Kansas City Lightning: The Rise and Times of Charlie Parker by Stanley Crouch – review
Richard Williams on a pungent life of the jazz saxophonist, told from a black perspective
Charlie Parker.Photograph: Michael Ochs Archives
Michael Ochs Archives/Michael Ochs Archives
Anyone intending to write a proper biography of Charlie Parker
must eventually come to grips with the nature of genius itself. Very
late in this, the first of two long-awaited volumes on the life of the
great modern jazz saxophonist, Stanley Crouch comes close to the matter
during a conversation with William "Biddy" Fleet, an obscure guitarist
with whom Parker shared experiments in music after his arrival in New
York in 1938, while still in his teens and groping his way towards his
own style and a new conception of what jazz might become. "The thing I
loved about Bird (Parker)," Fleet tells the author, "is this: he wasn't
one of those who's got to write something down, go home, study on it,
and the next time we meet, we'll try it out. Anything anyone did that
Bird liked, when he found out what it was, he'd do it right away.
Instantly. Only once on everything."
If that suggests an intuitive genius, consider the lengths to which
Crouch goes to establish just how carefully Parker studied his craft
before launching himself as a fully fledged professional musician. The
terms of Malcolm Gladwell's 10,000-hour rule
are fully met by the boy from Kansas City. He did not take music
seriously until the age of 15, but he was no ordinary student: his mind
worked at a different speed, with gifts of analysis and construction
unavailable to others.
Biddy Fleet, 10 years older than Parker, is a fugitive figure
in the history of jazz; his death in 1994 went all but unnoticed by the
music world. Crouch talked to him in 1985, three years after he began
to track down and interview many of the surviving witnesses to his
subject's early life: school friends, his first wife (they married when
she was 18 and he was 15), musicians who heard or worked with him during
his apprenticeship in the clubs of Kansas City and the surrounding
territories. One by one, in the 30 years it has taken him to deliver the
first half of his biography, those witnesses have disappeared, making
this testimony all the more valuable.
Not all of it is exactly fresh, however. A few years after beginning
work on the project Crouch made his research available to a fellow
author, Gary Giddins, then the jazz critic of the Village Voice, for use
in a substantial monograph titled Celebrating Bird, published in 1987. That unselfish act gives the clue to Crouch's intentions: even though, like Giddins's volume, Kansas City Lightning serves as a necessary corrective to Bird Lives,
Ross Russell's commercially successful but largely fanciful 1973
biography, this new work was never going to depend for its impact and
value on a recitation of the facts and first-hand witness statements
alone.
Once upon a time jazz history was written by white enthusiasts:
critics, historians and musicologists, mostly men, often with European
origins, inevitably existing – no matter how empathic – at a remove from
the musicians and their way of life. Crouch, born in Los Angeles in
1945, is an African American. An essayist and polemicist, a novelist and
poet, a co-founder (with his friend, the trumpeter Wynton Marsalis)
of the Lincoln Center's jazz department and the recipient in 1993 of a
MacArthur Fellowship "genius" grant, he has attempted to bring his own
experiences and cultural references to bear on his subject. This is the
first full-length study to view the life of Parker, a uniquely
significant musician, from a black perspective.
It
is Crouch's admirable intention not just to interrogate the familiar
lineaments of Parker's life – absentee ne'er-do-well father, doting
mother, four marriages, leadership of a musical revolution, career
disrupted by unruly appetites, death in the apartment of a Rothschild
heiress at 35 – but to set it in the context of his time. Having secured
our attention with a lengthy opening sequence describing the young
saxophonist's debut at Harlem's Savoy Ballroom in 1942, the author
returns to the beginning of the tale but frequently branches away into
short essays on a variety of related and tangential topics, from the
notorious free-for-all of Kansas City's nightlife under the jurisdiction
of Mayor Tom Pendergast to the invention of the saxophone, the
significance of the railroads in mid-century America, the early origins
of jazz and a short history of mob involvement in Harlem nightspots.
Crouch also makes extensive use of the appropriate vernacular,
studding his paragraphs with phrases from blues lyrics. The boxing
champion Jack Johnson
marries a woman with "a fine brown frame", while the bandleader Buster
Smith, Parker's early mentor, leaves Kansas City for New York and "had
to get up and dust his broom, move on farther down the road". Sometimes
Crouch's attempt to immerse himself in Parker's world leads him into the
terrain staked out by Walter Mosley.
"As if loving all the deep notes of a particularly lowdown gutbecket
song," he writes of Johnson, "this uptown ruler barreled downtown behind
the wheel of an aggressively stunning car with mufflers loud enough to
wake the dead". The mobster Dutch Schulz gets a "finalising lead
nightcap" – is shot dead. The consistent use of the term "negro" seems
entirely appropriate, given the desire to portray a particular time and
place.
Some of the material relating to Parker's early life, much of it
gathered in the first interview ever given by Rebecca Ruffin, his first
wife (also now dead, like her successors), is strikingly intimate,
particularly in the description of the miscarriage of what would have
been his second child when he was not yet 18. The story of his early
musical struggles is told through first-hand memories from such
associates as the guitarist Efferge Ware and the trumpeter Orville
"Piggy" Minor, who tells Crouch: "Charlie Parker was a guy who didn't
like anything according to Hoyle" – ie to the rules – "and if he could
bend it, he would bend it quick." If
the digressions occasionally push Parker into the background of his own
story, eventually the flow gathers strength and purpose; the sense of
destiny, shaded by unmistakable hints of impending tragedy, has become
compelling long before Crouch breaks off, leaving Parker on the verge of
the discovery of bebop, the revolution with which he would become
synonymous.
In Orville Minor's words, the young Parker "hated a dull moment". He
was still in his mid-teens when he began warding off the threat of such
moments through the use of marijuana, benzedrine and morphine (the last
of which may have been legitimised in his mind, Crouch suggests, by his
devotion to Sherlock Holmes,
for whom it was the opiate of choice). Here the author observes: "It
was during this period that Charlie began to notice that his appetites
were larger than those of others, that he started to sense that he was
somehow a danger to himself." The extent of that danger will no doubt be
revealed in the sequel – expected in two years' time – to this
occasionally irritating but pungently evocative and undeniably important
work.
About the Book
Kansas City Lightning: The Rise and Times of Charlie Parkeris the first installment in the long-awaited portrait of one of the
most talented and influential musicians of the twentieth century, from
Stanley Crouch, one of the foremost authorities on jazz and culture in
America.
Throughout his life, Charlie Parker personified the
tortured American artist: a revolutionary performer who used his alto
saxophone to create a new music known as bebop even as he wrestled with a
drug addiction that would lead to his death at the age of thirty-four.
Drawing on interviews with peers, collaborators, and family members, Kansas City Lightning
recreates Parker’s Depression-era childhood; his early days navigating
the Kansas City nightlife, inspired by lions like Lester Young and Count
Basie; and on to New York, where he began to transcend the music he had
mastered. Crouch reveals an ambitious young man torn between music and
drugs, between his domineering mother and his impressionable young wife,
whose teenage romance with Charlie lies at the bittersweet heart of
this story.
With the wisdom of a jazz scholar, the cultural
insights of an acclaimed social critic, and the narrative skill of a
literary novelist, Stanley Crouch illuminates this American master as
never before.
No
musician has lived a more transformational, or more tragic, life than
Charlie Parker, one of the most talented and influential figures of the
twentieth century. From the start of his career in the late 1930s,
Parker was a new kind of American artist: a revolutionary musician who
internalized all of popular music and blew it back through his alto
saxophone "at the tempo of emergency"—even as he wrestled with a drug
addiction that would ultimately contribute to his death at thirty-four.
Yet no writer has fully captured the arc and texture of Parker's personal story . . . until now. Kansas City Lightning,
the first in a two-volume life of Parker by Stanley Crouch, draws on
decades of original interviews with peers, collaborators, and family
members to reveal Parker as he emerged from the landscapes—literal and
artistic—that he inhabited. A precocious child, shy yet self-possessed,
Charlie ventured early into the nightlife of wide-open Depression Kansas
City, a veritable stomping ground for such bandleaders as Walter Page,
Bennie Moten, and Moten's successor, Count Basie, the king of Kansas
City swing. Inspired by saxophonists Lester Young and Chu Berry,
trumpeter Roy Eldridge, and his mentor Buster Smith, Parker endured
initial humiliation on the bandstand—yet persevered until he mastered
the idiom and began to transcend it.
Kansas City Lightning
follows Parker from the "freak shows" and "spook breakfasts" of
late-night Kansas City, to the segregated union halls of Chicago, and
finally to New York's Harlem ballrooms. Most intimately, it brings us
into young Charlie Parker's family circle, as he plunged headlong into a
very adult world—lured by both music and drugs, torn between his oddly
protective mother and Rebecca Ruffin, the impressionable young woman
whose romance with Charlie is at the bittersweet heart of this story.
