Image courtesy of Frank Driggs

Collection
Photograph by Herman Leonard
Charlie Parker
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Charles, Jr.; Bird; Chan; Charlie; Yardbird (1920-1955) Alto
saxophonist
Hot House
Recorded 1945
(Courtesy Verve Music Group)
Charlie Parker was one of the most influential
improvising soloists in jazz, and a central figure
in the development of bop in the 1940s. A
legendary figure in his own lifetime, he was
idolized by those who worked with him, and he
inspired a generation of jazz performers and
composers.
Parker was the only child of Charles and Addle
Parker. In 1927, the family moved to Kansas
City, Missouri, an important center of African-
American music in the 1920s and 1930s. Parker
had his first music lessons in the local public
schools; he began playing alto saxophone in
1933 and worked occasionally in
semi-professional groups before leaving school in 1935 to become a
full-time musician. From 1935 to 1939, he worked mainly in Kansas City
with a wide variety of local blues and jazz groups. Like most jazz musicians
of his time, he developed his craft largely through practical experience:
listening to older local jazz masters, acquiring a traditional repertory, and
learning through the process of trial and error in the competitive Kansas
City bands and jam sessions.
In 1939 Parker first visited New York (then the
principal center of jazz musical and business
activity), staying for nearly a year. Although he
worked only sporadically as a professional
musician, he often participated in jam sessions.
By his own later account, he was bored with the
stereotyped changes that were being used then.
He said, "I kept thinking there's bound to be
something else. I could hear it sometimes, but I
couldn't play it." While working over at the
Cherokee in a jam session with the guitarist Biddy
Fleet, Parker suddenly found that by using the
higher intervals of a chord as a melody line and
backing them with appropriately related changes he could play what he had
been "hearing." Yet, it was not until 1944-5 that his conceptions of rhythm
and phrasing had evolved sufficiently to form his mature style.
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Dizzie Gillespie and Charlie Parker
Image courtesy of Frank Driggs Collection
The NPR 100: "Ko Ko"
Tom Vitale reports on the Charlie Parker tune that almost
single-handedly gave rise to bebop. The tune is a selection
from National Public Radio's list of the 100 most important
American musical recordings of the 20th Century.
(Courtesy NPRJazz.org)
Parker's name first appeared in the music press in 1940, and from this date
his career is more fully documented. From 1940 to 1942 he played in Jay
McShann's band, with which he toured the Southwest, Chicago, and New
York, and took part in his first recording sessions in Dallas (1941). These
recordings, and several made for broadcasting from the same period,
document his early, swing-based style, and at the same time reveal his
extraordinary gift for improvisation. In December 1942, he joined Earl
Hines' big band, which then included several other young modernists such
as Dizzy Gillespie. By May 1944 they, with Parker, formed the nucleus of
Billy Eckstine's band.
During these years, Parker regularly participated in after-hours jam
sessions at Minton's Playhouse and Monroe's Uptown House in New York,
where the informal atmosphere and small groups favored the development
of his personal style and of the new bop music generally. Unfortunately, a
strike by the American Federation of Musicians silenced most of the
recording industry from August 1942, causing this crucial stage in Parker's
musical evolution to remain virtually undocumented. Though there are
some obscure acetate recordings of him playing tenor saxophone dating
from early 1943. When the recording ban ended, Parker recorded as a
sideman (from September 15, 1944) and as a leader (from November 26,
1945), which introduced his music to a wider public and to other musicians.
NPR's Jazz Profiles: Charlie Parker
Host Nancy Wilson presents this profile of the great Charlie
"Bird" Parker, the man who literally changed the course of jazz
history with his music.
(Courtesy NPRJazz.org)
The year 1945 marked a turning
point in Parker's career: in New
York he led his own group for the
first time and worked extensively
with Gillespie in small
ensembles. In December 1945,
he and Gillespie took the new
jazz style to Hollywood, where
they fulfilled a six-week
nightclub engagement. Parker
continued to work in Los
Angeles, recording and
performing in concerts and
nightclubs, until June 29, 1946,
when a nervous breakdown and
addiction to heroin and alcohol caused his confinement at the Camarillo
State Hospital. He was released in January 1947 and resumed work in Los
Angeles.
Parker returned to New York in April 1947. He formed a quintet (with Miles
Davis, Duke Jordan, Tommy Potter, and Max Roach) that recorded many of
his most famous pieces. The years from 1941 to 1951 were Parker's most
fertile period. He worked in a wide variety of settings (nightclubs, concerts,
radio, and recording studios) with his own small ensembles, a string group,
and Afro-Cuban bands, and as a guest soloist with local musicians when
traveling without his own group. He visited Europe (1949 and 1950) and
recorded slightly over half his surviving work. Though still beset by
problems associated with drugs and alcohol, he attracted a very large
following in the jazz world and enjoyed a measure of financial success.
NPR's Basic Jazz Record Library: Charlie
Parker
NPR's Basic Jazz Record Library: Charlie Parker NPR's Murray
Horwitz and jazz critic and poet AB Spellman recommend
Parker's album Confirmation.
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(Courtesy NPRJazz.org)
In July 1951, Parker's New York cabaret license was revoked at the request
of the narcotics squad. This banned him from nightclub employment in the
city and forced him to adopt a more peripatetic life until the license was
reinstated (probably in autumn 1953). Sporadically employed, badly in
debt, and in failing physical and mental health, he twice attempted suicide
in 1954 and voluntarily committed himself to Bellevue Hospital in New York.
His last public engagement was on March 5, 1955 at Birdland, a New York
nightclub named in his honor. He died seven days later in the Manhattan
apartment of his friend the Baroness Pannonica de Koenigswarter, sister of
Lord Rothschild.
The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz, Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For
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