Parker, Charlie 1920–1955

Charlie Parker 1920–1955

Jazz saxophonist and composer

Joined Kansas City Jazz Scene

Member of Big Bands

Initiated the Bebop Craze

Bebop’s California Invasion

Blues and Latin Explorations

Made His European Debut

Selected discography

Sources

When alto-saxophonist Charlie Parker made his first significant solo recordings with trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie in 1945, his music had a tremendous impact on a new generation of jazz musicians. In cities across the country, jazz instrumentalists sought to play in the Parker-style. Known to fellow musicians as Yardbird, Yard, or Bird, Parker expanded the musical horizons of jazz and influenced various instrumentalists with his unique phrasing and harmonic conception. Parker drew much of his inspiration from the blues, swing jazz standards, popular song forms, Afro-Cuban music, and modern European symphonic music. While Parker’s blues-based compositions elevated the form to a new creative level, his deep interest in the modern symphonic works of composers such as Igor Stravinsky and Bela Bartok inspired countless other jazzmen to study classical music. An avant-gardist of the bebop subculture, Parker’s heroin addiction elevated him to cult status among hipsters, poets, and intellectuals. Despite his self-destructive lifestyle and early death, Parker remains one of the twentieth century’s most innovative instrumentalists and composers.

Parker was born on August 29, 1920, in Kansas City, Kansas. His father, Charlie Sr., was a stage entertainer and his mother, a domestic of Native American descent. Raised by his mother, Parker attended Catholic schools and, not long after, became a student at Charles Sumner Elementary. In 1931 Addie took her son to live in Kansas City, Missouri, a hotbed of swing jazz and home to Tom Pendegast’s political machine which, as a result of its widespread corruption, fostered the city’s musical night club scene. A follower of tenor saxophonist Lester Young, Parker took up alto horn. Having never received any formal musical instruction, he faced stiff competition at local jam sessions from more seasoned musicians. Although Parker experienced humiliation at the hands of more experienced players, he persevered by practicing relentlessly and using exercise books.

Joined Kansas City Jazz Scene

Parker dropped out of school at age sixteen to pursue a career in music. His mother’s full-time employment at Western Union offered Parker plenty of opportunities to experience Kansas City’s nightlife and drug subculture

At a Glance…

Born Charles Christopher Parker August 29, 1920, in Kansas City, Missouri; son of Charles Parker (traveling entertainer and Pullman chef) and Addle (domestic); married Rebecca Ruffin July 25, 1936; children Francis Leon; Geraldine Marguerite Scott (dancer) April 10, 1943; Doris Snydor (hat check girl); Chan Richardson (model and dancer) July 1950; children Pree and Baird, also adopted Richardson’s daughter Kim. Died March 12, 1955 in New York City.

Career: Left school to play music at sixteen; mid 1930s played in Kansas City bands; 1937 with Buster “Prof” Smith; with Jay McShann orchestra 1940–1942; performed with Earl Hines 1942–1943; joined Billy Eckstine big band 1944; 1945 made first solo recordings in a quintet with Dizzy Gillespie; performed in California 1945–1947; first performed with Norman Granz’s Jazz at the Philharmonic series; recorded for Dial label 1945–1948; returned to New York in April 1947; recorded for Savoy label 1948; signed with Norman Cranz’s Mercury label 1948 and subsequently with recorded with Cranz’s Verve label; played the Paris International Jazz Festival, May 1949; recorded with strings 1949–1952; visited Scandinavia 1950; performed with various side-men 1950–1955.

Awards: Down Beat New Star Award, 1946; elected to Down Beat Hall of Fame 1955.

alone. In 1937 Parker worked in Ozark mountain resort clubs, including a four-month stint with George E. Lee’s band. The job with Lee’s band afforded Parker ample time for private practice, and he spent hours trying to imitate the Lester Young tenor saxophone solos featured on recordings by the Count Basie Band. Back in Kansas City, he broadened his musical knowledge by performing with another influential saxophonist, Buster “Prof” Smith.