With
the musical wisdom of a lifetime jazz scholar, the cultural insights of
an indispensable social critic, and the narrative skill of a writer at
the height of his powers, Crouch brings Parker back to glorious,
surprising, and deeply moving life.
The only child of Charles and Addie Parker, Charlie Parker was one of the most important and influential saxophonists and jazz players of the 1940’s.
When Parker was still a child, his family moved to Kansas City, Missouri, where jazz, blues and gospel music were flourishing. His first contact with music came from school, where he played baritone horn with the school’s band. When he was 15, he showed a great interest in music and a love for the alto saxophone. Soon, Parker was playing with local bands until 1935, when he left school to pursue a music career.
From 1935 to 1939, Parker worked in Kansas City with several local jazz and blues bands from which he developed his art. In 1939, Parker visited New York for the first time, and he stayed for nearly a year working as a professional musician and often participating in jam sessions. The New York atmosphere greatly influenced Parker's musical style.
In 1938, Parker joined the band of pianist Jay McShann, with whom he toured around Southwest Chicago and New York. A year later, Parker traveled to Chicago and was a regular performer at a club on 55th street. Parker soon moved to New York. He washed dishes at a local food place where he met guitarist Biddy Fleet, the man who taught him about instrumental harmony. Shortly afterwards, Parker returned to Kansas City to attend his father’s funeral. Once there, he joined Harlan Leonard’s Rockets and stayed for five months. In 1939, Yardbird rejoined McShann and was placed in charge of the reed section. Then, in 1940, Parker made his first recording with the McShann orchestra.
During the four years that Parker stayed with McShann's band, he got the opportunity to perform solo in several of their recordings, such as Hootie Blues, Sepian Bounce, and the 1941 hit Confessing the Blues. In 1942, while on tour with McShann, Parker performed in jam sessions at Monroe’s and Minton’s Playhouse in Harlem. There he caught the attention of up-and-coming jazz artists like Dizzy Gillespie and Thelonious Monk. Later that year, Parker broke with McShann and joined Earl Hines for eight months.
The year 1945 was extremely important for Parker. During that time he led his own group in New York and also worked with Gillespie in several ensembles. In December, Parker and Gillespie took their music to Hollywood on a six-week nightclub tour. Parker continued to perform in Los Angeles until June 1946, when he suffered a nervous breakdown and was confined at a state hospital. After his release in January 1947, Parker returned to New York and formed a quintet that performed some of his most famous tunes.
From 1947 to 1951, Parker worked in a number of nightclubs, radio studios, and other venues performing solo or with the accompaniment of other musicians. During this time, he visited Europe where he was cheered by devoted fans and did numerous recordings. March 5, 1955, was Parker’s last public engagement at Birdland, a nightclub in New York that was named in his honor. He died a week later in a friend’s apartment.
Charles “Yardbird” Parker was an amazing saxophonist who gained wide recognition for his brilliant solos and innovative improvisations. He was, without a doubt, one of the most influential and talented musicians in jazz history.
Bye Bye Birdland 09.23.13 What Made Charlie Parker Great? Reviewing Stanley Crouch’s Biography on Bird
The bebop legend drove jazz into territories that continue to awe listeners with ears fast enough to keep up. The first volume of veteran critic Stanley Crouch’s decades-in-the-making Charlie Parker biography gets to the heart of Bird’s genius, but the book will test your patience, says Stuart Klawans. The veteran jazz writer Stanley Crouch has a store of fresh information for you in his new book about Charlie Parker (1920–55), the genius of American music universally known as Bird, and invaluable insights to offer into the meaning of Parker’s achievement. It is imperative that you come into possession of this material, contained in Kansas City Lightning: The Rise and Times of Charlie Parker—even though, to get at it, you will sometimes feel as if you’re swimming through a vat of Jell-O laced with industrial sludge.
There is an excuse for the ordeal, maybe. Solid documentation and reliable first-person accounts about Bird simply do not exist for major portions of the period covered in this book, the first of two volumes, which takes you from Parker’s birth in Kansas City through his career breakthrough at New York’s Savoy Ballroom, with Jay McShann’s band, in February 1942. Crouch, who is one of the most knowledgeable people in the bebop business, did years of research to fill in the blanks, gaining candid testimonies from a host of people who knew the young Parker, including his first wife, Rebecca Ruffin. It seems likely to me that these witnesses entrusted Crouch with confidences that they might have withheld from other writers.
Still, as Crouch is the first to say, this is a life story full of gaps. And so, to compensate for the missing information, Crouch has relied on an imagination that might be called novelistic, if novelists dealt in generic supposition and platitudinous bombast.
Unable to trace much of Parker’s brief career in Chicago, for example, Crouch pads his meandering paragraphs with old tag-lines (both “toddling town” and “city of big shoulders” make their appearance), canned accounts of the careers of Al Capone and John Dillinger and an assurance that the ever-acute Parker knew Chicago “would have its day life and its night life.” Similarly ignorant of what actually happened on the road when Parker drove with McShann’s band from Detroit to New York in early 1942, Crouch patches in the banal details of any and every winter car ride. (“They all knew the importance of driving carefully as they crossed snow or the slick melts…”)
Can Kansas City Lightning even be called a biography? For pages on end its guest of honor goes missing, and from a party that often sounds like nothing special:
“That was how law and lawlessness, convention and opportunism, mass media and manufactured reality worked together in ways that shaped the world in which Charlie Parker and everyone else in America lived, during and after the Great Depression.”
Welcome to the life and times of Bird, Shirley Temple, and your great-uncle Morris. The nerves splinter; patience cracks. And yet, if you can hold on, Crouch will show you a clearer and more affecting portrait of Parker than you have ever seen before.
At the beginning, it is the picture of a quiet, aloof and indolent boy, who was so spoiled by his mother Addie that he wore tailor-made suits during the worst years of the Depression. To Rebecca Ruffin, who moved with her family into Addie Parker’s boarding house and before very long married the teenage Parker, he seemed a prince, indulged in everything and yet fundamentally lonely and unloved.
His interest in music—or rather, at first, in the free and glamorous lives of musicians—began with much posing and woolgathering. Soon, though, he learned that in order to present himself as a jazz man in the Kansas City night spots, he would have to brave jam sessions that were conducted like a musical blood sport. It took only a couple of humiliations for Parker to develop an obsessive work ethic on the alto saxophone, and a corresponding lack of discipline in every other aspect of his life.
We know, with hindsight, that the young Parker’s search for mastery and innovation eventually drove him to the Savoy Ballroom and beyond, into the inventions that continue to this day to dazzle, exhilarate, and overawe any listener with ears quick enough to keep up with him, and a heart big enough to receive his floods of emotion. We also know that during the period Crouch will cover in volume two, the people who listened to American popular music (that is to say, everybody) believed Parker had broken away from jazz as it had been previously conceived, moving forward as decisively as the New Testament is said to have departed from the Old.
But just how new in fact was Parker’s music, and in what ways? What did it signify within African American culture—its place of origin and unshakeable frame of reference—and what did this music say to, and about, the larger American culture that black people had done so much to make, while receiving so little by way of thanks?
‘Kansas City Lightning: The Rise and Times of Charlie Parker’ by Stanley Crouch. 384 pp. Harper. $28. Kansas City Lightning reaches its considerable height whenever Crouch applies himself to such questions. The best reason to be patient with Crouch is that he understands, deeply, the link between the near-frontier ambience of Kansas City and the riffing, stomping style of blues that flourished there. He admires how well-schooled black musicians such as Buster Smith (known as Professor) used to serve as mentors to the self-taught ones such as Parker, and how those relationships could translate into the combination of heady logic and gutbucket wailing in Bird’s music. He feels the exuberance and the strain of an itinerant professional life, much of it necessarily spent in places on or beyond the law’s margins. He revels in the abundance of humanity found in the line-up on every bandstand, and to his credit can never mention a player, however glorious or obscure, without wanting to explore his experience for a paragraph or two. Perhaps most brilliant of all, Crouch considers the hard-edged timbre that Parker developed on alto—a sound that enabled his bursts of velocity—and connects it to the era’s infatuation with speed and shiny, astonishing new machines. It is a wonderful insight, and points up the shame that no editor had the cool mind and relentless will to focus Crouch’s writing for him, as Parker focused his tone. Still, the desire to soar is everywhere in Kansas City Lightning. Often—though not as often as Bird—the book does take off.
50 great moments in jazz: Charlie Parker
One of the most influential improvisational soloists in jazz, and a
pioneer of bebop, Parker was able to move away from a tune's 'home' key
and back without losing the thread
When Charlie Parker
died in 1955, graffiti artists scrawled the words "Bird Lives!" on New
York's walls. Parker had been the most gifted creator of bebop, the jazz
soundtrack to 1940s existentialism and hipster bohemianism. The Kansas
City alto saxophonist's impassioned attack, bluesy tone, and dazzling
melodic inventiveness seemed like the quintessential celebration of the
intense but fleeting moment.
