Parker, Charlie (1920–1955),
jazz saxophonist and leader in the “bop” revolution of the 1940s.Born in
Kansas City, Kansas, Parker grew up across the river in Missouri. At age nineteen he joined the Jay McShann Orchestra and became the band's principal soloist, acquiring the name “Yardbird,” shortened to “Bird.” In 1941, when the McShann Orchestra played at the Savoy Ballroom and the Apollo Theater in
New York City, Parker discovered the Harlem clubs that were centers of jazz experimentation. When he left McShann in 1942, he had already acquired the narcotics problem that would ultimately take his life. He played for most of 1943 with the Earl Hines Orchestra, working with the trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie, another formulator of the “bop” style. When the singer Billy Eckstine left Hines to form his own band, both Parker and Gillespie went with him. Tired of big bands and preferring the freedom of a small combo, Parker quit Eckstine in 1944.
His eccentric style, subtle and complex, won followers among young urban blacks and jazz enthusiasts, and his improvised sounds combined with his unorthodox lifestyle to make “Bird” a cultural icon. In 1947, Parker formed his own quintet and often played in after‐hours jam sessions at Minton's Playhouse in Harlem and the clubs along Fifty‐second Street in midtown New York. He played his last engagement at Birdland, a Broadway club named for him, shortly before his death. Always controversial, Parker deepened the emotional intensity of jazz and became a hero within the emerging
Black Nationalism of postwar America.
Bibliography
Ross Russell , Bird Lives!, 1973.
Brian Priestley , Charlie Parker, 1984.
Ronald L. Davis