In 1938 Parker performed for several months with pianist Jay McShann’s Sextet, and then moved on to New York City. On his way to New York, he stopped in Chicago where, at a breakfast dance, he sat-in with the band on saxophone. Despite his disheveled appearance, Parker’s saxophone lines astounded listeners. Unable to find musical work in New York City, he washed dishes at Jimmy’s Chicken Shack in Harlem. While working at Jimmy’s, Parker had the opportunity to hear the brilliant house pianist, Art Tatum. As Royal W. Stokes remarked in The Jazz Scene, Art Tatum “was an important transitional figure” in Parker’s musical education. Eventually, Parker performed at dime dance halls and jam sessions. At Don Walls’ Chili House, his interaction with guitarist Bill “Biddy” Fleet expanded his knowledge of harmony and chord substitutions. Parker also took part in jam sessions at Clark Monroe’s Uptown House in Harlem, where he worked out brilliant lines over the changes of pop standards such as his favorite showpiece, “Cherokee.”

Member of Big Bands

After returning to Kansas City in 1940, Parker joined Jay McShann’s big band and was put in charge of organizing the reed section. “But it was no question [Parker] had a profound effort on the band,” commented McShann in Talking Jazz, “… when Bird took a solo, he just lifted the band, lifted everybody.” In April of 1941, Parker made his first commercial recordings with McShann’s orchestra, including the Decca side “Hootie Blues.” His playing on this slow blues number, though ignored by critics at the time, made an immediate impression on many saxophonists. Parker’s appearance on McShann’s 1942 sides “Jumpin’ Blues,” “Lonely Boy Blues,” and “Sepian Bounce,” inspired Gunther Schuller to remark in The Swing Era, “Although the ‘cool’ timbre and linearization of musical ideas of Lester Young are clearly the base of [Parker’s] inspiration, he is also beginning to be very much his own man.”

In January of 1942, Parker opened at Harlem’s Savoy Ballroom. When he was not performing with McShann’s orchestra, he sat in at Harlem jam sessions held at Monroe’s and Minton’s Playhouse. At these impromptu performances, Parker joined other jazzmen in experimenting with small ensembles and playing extended solos over complex harmonic forms built upon standard song and compositional forms. Although Parker’s talent impressed his contemporaries at the jam sessions, his worsening drug habit forced McShann to fire him. Parker then bided his time between jam sessions and free lance work until December of 1942 when, through the intercession of Billy Eckstine and trumpeter Benny Harris, he found work as a tenor saxophonist in Earl “Fatha” Hines’ big band which included vocalist Sarah Vaughan. However, Parker’s erratic behavior forced Hines to fire him after only eight months with the band.

Initiated the Bebop Craze

In 1944, Parker joined Billy Eckstine’s innovative bebop big band. He often shared the bandstand with Dizzy Gillespie and several other former alumni of the Hines orchestra, including Sarah Vaughan. After a few months, Parker left Eckstine’s band and played on 52nd Street with saxophonist Ben Webster, and later worked with trumpeter Cootie Williams. In February of 1945, Parker collaborated with Gillespie on sessions for the Guild label which produced the numbers “Groovin’ High” and “Dizzy Atmosphere.” Three months later, a session for Guild yielded “Salt Peanuts,” “ShawNuff,” “Hot House,” and “Lover Man” with vocalist Sarah Vaughan. Not long after the first Guild sides were released, Parker’s music divided musicians and critics into warring camps. “With Parker’s emergence,” noted jazz trombonist Benny Green in The Reluctant Art, “the term [jazz] had no longer a precise meaning.” It forced jazz musicians to align themselves with “music that was pre-Charlie Parker or the music he was playing.”

In the fall of 1945, Parker and Gillespie landed a job at the Three Deuces. Shortly thereafter, Parker’s irresponsibility and disregard for promptness caused Gillespie to quit the group. Parker subsequently hired trumpeter Miles Davis to perform in a quintet which included drummer Max Roach. As Davis enthusiastically recounted in his memoir Miles, “I was nineteen years old and playing with the baddest alto saxophone player in the history of music.” A month after opening at the Three Deuces, Parker debuted on the Savoy label. Under the name “Charlie Parker’s Reboppers,” Parker, Gillespie, Davis, Russell, and Roach recorded the classics “Ko Ko” and “Now’s the Time.” Gary Giddins stressed in Celebrating Bird that, “Ko Ko’ was the seminal point of departure for jazz in the postwar era. It’s effect paralleled that of [Louis] Armstrong’s ‘West End Blues’ in 1928.”