Charlie Parker was born in Kansas City on 29 August, 1920. His
father, who left home when Parker was 11, was a vaudeville performer.
His mother Addie doted on her son, and bought him his first saxophone.
When Charlie was 14, and Addie was out all night working as a cleaner,
he took the opportunity to hang around the Kansas jazz clubs, where he
heard the leading saxophonists of the 30s, including the great Lester Young.
Fascinated by Young's melodic conception and narrative strengths, the
teenage Parker taught himself to play alto sax. He didn't realise that
most jazz music was only played in a few favourite keys, so he learned
them all - an accidental skill that later became a trademark feature of
his improvising, namely the ability to move away from a tune's "home"
key and back without losing the thread. But the progress toward a jazz
revolution wasn't without its pitfalls. Sitting in with swing legends
including Count Basie's drummer Jo Jones one night at Kansas City's Reno
Club, Parker lost his place attempting such a risky modulation on a
fast I Got Rhythm. Jones gonged him off by unscrewing a cymbal and
tossing it at the humiliated teenager's feet.
But by 1939, when Charlie Parker joined the big-time swing band of
pianist Jay McShann, he was overcoming new technical hurdles by the day.
He began stacking swing's relatively simple chords with extra notes on
top, using these, instead of the usual constituent notes, as the basis
for fresh improvisations. "I came alive," Parker said, when he cracked
this problem while dissecting the structure of the swing tune Cherokee.
But
bebop wasn't born simply out of Parker's genius. It was waiting to
happen, bubbling up out of the boredom of the younger musicians playing
commercial swing, a desire among many African-Americans to increase
respect for jazz as art-music amid the pressures and disruptions of the
second world war. In New York, Charlie Parker soon met kindred spirits
such as drummer Kenny Clarke, pianist Thelonious Monk, guitarist Charlie
Christian and trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie. Late at night, after the swing
shows they played for a living, the young experimenters would get
together at Minton's Playhouse in Harlem and other after-hours haunts.
In 1944, Parker began recording under his own name. By the following
year, he was in his astonishing prime, beginning to produce the sessions
that would come to be seen as landmarks in jazz history, as significant
as Louis Armstrong's Hot Fives and Sevens two decades earlier.
Here's Parker in 1946
on Dial Records's account of his classic bop composition Cherokee. An
unsteady-sounding 19 year-old Miles Davis is on trumpet and Dodo
Marmarosa is on piano. It's fascinating to compare the construction of
Charlie Parker's alto sax improvisation - he's the first sax soloist -
with a still swing-sounding Lucky Thompson on tenor. Jazz is on the
cusp, about to be transformed forever.
Like a Nathan's hot dog or Carvel ice-cream cone, Phil Schaap
is a New York original. For the uninitiated, Phil, 59, is best known as the host of Bird Flight, a
radio show on WKCR that's devoted to Charlie Parker. But that isn't
really what's remarkable. What's special is Phil's unrivaled passion for
the subject, his nitty-gritty knowledge, and the fact that the show has
been on the air every weekday from 8:20 to 9:40 a.m. since 1983. Many
people who know about Charlie Parker and his music gained their smarts
and appreciation through Phil's show.
In honor of Parker's 90th birthday on August 29 and
WKCR's "Charlie Parker Birthday Broadcast" on the August 28 and 29, I
decided to pose five Parker questions to Phil. In today's post, we focus
on the famed Ko-Ko session of November 26, 1945:
JazzWax: What’s the major artistic achievement of Parker’s Ko-Ko? Phil Schaap: For Charlie Parker, he is in the studio for his first
session as a leader. He also is mapping out for you precisely what came to him while playing over Cherokee's chord
changes. It’s a eureka moment for him in terms of where jazz might be
going. He’s returning to a piece that was so essential to his
development. Through the music, Parker is returning to Cherokee and telling you how the new music—bebop—came to him. [Photo by William P. Gottlieb, Library of Congress]
JW: Returning to Cherokee? PS: At the time in November 1945, very few people would have been aware that Bird had played Cherokee regularly as far
back as 1939. They also wouldn't know that it’s through this song that Parker saw the door open for what would become bebop. Ko-Ko is the pinnacle of what this new form of expression is all about.
JW: How so? PS:
Parker is being explicit and inventive about something listeners
understood—the reinvention of a popular standard. He is specifically
saying through his playing that Ko-Ko is the same as Cherokee but also quite different. During the recording, he also hits the three emphasis points of bebop.
JW: What are they? PS: The exhibition of unbelievable amounts of technique almost casually displayed. The incredible wisdom in deep
harmony that is effectively displayed through improvisation. And the
unleashing of a new rhythmic arc through phrasing, meaning the music now
has a completely different feel and sound than swing, which preceded
it. The last of the three emphasis points—the rhythmic arc and
phrasing—actually is bebop's biggest innovation.
JW: Yet there’s also enormous urgency and a mysterious feel to what Parker plays on the intro and outro to Ko-Ko.
PS: Not as much as you think. Yes, there's a radical quality to Ko-Ko that comes from the new rhythmic line. And the song’s initial minor key is telling you the music has a different flavor.
But that’s not what makes this song special. That’s just the employing
of a fetching component of music’s making. The rhythmic line—independent
of key or anything else—is an incredibly new way of making music. It’s
the definitive element of breakthrough, and it’s why virtually anyone
even casually familiar with jazz can hear that something new is going on
in the music. [Photo of Charlie Parker by Herman Leonard/CTSImages.com]
JW: Then what is Parker saying here? PS: The
music we hear on the record is more important than any hidden meaning
Parker may have had. What’s most interesting about this session, in some
ways, is that Bird had no intention of recording Ko-Ko at the outset.
JW: What do you mean? PS: This was his first session as a leader, which meant he was responsible for the song choices and choosing the band members. He originally planned to record two blues—Now’s the Time and Billie's Bounce, both in F concert—a ballad based on Embraceable You and a tune based on I Got Rhythm’s chord changes, which we now know as Anthropology.
JW: What changed? PS:
On a break early in the recording session, Parker went downstairs to
pick up his instrument from the repair shop. When he returned, before
recording again, he tested the repair by playing the most ambitious
piece in his repertoire in terms of technique—Cherokee.
JW: How did this exercise become a recorded song? PS:
Oddly enough, Savoy owner Herman Lubinsky [pictured], who for the most
part was non-artistically oriented, heard what Parker was
doing and said, “Hey, man, that’s what we should record!” Bird agreed and the group recorded Warming Up a Riff and Ko-Ko, both of which were based on Cherokee. They scrapped the I Got Rhythm tune and dropped Embraceable You at the end to make room for Ko-Ko.
JW: Why cut one of the songs? PS: According
to the rules of the musicians’ union at the time, you could only record
four tracks in one session. This rule was put in place to keep record
companies from overworking musicians. When Parker and the musicians pick
up Ko-Ko, Dizzy had to play the trumpet part. Miles wasn’t
going to be able to play that difficult passage at the beginning of the
song in 1945.
JW: What happens at the session? PS: The group recorded three takes of Billie’s Bounce. Then they took a break to let Bird go to the repair shop to pick up his alto saxophone. When he comes back, they record Warming Up a Riff, which is
based on Cherokee. They also record takes No. 4 and 5 of Billie’s Bounce, followed by four takes of Now’s the Time and three takes of Thriving From a Riff. There’s only take of Embraceable You, known as Meandering. But eventually the last song is dropped for Ko-Ko, the fifth title recorded that day.
JW: Is KoKo an extension of anything the group had played earlier?
PS: Yes, Ko-Ko actually is rooted in the astounding display of
harmony Parker executed earlier on Warming Up a Riff, on which he takes a three chorus solo.
JW: Is Parker's opening line for Ko-Ko coming off the top of his head or did he have it already down?
PS: It’s an arrangement they already had worked out to Cherokee. But instead of playing Cherokee straight, Parker let the arrangement become the melody.
Tomorrow,
Phil talks about Parker's trip to the West Coast, the impact he has on
California jazz, and his stay at Camarillo State Hospital near Los
Angeles between August 1946 and late January 1947.
JazzWax tracks: The five songs recorded during the Ko-Ko session can be found on the Complete Savoy & Dial Master Takes at iTunes or here. You'll find the five tunes recorded in November 1945 on the first disc.
JazzWax clip: Here's Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie playing Ko-Ko, with Gillespie on trumpet and piano...
A Birthday Tribute To Charles Christopher Parker, Jr. Better Known As
"Bird" (1920-1955): Alto Saxophonist, Composer, Cultural Icon, and
Musical Genius
All,
I know that technically I am a "day late" in celebrating the immortal
Charles "Yardbird" Parker's birthday (Bird was born August 29, 1920). I
also know I'm not inaccurate in saying that EVERY DAY IS BIRD'S BIRTHDAY
if you truly love and appreciate MUSIC and its singular unique ability
and power to enrich and transform our lives. So with that let's begin
our ongoing tribute to one of the most profound, powerful, and
transformative musicians in the history of this planet.
