, 136 Watkins, Doug, 122 Webster, Ben, 6, 34, 48, 69, 139; band led by, 92 Webster, Freddie, 83, 101 West, Harold, 118 “West End Blues” (song), 100 “What Price Love” (song): CP’s composition of, 67–68

Whiteman, Paul, 97 White Rose (club, New York City): CP’s appearances at, 94 Wichita, Kansas: CP in, 31, 60, 65 “Wichita Blues” (song): CP’s solos on, 67 Wiggle Inn (club, Kansas City, Missouri), 41 Wilkerson, George, 44–45 Williams, Cootie, 76 Williams, Ernie, 37 Williams, Henry “Rubberlegs,” 98 Williams, John, 82 Williams, Lawrence, 37 Williams, Mary Lou, 29, 45–46, 75 Williams, Rudy, 7 Williams, Winston, 52–53, 61 Wilson, Gerald, 105 Wilson, Shadow, 82, 84 Wilson, Teddy, 75, 108 Wilson, Woodrow, 20 Woods, Phil, 95, 130 World War I, 20–21 World War II, 87–88 Wright, Richard: Native Son, 87 “Yardbird Suite” (song): CP’s recording of, 68, 108 “Yatag” (song): CP’s recording of, 115 Young, Lester, 6, 34, 35, 44, 106, 108; influence on CP, 39, 49, 67; as jazz trailblazer, 75, 89 Young, Trummy, 97

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G

ary giddins wrote the “Weather Bird” jazz column in

the Village Voice for thirty years and served as artistic director of the American Jazz Orchestra from 1986 to 1992. He is executive director of the Leon Levy Center for Biography at the CUNY Graduate Center, where he also teaches. His essays on music and film have been published in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Esquire, Vintage, and the New York Times. He has received the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Jazz Journalists Association Lifetime Achievement Award, a Guggenheim Fellow­ ship, a Peabody Award, a Grammy Award, two Ralph J. Gleason Music Book awards, and six ASCAP Deems Taylor Awards for Excellence in Music Criticism. His books include Riding on a Blue Note, Satchmo, Visions of Jazz, Weather Bird, Natural Selection, Jazz (with Scott DeVeaux), and Warning Shadows: Home Alone with Classic Cinema.