Bebop’s California Invasion

As a member of the Dizzy Gillespie sextet, Parker traveled to Hollywood in December of 1945 to perform at Billy Berg’s, a one-story stucco building on Vine Street. “That little band was very skillfully assembled, recalled Gillespie in To Be or Not to Bop “Charlie Parker I hired, because he was undeniably a genius, musically, the other side of my heartbeat.” Billed with the popular acts Slim Gillard and Henry “The Hipster” Gibson, the sextet played to packed houses. With the exception of a small circle of followers, however, the reaction to the sextet’s modern sound was met with indifference.

After finishing their stint at Berg’s, Parker and Gillespie recorded several sessions for Hollywood record store owner Ross Russell. As a result of poor organization and personnel problems, these first sessions for Russell’s newly formed Dial label yielded little material. When Gillespie’s band returned to New York, Parker stayed behind in Los Angeles and continued to record for Dial. Parker then took a job playing in Howard McGhee’s group at the Club Finale. He also attended several Dial recording sessions which produced a wealth of music including “Yardbird Suite,” “Moose the Mooche,” and “A Night in Tunisia.” As Ted Goia noted in West Coast Jazz, these sides “rank among the landmarks of jazz music. On a level with Louis Armstrong’s Hot Fives and Hot Sevens and Ellington’s work from the early 1940s, the Parker Dial sessions stand out as monumental achievements.”

Despite the fine musicianship Parker displayed on the Dial recordings, his personal life was in shambles. He was living in poverty and suffering from drug withdrawal. On July 29, 1946, Parker attended a Dial recording session. Later that night a fire, presumably caused by careless smoking, destroyed his room at the Civic Hotel. Earlier that evening, Parker was seen wandering around the hotel lobby wearing only his socks. He was arrested and held in the psychiatric ward of the East Los Angeles Jail. Charged with arson, indecent exposure, and resisting arrest, Parker served a six-month term at the Camarillo State Hospital. He was released in January of 1947 and periodically experienced episodes of good health, only to succumb to eating binges and further drug abuse. Before returning to New York, Parker participated in recording sessions for Dial with pianist Erroll Garner, Howard McGhee and Wardell Gray.

Blues and Latin Explorations

Between 1947 and 1948 Parker led a quintet which included, at various times, Miles Davis, pianists Duke Jordan and Al Haig, and Max Roach. Also, extended engagements at New York nightclubs such as the Three Deuces and the Royal Roost provided Parker with a relatively stable period of work. In September of 1948, Parker cut the Savoy side “Parker’s Mood.” Acclaimed as one of Parker’s finest blues numbers, “Parker’s Mood,” as Thomas Owens noted in Bebop: The Music and Its Players, “contains a number of [Parker’s] standard melodic figures, but the slow tempo gives him more time than usual to reshape and combine them, and to think of new phrases. In the process he creates a beautiful and poignant picture of the poetic meaning of the blues—he ‘tells his story’ as though he was a great blues singer.” In December of 1948 and January of 1949, Parker recorded with Machito’s Afro-Cuban orchestra for the Verve label.

Made His European Debut

In May of 1949, Parker made his European debut at the Paris International Festival of Jazz. That same year, Parker hired trumpeter Red Rodney. Rodney told Ben Sidran in Talking Jazz, “Charlie Parker was very much like he played. He was beautiful. He was so proficient that the instrument was like a toy.” In November of 1949, Parker recorded with a string section conducted by Mitch Miller. The session yielded the smash hit, “Just Friends.” In 1950 and 1952, he continued to perform and record with string quartets and other small groups. In March of 1951 and January of 1952, Parker recorded his Latin-inspired album, South of the Border. This album, released on the Verve label, contained his popular number “My Little Suede Shoes.”