Kofi
CHARLES 'BIRD' PARKER (1920-1955)
Charlie Parker and Miles Davis playing at the Three Deuces nightclub in NYC 1948. Photo by William P. Gottlieb
"Bird Lives" by famous American sculptor Robert Graham (1938-2008)
MAJOR WORKS:
2007 - "Spirit of California" - California Hall of Fame Medal 2002 - The Great Bronze Doors and Statue of Mary - Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, Los Angeles, California 2001 - Prologue - addition to the FDR Memorial, Washington D.C. 1999 - Charlie "Bird" Parker Memorial, Kansas City, Missouri 1997 - Duke Ellington Monument - Central Park, New York City 1997 - Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial, Washington D.C. 1994 - Plumed Serpent, Plaza de César Chávez, San Jose, California 1988 - Gates of The Contemporary Museum, Honolulu 1986 - Joe Louis Memorial, Detroit, Michigan 1984 - Olympic Gateway - Memorial Coliseum, Los Angeles, California 1983 - Fountain Figure No. 1, Fountain Figure No. 2, and Fountain Figure No. 3, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston 1980/81 - Stephanie and Spy - Hammer Museum, University of California, Los Angeles Campus, Los Angeles, California 1978 - Dance Door - Los Angeles Music Center, Los Angeles, California
1999 Charlie "Bird" Parker Memorial, Kansas City, Missouri:
William P. Gottlieb/Library of Congress via flickr.com
It's safe to say that without Charlie Parker, the music we now
call bebop might never have existed. While other musicians in New York —
Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, and Bud Powell among them — were
creating the musical building blocks that would later become part of
bebop, it was Parker's innovative phrasing on alto saxophone that
provided the glue that brought it all together as a new jazz revolution.
In the first of a two-part Jazz Profiles, we explore Parker's formative
years and his arrival in New York.
Regardless of the velocity
or intricacy of his solos, Parker never left behind the basic blues of
his hometown, Kansas City, Kansas. Born August 29, 1920, he grew up in
the notorious, mobster-ridden town that was also a haven for jazz. His
father abandoned his family when Parker was just a child, so his mother
worked nights to support the family. This left Bird the perfect
opportunity to sneak into the local bars to listen to jazz artists like
saxophonists Lester Young and Chu Berry, and trumpeter Roy Eldridge.
In Kansas City's jazz scene, after-hours jam sessions filled the
night air. After gaining a reputation as an aspiring saxophonist, a
teenaged Parker joined in a jam session with top-notch players like
drummer Papa Jo Jones. The session was far out of Parker's league,
leaving the hopeful musician humiliated after listeners laughed at his
inchoate playing. In a rare radio interview with fellow saxophonist
Paul Desmond and disc jockey John McClellan, Parker revealed that the
experience sparked his intense practicing regimen, which often found him
playing as much as eleven hours at a stretch.
Eventually,
Parker began working with Kansas City saxophonist Buster Smith, who
according to jazz historian Phil Schaap was known as "Prof" for his work
with young musicians. Parker had to travel to New York to find Smith.
Upon his arrival he took a job as a dishwasher at a Harlem club called
Jimmy's Chicken Shack, where piano virtuoso Art Tatum played regularly.
According to writer Gary Giddins, the then-nineteen year old Parker
received his first musical vision there in New York. As trumpeter
Wynton Marsalis notes, it was from Tatum that Parker first learned how
to solo. Whenever he could, Parker played in neighborhood jam sessions
and one cold night, in December 1939, he had a musical revelation. When
he used higher chord intervals while playing the Ray Noble hit song,
"Cherokee," he found that he could resolve the resulting tension with a
complex shower of just the right notes. In the words of a Down Beat
feature, Parker said that he had came alive.
Before his
twentieth birthday, Parker returned to Kansas City. He took a job with
the Harlan Leonard Band, but quickly left to join pianist Jay McShann's
big band. While travelling through Nebraska with the group, Parker hit a
chicken while driving and according to McShann, this is where Parker
got the nickname "Bird." The band eventually came to New York City to
play the legendary Savoy Ballroom. Phil Schaap points out that this was
Parker's first real performance in New York City, a significant
milestone in the history of jazz.
Parker wasn't the only bebop
innovator in McShann's big band — Dizzy Gillespie was also in the group.
The two horn players had met previously back in Kansas City, when Dizzy
was touring with Cab Calloway's big band. In his radio interview with
Paul Desmond, Parker recalls the first time he met Diz, while Gillespie
reveals how influential Parker's phrasing was on Diz's own playing.
After
finding a musical soul mate in Dizzy, Parker found himself working with
the trumpeter again in 1942, with pianist Earl Hines. Two years later,
Bird and Dizzy joined Billy Eckstine's Band, with bebop pioneers such as
trumpeters Fats Navarro, tenor saxophonist Dexter Gordon, and drummer
Art Blakey; unfortunately, that particular group of musicians folded
before recording with Bird.
During this time, New York City's
52nd Street was ablaze with jazz, but it was Uptown in Harlem where
bebop was on the rise. At Harlem after-hour clubs like Monroe's and
Minton's, Bird and Diz played their freshly minted solos at a blistering
pace, a clear challenge to the swing-oriented 52nd Street sound. At
Minton's, the two friends formed a house band with pianist Thelonious
Monk and drummer Kenny Clarke. As jazz historian Stanley Crouch says,
"[they] were really trying to find a way to play that was interesting to
them"
In January 1945, Parker and Gillespie entered the studio
together for first time to accompany singer and trombonist Trummy Young
on a song called, "Sorta Kinda." The first landmark bebop recording
session took place four months later, when Diz and Bird recorded "Shaw
Nuff," and before long Savoy Records came knocking and offered Bird the
opportunity to record on his own. When the day arrived, a pianist
scheduled for the session couldn't make it and Bird asked Dizzy to fill
in. The result is one of Parker's most beloved classics - "KoKo." Gary
Giddins describes this song as perhaps Bird's greatest recording, and
both "Shaw Nuff" and "KoKo" are now viewed as the birth of recorded
bebop.
In early 1946, Diz and Bird accepted a two-month
engagement at Billy Berg's nightclub in Hollywood. At that time,
Parker's heroin addiction was getting as much attention as his musical
talent. Dizzy was commissioned to bring a quintet, but he brought seven
musicians due to Bird's unreliability. Once the engagement ended, all
the musicians returned to New York except for Bird, who cashed in his
airplane ticket and stayed in California.
Stranded in
California with a serious drug addiction, Parker's need for cash led him
to Ross Russell of Dial Records. There, Parker recorded four classics:
"Moose The Mooch," "Yardbird Suite," "Night In Tunisia" and
"Ornithology." Parker's addiction was rapidly debilitating him, and by
the time he recorded the "Lover Man," session with Howard McGee, he
could hardly stand up to play.
After the "Lover Man" session,
Parker suffered a nervous breakdown. This led to his arrest, and
subsequent treatment for drug addiction at the Camarillo State Hospital,
where Parker later wrote a song called "Relaxin' At Camarillo." Six
months after this stay at Camarillo, Parker returned to New York with a
new vitality. Bird's legacy continues in part two of this special
edition of Jazz Profiles.
THE DOZENS: STEVE COLEMAN ON CHARLIE PARKER by Steve Coleman (Ted Panken editor)
STEVE COLEMAN (b. September 20, 1956
The music of Charles Christopher Parker as well as the music of many
other musicians probably has the greatest influence on my own music. I
view Parker as a major composer, albeit primarily a spontaneous
composer. His written compositions, similar to many other very strong
spontaneous composers, were mainly jumping-off points for his
spontaneous discussions. Parker was also someone whose function would be
analogous to the role of a master drummer in traditional West African
societies. For me, Parker translated these combined ideas, via a style
that is a sophisticated version of the Blues, into something that can
express life, from the point of view of the African-American experience
in the 20th century. Many others, John Coltrane for example, contributed
to the expression of this transitional music on a technical,
intellectual and spiritual level.
I get a lot of what I call micro-information from Parker. There is much
in the way of technical things such as melodic movements and
progressions, etc., but there are also the linguistic aspects of
Parker’s music and the emotional and spiritual content. In studying the
history of how this music was developed, one can glean a great deal of
insight about the natural world as well as human nature in general. This
story has been told many times before; the clothes may be different,
but it is the same story.
In my opinion, by far the most dramatic feature of Bird’s musical
language is the rhythmic aspect, in particular his phrasing and timing,
not only his own playing but in combination with dynamic players such as
Max Roach, Roy Haynes, Bud Powell, Fats Navarro,Dizzy Gillespie, and
others. Although much more has been written about the harmonic aspects
of Bird’s musical language, most of this harmonic conception was already
present in the music of pianists and saxophonists from the previous
era, before Parker arrived on the scene. Among others, the music of
pianists Duke Ellington and Art Tatum, as well as saxophonists Coleman
Hawkins and Don Byas, demonstrated an already quite sophisticated grasp
of harmony. Just about any recording of Tatum demonstrates a harmonic
language that rivaled anything from the musicians of Charlie Parker’s
time. Furthermore, one could look at examples such as Coleman Hawkins’
famous 1939 rendition of “Body and Soul” or Don Byas’ 1945 Town Hall
duos with Slam Stewart (“I’ve Got Rhythm” and “Indiana”) to see that
many of these harmonic aspects were already quite developed. Also in
Byas’ recordings, we already see some hint of the rhythmic language that
would emerge fully developed in Parker’s playing.
Not a lot has been written about the rhythmic aspects of this language,
and for good reason-there are no words and developed descriptive
concepts for it in most Western languages. Western music theory has
developed primarily in directions that are great for describing the
tonal aspects of music, particularly harmony. However, the language to
describe rhythm itself is not very well developed, apart from
descriptions of time signatures and other notation-related devices. But
over the years, musicians themselves have developed a kind of insider’s
language, an informal slang that is helpful to allude to what is already
intuited and culturally implied.
implications of Parker’s phrasing helped to catalyze the rhythmic
responses that eventually would come from players such as Max Roach, Bud
Powell, Fats Navarro, etc. Although the descriptive aspects of these
rhythmic concepts are underdeveloped, we could extend our ability to
discuss this language by drawing from the perspective of the rhythmic
language of the African Diaspora. Dizzy Gillespie referred to Charlie
Parker’s rhythmic conception as sanctified rhythms, suggesting a
style of playing that was related to music heard in church. Later in
this article I will take that analogy a little further when I discuss
ternary versus duple time.
There is a famous quote by Beethoven that “music is a higher revelation
than philosophy.” The tradition of Armstrong, Ellington, Monk, Bird, Von
Freeman, Coltrane, etc., has demonstrated to the world the great
heights that spontaneous composition can be taken to, and there is great
importance in this. Particularly in western cultures, sophisticated
spontaneous composition became virtually a lost art, probably only kept
alive in the context of the French Organ improvisational schools (Pierre
Cochereau, Marcel Dupr, etc.) and some of the various forms of folk
music. But the form and approach of the concept of spontaneous
composition that was developed in the Armstrong-Parker-Coltrane
continuum (to use a phrase coined by Anthony Braxton) and the amount of
information that this form of composition projects (both material and
spiritual information) is staggering in its scope. This is particularly
true when you look at the relatively short amount of time that it has
taken for this music to develop.
That is not to say that other forms of music have not accomplished the
same thing in their own way. But this article deals specifically with
spontaneous composition as expressed in the music of Charlie Parker.
I will address most of the following performances in some detail with
technical analysis, and will mostly concentrate on the rhythmic, melodic
and linguistic elements of Parker’s music.
This is one of the slickest melodies that I've ever heard.
And the manner in which it is played is just sophisticated slang at its
highest level. The way the melody weaves back and forth is unreal, and
Yard and Max keep this kind of motion going in the spontaneous part of
the song.
I'm a big boxing fan, and I see a lot of similarities between boxing
and music. To be more specific, I should say that I see similarities
between boxing and music that are done a certain way. There was a point
in round eight
of the December 8, 2007, Floyd Mayweather, Jr. versus Ricky Hatton
fight, starting with an uppercut at 0:44 of this video (2:19 of the
round), and also beginning with the check left hook at 2:22 of the video
(0:42 of the round) when Floyd was really beginning to open up on
Ricky, hitting him with punches coming from different angles in an
unpredictable rhythm. If you listen to this fight with headphones on you
can almost hear the musicality of the rhythm of the punches. Mayweather
was throwing body shots (i.e. punches) and head shots, all coming from
different angles: hooks, crosses, straight shots, uppercuts, jabs, an
assortment of punches in an unpredictable rhythm. But it's not only that
Mayweather's rhythm that was unpredictable, It was also the groove that
he got into.
In my opinion, the work of Max Roach in this performance of "Ko-Ko"
is very similar to the smooth, fluent, unpredictable groove that elite
fighters like Mayweather, Jr., employ. The interplay of Max's drumming
with Bird's improvisation sets up a very similar feel to what I saw in
Mayweather's rhythm. Near the end of "Ko-Ko," at 2:15, Max does exactly
this same kind of boxer motion, accompanying the second half of Miles'
interlude improvisation and continuing into Bird's improvisation, only
in this case it is like a counterpoint, a conversation in slang between
Yard and Max. This is a technique that is both seen and heard throughout
the African Diaspora. A certain amount of trickery is involved, a
slickness that is demonstrated, for example, by the cross-over dribble
and other moves of athletes for example, the 'ankle-breaking' moves of
basketball player Allan Iverson. In addition to this, Max's solo just
before the head out is absolutely masterful. Try listening to it at half
speed if you can.
This was the first Charlie Parker recording that I ever heard, as it
was the first cut on side A of an album (remember those?) that my father
gave me. And I can still vividly remember my response I had absolutely
NO IDEA of what was going on in terms of structure or anything else. It
all seemed so esoteric and mysterious to me, as I was previously exposed
to the more explicit forms of these rhythmic devices as presented in
the popular African-American music that I grew up listening to. Compared
to music that I had been listening to when I was younger (before the
age of 17), the detailed structures in the music of Parker and his
associates were moving so much more quickly, with greater subtlety and
on a much more sophisticated level than I was accustomed to. However
from the beginning, while listening to this music, I did intuitively get
the distinct impression of communication, that the music sounded like
conversations.
In discussing "Ko-Ko," first of all the rhythm of the head is like something from the hood,
but on Mars! In the form and movement there is so much hesitation,
backpedaling, and stratification. The ever-present phrasing in groups of
three and the way the melody shifts in uneven groups, dividing the 32
beats into an unpredictable pattern of 3-3-2-2-3-3-2-2-1-3-4-4. By backpedaling
I mean the way that the rhythmic patterns seem to reverse in movement;
for example the 8s are broken up as 3-3-2, then as 2-3-3. By hesitation I am referring to the way the next 8 is broken up as 2-2-1-3, as kind of stuttering movement.
The opening melody of "Ko-Ko" Stratification is just my term for the funky nature of the
melody and Max's accompaniment. With this music I always paid more
attention to the melody, drums and bass; however, this song form is
composed of only melody and drums, with Max's part being spontaneously
composed. The way Max scrapes the brushes rhythmically across the snare,
frequently pivoting in unpredictable places, adds to the elusiveness
and sophistication of this performance. For example, during the head and
under Miles' first interlude improvisation (starting at measure 9), Max
provides an esoteric commentary, filling in a little more as Parker
enters (in measure 17)�however, the beat is always implicit, never
directly stated. On this rendition of "Ko-Ko," Bird's temporal sense is
so strong that his playing provides the clues for the uninitiated
listener to find his/her balance.
Melody of "Ko-Ko", trumpet, sax, snare & bass drum: One rarely hears this kind of commentary from drummers, as
much of today's music is explicitly stated. The way Max chooses only
specific parts of the melody to use as points for his commentary is part
of what makes the rhythm so mysterious. Much is hinted at, instead of
directly stated. This continues in the spontaneously composed sections
of this performance, as Yard plays in a way where there are very hard
accents which form an interplay with Max's spacious exclamations.
Punches are being mixed here, some hard, some soft, upstairs and
downstairs, in ways that form a hard-hitting but unpredictable groove.
I've always felt that the obvious speed and virtuosity of this music
obscures its more subtle dimensions from many listeners, almost as if
only the initiates of some kind of secret order are able to understand
it. This kind of slickness and dialog continues throughout this
performance, building in ways that ebb and flow just as in a
conversation. By the way Miles plays the F in measure 28 early; based on
the original 1945 studio recording with Diz and Bird playing the
melody, this F should fall on the first beat of measure 29. However,
Yard and Max play their parts correctly, so the still developing Miles
Davis probably had trouble negotiating this rapid tempo.
Spontaneously composed music can be analyzed in a similar fashion to
counterpoint, in terms of the interaction of the voices. However, it is a
counterpoint that has its own rules based on a natural order and
intuitive-logic what esoteric scholar and philosopher Schwaller de
Lubicz referred to as Intelligence of the Heart. Also, in my
opinion, the cultural DNA of the creators of this music should be taken
into account, just as you should take environment and culture into
account when studying any human endeavors. Max tends to play in a way
that both interjects commentary between Bird's pauses and punctuates
Parker's phrases with termination figures. For a drummer to do this
effectively he/she must be very familiar with the manner of speaking of the soloist in order to be able to successfully anticipate the varied expressions.