In 1953 Parker joined Dizzy Gillespie, Max Roach, bassist Charles Mingus, and pianist Bud Powell for a performance at Toronto’s Massey Hall. Around this time, Parker’s constant drug use began to take its toll. Although he was still capable of delivering fine performances, his reputation for showing up in mid-performance or missing entire shows often forced club owners to hire Parker on a per set basis. After being admitted twice to Belle vue psychiatric hospital in 1954, Parker attempted suicide. On March 4, 1955, he made his final appearance at Birdland—the club named in his honor. During the performance, he exchanged harsh words onstage with Bud Powell and left the nightclub. Five days later, Parker traveled to New York City to visit his close friend and benefactor, Baroness “Nica” Ponnonica de Koenigswarter. Parker suffered an ulcer attack while visiting the baroness, but refused to be hospitalized. He died on March 12, 1955. Autopsy results attributed the cause of death to lobar pneumonia and the long-term effects of alcohol and heroin abuse.

During his brief life, Charlie Parker inspired a school of jazz, a legion of followers, and helped to define a generation of post-war poets and writers. A few months after Parker’s death, Beat writer Jack Kerouac hailed him in his book of poems Mexico City Blues, as “the perfect musician … and a great creator of forms.” In recent decades, Parker has become the subject of books, film documentaries, and a feature motion picture. His music remains an internationally recognized source of musical inspiration and one of America’s highest artistic achievements.

Selected discography

Charlie Parker, The Verve Years (1952–54), Verve, 1977.

Charlie Parker at Storeyville, Blue Note, (recorded 1953) 1988.

Charlie Parker The Legendary Dial Masters Vol. I, Stash, 1989.

Charlie Parker Swedish Schnapps+, The Great Quintet Sessions 1919–1951.

Verve, 1991.

Charlie Parker, “Round Midnight and Other Gems,” Tel-Star, 1991.

Bird at St. Nick’s, Original Jazz Classics, (recorded 1950) 1992.

Charlie Parker, Jazz at the Philharmonic 1949, Verve, 1993.

Bird on 52nd Street, Original Jazz Classics, (recorded 1948) 1994.

Charlie Parker Plays Standards, Jazz Masters 28, Verve, 1994.

Charlie Parker, South of the Border, (recorded 1951–1952), 1995.

Charlie Parker, The Complete Dial Recordings, Rhino, 1996.

Bird and Diz, (recorded 1948) Verve, 1997.

Yardbird Suite, The Ultimate Charlie Parker, Rhino, 1997.

Sources

Books

Davis, Miles with Quincy Troupe. Miles, The Autobiography, Simon & Schuster, 1990.

Giddins, Gary. Celebrating Bird, The Triumph of Charlie Parker, Beech Tree Books, 1987.

Gillespie, Dizzy with Al Fraser. To Be, or not …To Bop, Memoirs, Doubleday &Co., 1979.

Gioa, Ted. West Coast Jazz: Modern Jazz in California 1945–1960, Oxford University Press, 1992.

Gitler, Ira. Jazz Masters of the Forties, Collier Books, 1966.

Green, Benny. The Reluctant Art: Five Studies in the Growth of Jazz, Da Capo, expanded edition, 1991.

Hennessey, Mike. Klook: The Story of Kenny Clarke, University of Pittsburgh Press, 1990.

Kerouac, Jack. Mexico City Blues (242) Choruses, Grove Press, 1959.

Owens, Thomas. Bebop: The Music and Its Players, Oxford University Press, 1995.

Reisner, Robert, ed. Bird: The Legend of Charlie Parker, Da Capo, 1962.

Schuller, Gunther. The Swing Era: The Development of Jazz 1930–1945, Oxford University Press, 1989.

Sidran, Ben. Talking Jazz: An Oral History, expanded edition, Da Capo, 1995.

Stokes, Royal W. The Jazz Scene: An Informal History From New Orleans to 1990, Oxford University Press, 1990.

—John Cohassey