I have heard many live recordings where it is clear that Max is
anticipating Parker's sentence structures and applying the appropriate
punctuation. This is not unusual; close friends frequently finish each
other's sentences in conversations. With musicians such as Parker and
Roach everything is internalized on a reflex level. As this music is
rapidly moving sound being created somewhat spontaneously, I believe
that the foreground mental activity occurs primarily on the semantic
level in the mind, while the internalized, agreed-upon syntactic musical
formations may be dealt with by some other more automated process, such
as theorized by the concept of the mirror neuron system. What is
striking here is the level that the conversations are occurring on these
are very deep subjects! Most of the time, critics and academics discuss
this music in terms of individual musical accomplishments, and don't
focus enough attention on the interplay. I feel this music first and
foremost tells a story. There is definitely a conscious attempt to
express the music using a conversational logic. So what I am saying is
that while syntax is important, semantics is primary. Too often what the
music refers to, or may refer to is ignored.
The last half of the bridge going into the last eight before Roach's
solo (at 1:32) provides one of these rhythmic voice-leading points where
Max goes into his boxing thing, playing some of the funkiest stuff I've
heard. Just as instructive are the vocal exclamations of the musicians
and possibly some initiated members of the audience, which form
additional commentary. There is so much going on in this section that
you could write a book about it; an entire world of possibilities is
implied, as the rhythmic relationships are far more subtle than what is
happening harmonically.
2nd half of last bridge and last 8 of "Ko-Ko", Bird's solo
This illustrates that on these faster pieces Yard tended to play
with bursts of sentences punctuated with shorter internal groupings
using hard accents, whereas Max played in a way that effectively
demarcated Parker's phrases with longer groupings setting up shifting epitritic
patterns*. Max sets these patterns up by repeated figures designed to
impress upon the listener a particular rhythmic form, only to suddenly
displace the rhythm from what the listener was conditioned to expect.
The passage above is a perfect example of this, setting up a hypnotic
dance of 2-3-3, only to shift the expected equilibrium with the response
of 2-1-3-1-1, then continuing with a slight variation of the initial
dance.
Even the vocal exclamations of the musicians and audience members
participates in what I consider to be secular ritualized performances.
All of these features that I mention are traits that I consider to be a
kind of musical DNA that has been retained from Africa. This music's
level of sophistication demanded the intellectual as well as emotional
participation of musicians and non-musicians alike (when they could get
into the music, which not all people could). The rate of change of each
instrument is also instructive. Obviously the soloists are in the
foreground playing the instruments that have the swifter motion. In the
case of this particular group, the bass would be approximately half the
speed of the soloist, with the drums having a mercurial and protean
function. In terms of commentaries, the drummer would be the next
slowest after the bass and piano, and would be providing the slowest
commentary from a rhythmic point of view. However, elements of the drum
part are closer to the speed of the soloist.
*The epitritic ratio is 4 against 3; that is, Max playing the 4
against slow 3 (i.e. a slow pulse which is every 3 measures of 1/1
time). This ratio is used a lot on the continent of Africa. Reviewer: Steve Coleman
Unlike "Ko-Ko," I included this cut because of the lack of
dialog between Parker and Buddy Rich (drums), who plays more of a
time-keeping role here. As a result Bird's phrases stand out more
against the relief of a less involved backdrop. Here we can concentrate
on the question and answer qualities of Parker's playing as well as on
the melodic and harmonic content. The harmonic structure of the song is
based on one of the standard forms of this time period, Rhythm Changes, derived from the George and Ira Gershwin composition "I Got Rhythm."
In my opinion, the main keys to Bird's concept are the movement of
the rhythm and melody, with the harmonic concept being fairly simple.
Not only has this been communicated to me directly by several major
spontaneous composers of that era, but one can find quotes from
musicians of this period stating this idea, such as the following from
bassist and composer Charles Mingus:
I, myself, came to enjoy the players who didn't only just swing
but who invented new rhythmic patterns, along with new melodic concepts.
And those people are: Art Tatum, Bud Powell, Max Roach, Sonny Rollins,
Lester Young, Dizzy Gillespie and Charles Parker, who is the greatest
genius of all to me because he changed the whole era around. (Liner notes to Let My Children Hear Music)
If you have not read these liner notes by Mingus you should really check them out.
It is clear that from Mingus' perspective, it is the rhythmic and
melodic concepts that are the real innovations of this music. On the one
hand, Mingus refers to rhythmic and melodic innovation and
sophistication, things that could keep a musician interested from the
perspective of the craft of music. At other points in the article Mingus
talks about the necessity that the spontaneous compositions be about something,
that they tell a story about the lives, experiences and interests of
the people performing the songs or of other people, and that these are
principles that transcend the craft of music as a thing and move
toward the core of what it is to be human. I see Bird's music as fitting
squarely within this tradition, whatever name it may be called by.
I've always thought of Bird's spontaneous compositions as
explanations containing various types of sentence structures. Here,
after Buddy Rich's drum introduction, Parker begins "Celebrity" with a
27-beat opening statement, but within this statement is an internal
dialog. The harmony and timing help to structure the statement, and
gives the listener a sense of the dialog. Generally speaking, what I
call dynamic melodic tonalities suggest open ended sentences which are
usually (but not always) followed by a response, and in fact lead to or
invite a response.
Opening (8 beats static to dynamic)
Response (8 beats preparation to dynamic)
Elaboration (8 beats dynamic to static)
Closing (2 beats)
New Opening (8 beats static to dynamic)
Response (8 beats preparation to dynamic)
Extension (7.5 beats dynamic to dynamic)
Semi-Closing (6.5 beats)
First 16 measure of "Celebrity" Following up on what Mingus referred to as new melodic concepts, many times musicians use what I call Invisible Paths,
meaning that they are not necessarily following the exact path of the
composed or accepted harmonic structure for a particular composition,
but instead following their own melodic and harmonic roads which
functionally perform the same job. The musical description of that job
is to form dynamic roads that lead to the same tonal and rhythmic
destinations as the composed harmony. This differs slightly from the
academic concept of chord substitutions, because these Invisible Paths
can be entire alternate roads that are not necessarily related to the
composed harmony on a point-by-point basis, and resist being explained
as such, but nevertheless perform the same function of voice-leading to
the cadential points within the music. These paths may be
rhythmic, melodic or harmonic in nature; all that is required are the
same three elements that are required with a physical path an origin, a
path structure and a destination.
Many older musicians, especially the self-taught musicians with less
training in European harmonic theory, have told me that the musicians of
that time were primarily thinking in terms of very simple harmonic
structures, mostly the four basic triads (major, minor, diminished,
augmented) along with some form of dominant seventh chords. Although the
harmonic structures were simple, the different ways in which they
progressed and were combined were complex, again pointing to the idea
that it was the movement of the musical sounds that most concerned these
musicians. This is often overlooked by academics who are used to
analyzing music by relying on the tool of notation, instead of realizing
that music is first and foremost sound, and sound is always in motion.
It was in the areas of rhythm and melody where most of the complexity
was concentrated. Many of these musicians did not learn music from the
standpoint of music notation, so they had a more dynamic concept of the
music closely allied with how it sounded rather than how it looked on
paper. Unfortunately, for copyright reasons, this website cannot allow
me to use sound examples for this article, so, ironically, I will myself
be forced to use notation. My choice would be to use geometric symbols
and diagrams. However, I would then need to spend a large sections of
this article explaining the symbols.
In analyzing these passages, we can sometimes see hybrid structures
or harmonic schemes which shift in the course of a single melodic
sentence. Coming out of Buddy Rich's solo, a simple version of this idea
seems to be along the following path, or something similar, for 32
beats.
|| Cmin7 F7 | Bb A7 | F7 Dbmin6 | Cmin7 F7 | Fmin7 Bb7 | Ebmaj Ebmin | Bbmaj | C7 F7 ||
The bridge is even more varied, with Bird's melodic paths creating
their own internal logic, which then resolve back into the logic of the
composition.
|| Ebmin6 | Amin6 Ebmin6 | Dmin | Fmin6 | Gmin6 (maj7) | Gmin6 | Cmin6 | (F7) ||
With a little thought, you will notice that these passing tonalities
provide the same function as the composed harmonic structure of the
song. Notice here that Yard is doing just what he stated in two
different versions of the same quotation:
I realized by using the high notes of the chords as a melodic
line, and by the right harmonic progression, I could play what I heard
inside me. That's when I was born. (c. 1939, quoted in Masters of Jazz)
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. (1955, Hear Me Talkin' to Ya )
However, Parker's version of higher intervals of a chord was
not in the form of flatted 9ths, 11ths and 13ths, but in the form of
simple melodic and triadic structures that reside at a higher location
within the tonal gamut which I refer to as the Matrix (who really knows
how Bird thought of it?). In this case, simple minor structures such as
Ebmin6, Amin6 and Fmin6 are the upper intervals of Ab7, D7 and Bb7,
respectively. These minor triads with an added major sixth are very
important structures in music, often mistakenly called half-diminished
(for example Amin6 could be called F# half-diminished today). In this
instance, the function of Amin6 is that of dynamic A minor, in the same
sense that the function of D7 is that of dynamic D major. By dynamic
I mean energized with the potential for change. Adding a major 6th to a
minor triad has a similar (but reciprocal) function to adding a minor
7th to a major triad, and that function in many cases is to energize the
triad, to infuse it with a greater potential for change, due to the
perceived unstable nature of the tritone interval. Pianist Thelonious
Monk was a master of this technique, and demonstrated this to many of
the other musicians of this time (including Dizzy and Bird). Regarding
whether to use the name half-diminished or minor triad with the added 6th,
this is a case where a simple change in name can obscure the melodic
and harmonic function of a particular sound. Dizzy Gillespie mentions
this in his autobiography when he says that for him and his colleagues,
there was no such thing as half-diminished chords; what is called a
half-diminished chord today, they called a minor triad with a major
sixth in the bass.
Monk doesn't actually know what I showed him. But I do know some of
the things he showed me. Like, the minor-sixth chord with a sixth in the
bass. I first heard Monk play that. It's demonstrated in some of my
music like the melody of "Woody 'n You," the introduction to "Round
Midnight," and a part of the bridge to "Mantaca.".... There were lots of
places where I used that progression... and the first time I heard
that, Monk showed it to me, and he called it a minor-sixth chord with a
sixth in the bass. Nowadays, they don't call it that. They call the
sixth in the bass, the tonic, and the chord a C-minor seventh, flat
five. What Monk called an E-Flat-minor sixth chord with a sixth in the
bass, the guys nowadays call a C-minor seventh flat five... So they're
exactly the same thing. An E-Flat-minor chord with a sixth in the bass
is C, E-flat, G-flat, and B-flat. C-minor seventh flat five is the same
thing, C, E-flat, G-flat, and B-flat. Some people call it a half
diminished, sometimes. (from the chapter "Minton's Playhouse" in To Be or Not To Bop)
This composition is another example of the many linguistic
rhythmic devices Parker used in his music that are not much discussed.
In my opinion, the composed melody is clearly an explanation with
variations. The opening phrase of the melody is an explanation of some
kind, followed by but perhaps (going into measure 5), which begins the first alternate explanation. Then perhaps (into measure 7) begins a second alternate explanation. Perhaps (into measure 9) begins the final clarification, then the melody ends with the responses in measures 11 and 12 perhaps, perhaps, perhaps. Therefore we can think of the melodic segments in between the perhaps
as some sort of discussion and clarification of a particular situation,
lending more evidence to the literal admonishment of the cats to always tell a story
with your music. Obviously in this song there is an added onomatopoetic
dimension to the melody that allowed me to at least recognize the perhaps
musical phrase at an early stage in my career when I knew very little
about the structure of music. But this more obvious example also served
notice to me that these possibilities existed within this music, and
just maybe there also were elements of the spontaneous compositions that
exhibited these features.
This was my intuitive reaction to this song when I first heard it in
my formative years as I was still learning how to play, and it is still
how I understand it when I listen today. But beyond the more obvious
example of this composed melody, I feel that the spontaneous part of
this composition, indeed of all of Parker's compositions, are also
explanations, and that they are all telling stories. And as mentioned
before, they contain the same kinds of exclamations, dialog, linguistic
phraseology, and common sense structure that is contained in everyday
conversation, with the exception that this linguistic structure is based
on the sub-culture of the African-American community of that time, what
most people would call slang. This is particularly evident in
the rhythm of the musical phrases. The way Max answers the melody is
definitely conversational. I hear the same kinds of rhythms that I see
when watching certain boxers, basketball players, dancers, and the
timing of most of the various activities that go on in the hood.
However, this same rhythmic sensibility can occur on various levels of
sophistication, and with the music of Bird and his cohorts, it occurs on
an extremely sophisticated artistic level.
This subject of musical conversation brings up the issue of
African-Diapora DNA. Scholar Schwaller de Lubicz made reference to a
theory that the ancient Egyptians, at some very early point in their
existence, had a language whose structure and utterances consisted of
pure modulated tones similar to music, as opposed to the phonetic
languages of today. Given that their ancient writing contained no
symbols for vowels, this idea may seem far-fetched. However, because the
recorded writing of this civilization documents over two millennia, a
great deal of change must have occurred within the language.
Many modern linguists believe somewhat the opposite, that the
original human languages contained clicks or were predominantly click
languages. These linguists use the languages of the Hadza people of
Tanzania and Jul'hoan people of Botswana as evidence. However, the
evidence of drum languages in the Niger-Congo region of Sub-Saharan
Africa tells another story. For example, the drum languages of the
Yoruba of Nigeria, Ghana, Togo and Benin; the Ewe of Ghana, Togo and
Benin; the Akan of Ghana; and the Dagomba of northern Ghana, still exist
today. In the languages of these areas, register tone languages are
common, where pitch is used to distinguish words (as opposed to contour,
as in Chinese). Since many of these West-African languages are tonal,
suprasegmental communication is possible through purely prosodic means
(i.e. rhythm, stress and intonation). There is little doubt that
emotional prosody (sounds that represent pleasure, surprise, anger,
happiness, sadness, etc.) predated the modern concept of languages. If
the early ancient Egyptians developed a highly structured form of
suprasegmental communication, it is quite possible that de Lubicz'
theory is correct. In any case, there is plenty of precedent for the
exclusive use of tones as language.
Regarding the sections containing spontaneous composition, of course,
many musical devices are involved, rhythmic, melodic, harmonic and
formal, all on a very high level. Which is why most students of this
music are absorbed in the musical parameters�there is so much there. But
I propose that much of what is being accomplished musically can be seen
more clearly if we take into account the perspective of the
African-Diaspora, rather than have discussions primarily about harmonic
structure, etc. Many of the rhythms that Parker uses are not merely
related to African music in the linguistic sense that I have outlined
above, nor only related to the notion of having a certain kind of swing or groove. Also many of the structural rhythmic tendencies of the Diaspora have been retained within African-American culture.
We can start by looking at the concept of clave in Parker's
playing. The phrase at 0:26 of take 1 is precisely the kind of slick
musical sentence that Parker was renowned for among his peers. I feel
that the emphasis in the phrasing contains rhythmic figures very similar
to various clave patterns. This phrase is repeated almost verbatim at 0:55 with the addition of a turn and a slight shift in the clave pattern:
(at 0:26 )
versus:
(at 0:55)
Of course, you need to listen to the recording to get a feel for the
emphasis, but my point here is that there does not seem to be much
discussion of this aspect of Bird's internal sense of rhythmic
structure. Recognition of a sense of clave in Parker's playing is a key
(pardon my pun) to beginning to investigate his complex rhythmic
concepts in greater detail. It would be instructive to listen to Bird's
spontaneous compositions only for their rhythmic content without regard
for the pitches. Then it would be revealed that many of his phrases
contain the same kinds of rhythmic structures found in the phrasing of
the master drummers of West Africa, with the exception of the pitch
conception. An investigation of the starting and ending points of
Parker's phrases reveals a kinship to these Sub-Saharan drum masters.
Take as an example this melodic sentence at 0:38 of take 1 of "Perhaps":
There are several rhythmic shifts of emphasis here that suggest a
compressing and lengthening of phrases. Starting on beat 3 of measure 2,
the shift in emphasis within the phrase suggests groupings of 6-4-5-3-4
(in quarter note pulses). This concept is similar to the classic
mop-mop figure; i.e. 4-3-5-4, and is one of the hallmarks of Bird's
spontaneous compositions.
Reviewer: Steve Coleman
Charlie Parker: 52nd Street Theme #275, #238, #218, #214
These various performances of Parker, recorded by
saxophonist Dean Benedetti, demonstrate the combination of looseness and
tightness of this particular band, which I consider Bird's most
effective working band. I heard about these recordings before I knew
they physically existed, and I even heard a few of them long before this
box set came out, so it was a real pleasure to finally hear the entire
collection. For economic reasons, Benedetti usually only recorded the
solos of Parker and not the other musicians, so these recordings are
quite fragmented. Furthermore the sound quality is frequently poor;
these are not recordings that audiophiles will be writing home about.
However, for musicians studying this music, this collection is a
goldmine. I compare it to finding a new ancient tomb in the Valley of
the Kings in Egypt, in terms of the musical treasures it yields. Example A: 52nd Street Theme #275
This version of Monk's composition was usually played as a break
tune, a signal that the set is coming to a close. This take is really
just a fragment (similar to a find in an archeological dig), but man, it
swings hard! When Parker's sax solo enters after he speaks to the
audience, the band settles into a serious groove, everybody responds to
Yard, and the beat lays back to the extreme, giving the impression that
the band is slowing down. Bird�s solo on "52nd Street Theme #275"
It's clear that this groove emotionally hits those who are present, as
can be heard by the various exclamations. This reaction from the people
is what I love about live recordings in general�at least recordings done
in the presence of responsive audiences. The steady rhythm of the
rising spontaneous melody that Yard plays in the opening eight measures
creates tension and is perfectly offset by the snaking melody of the
second eight, with its dancing, shifting, clave-like patterns that begin
in the 11th measure (at 0:42):
Rhythm of the clave-like pattern at measure 11 of "52nd Street Theme #275" Again, this demonstrates the use of rhythms that reveal elements retained from West-African concepts. Example B: 52nd Street Theme #238
This version is also very dynamic. I love the space that Bird
utilizes in this very loose version. Right from the beginning, when
Parker plays the augmentation of the melody, we know that he is on top
of his game. He does not even bother to complete the melody, immediately
launching into a spontaneous statement. The bridge is beautiful!
Obviously Parker meant to play the melody here, but stumbles a little.
But he sounds like Michael Jordan here, if you follow what I mean, by
adjusting in midstream and turning his misstep into a beautiful melodic
statement where antecedent and consequent are both preceded by the same
rhythmic misstep (mm 1 and 5 below), which transform the original
stutter into part of the form of the statement. As with many of Bird's
conversations, the form of the statement is irregular but makes perfect
rhythmic sense in terms of balance, one of the traits that distinguishes
him from most of his musical colleagues. Also the many alternate tonal
paths and delayed resolutions (6th, 7th and 9th measures of bridge) add
to the hipness of the statement.
Bridge: 2-beat stutter - 6-beat antecedent, 3-beat stutter - 18 beat consequent of "52nd Street Theme #238"
Starting from the second eight of the first chorus of the solo we hear
the kind of smooth melodic voice-leading that Parker popularized in this
music. 2nd eight, Bridge and last eight of "52nd Street Theme #238"
These types of clear and precise statements were already present in the
music of some spontaneous composers, such as tenor saxophonist Don Byas.
However, it was through Parker's dynamic performances that most
musicians were exposed to this concept, due in large part to Bird's
unique phrasing and advanced rhythmic conception. Both Byas and Yard
were from the Midwest and both had that Midwest sanctified rhythm thing
happening. Byas was from Muskogee, Oklahoma, and Bird developed his
musical skills in Kansas City, Missouri, although he was born in Kansas
City, Kansas. The Midwest produced many great musicians. For example,
Oscar Pettiford, was a fantastic bass player from Okmulgee, Oklahoma,
who made tremendous contributions to this music, although these
contributions are rarely acknowledged in proportion to their importance.
Both Muskogee and Okmulgee are in the eastern part of Oklahoma, just
south of the Kansas City metropolitan area, so this area of the country
was a hotbed of activity during the 20s, 30s and 40s.
The slickness of the rhythmic concept in this example is striking. There
are several clave-like rhythms where Parker plays in groups of 3
pitches, which tends to produce shifting rhythmic patterns. Overall Bird
had a very rhythmic conception, even in his formative years, and it was
this conception that most contributed to the change in the direction of
the music during that time. Consider this statement by Dizzy Gillespie:
I guess Charlie Parker and I had a meeting of the minds, because
both of us inspired each other. There were so many things that Charlie
Parker did well, it's hard to say exactly how he influenced me. I know
he had nothing to do with my playing the trumpet, and I think I was a
little more advanced, harmonically, than he was. But rhythmically he was
quite advanced, with setting up the phrase and how you got from one
note to the other. How you get from one note to the other really makes
the difference. Charlie Parker heard rhythm and rhythmic patterns
differently, and after we had started playing, together, I began to
play, rhythmically, more like him. In that sense he influenced me, and
all of us, because what makes the style is not what you play but how you
play it. (From Giant Steps: Bebop and The Creators of Modern Jazz 1945-65)
I would like to emphasize here that Charlie Parker's rhythmic
contribution amounts to more than just phrasing. Usually people write
about triplets, so-called pick-up notes, etc. These
perspectives reveal more about the musicologist's academic background
than they do about Parker's sensibilities. Rhythm was something that was
constantly stressed in the African-American communities; as Dizzy
mentions, it was associated with the way and the how
something was done. In my opinion, not only was Bird's phrasing
important, but also his placement of entire musical sentences and how
they balanced each other.
Example C: 52nd Street Theme #218 What I like about this version of "52nd Street Theme" is the form of
the first chorus, which sets up the rest of the performance, and this
partly illustrates what Dizzy was referring to in his quote. This is a
true example of spontaneous composition and how the micro-forms can be
very complex. One cannot underestimate the power of developed intuition
and insight, when coupled with preparation, logic and talent and Yard's
performance is a clear example of this.
At first listening, the phrases may seem to sound very symmetrical and
smooth, yet a cursory observation reveals what at first appear to be
random starting and stopping points with no clear balancing points. A
more detailed examination exposes a sophisticated natural symmetry. The
first antecedent is approximately 3 measures long, answered by what
feels like a 5-measure consequent. This division of an approximately
8-measure space into 3 and 5 measures is something that has been
discussed throughout history as being related to the proportion of the
Golden Mean. Much has been written about this kind of balance on the
Internet and in books, so I will not go over it in detail here. However,
the linguistic quality is the result of rhythm and melody, and the
timing of the phrases and their contour contribute to the effectiveness
of the music.
The opening phrase is cryptic in the sense that it creates a lot of
motion within a compact contour. There is a lot of doubling back (what
we used to call going back for more) that is reminiscent of one of former NBA basketball player's Tim Hardaway's killer crossover moves, and Yard is truly breaking
ankles here. The answer in measure 3 contains its own paraphrase, with
the phrase in Gbmaj being woven into its answer in Fmaj (a 5-5-4 balance
in terms of 8th note pulses) before mutating into another ankle breaking
phrase from which Parker eventually achieves escape velocity. The next
phrase feels perfectly centered within the second 8 measures, being
contained in the internal 4 measures of the 8, however in reality it is
shifted forward in time by one beat.
The question-and-answer in the bridge has that same kind of Golden Mean
balance, i.e., a 3-5 measure grouping to the phrases. After one of those
preacher-like exclamations to begin the last 8, the final phrase has a
beautiful and subtle voice-leading device where Bird plays a ghosted Eb
(3rd measure after the bridge) which announces a more complex sentence.
This phrase also seems to wake Max up, as he becomes much more
responsive at this point.
Here Parker's melodic choices are brilliant, seamlessly alternating
between diatonicism, voice-leading chromaticism that is very carefully
placed, and pentatony. As for the phrasing, Bird's sentences have the
quality of someone speaking with a southern accent. If you listen
carefully, there is a slight drawl to the phrases, a slightly
behind-the-beat drag similar to the way people talk in the south, or in
the hood.
1st chorus of "52nd Street Theme #218" Example D: 52nd Street Theme #214
This version begins in progress, near the end of the 5th measure, but
who knows how long Bird had already been playing. I paid a lot of
attention to this version of "52nd Street Theme," as it is very
intricate with a lot of great interaction. However, I will only briefly
comment on each section.
The first chorus has Parker's typical conversation-like phrases. One
thing that stands out is the repeated five-note figure that occurs
beginning on the 4th beat of the 4th measure of the bridge (0:13 into
the performance). What is intriguing is the rhythm, where there is
diminution in the amount of time between the phrases. The first phrase
begins on the 4th beat of the 4th measure and ends on the 2nd beat of
the 5th measure. This is repeated 2 beats later, beginning on the 4th
beat of the 5th measure and ending on the 2nd beat of the 6th. Then, as
the phase shifts in tonality from the secondary dominant to the
dominant, Bird immediately begins the phrase again, this time starting
on the 3rd beat of the 6th measure and ending on the 1st beat of the 7th
measure. Passages like this always made me feel that Parker was keenly
aware of not only melodic target points, but rhythmic target points
also, always balancing the starting and ending points so that the
phrases, even when seemingly starting in strange places, always fall
exactly in balanced proportions. In other words, Bird was very attentive
to melodic and rhythmic forms, but as Dizzy mentioned, the real deal is
the placement of the phrases.
The second chorus begins with an aborted attempt by Parker to play a
typical lick of his that comes from clarinetist Alphonse Picou's
variation on the 1901 Porter Steele march "High Society," a phrase that
Bird frequently quoted (for example at the start of the second chorus to
his famous 1945 "Ko-Ko" performance). It is clear that when playing
this phrase Parker's G# key sticks on his saxophone the bane of all
saxophone players. However, Parker quickly unsticks the key, changes
directions in midstream, and continues with a flawless execution of his
improvisational statement. Two clues help me draw this conclusion.
First, he succeeds in playing G# nine beats later in an immediately
succeeding phrase (keep in mind this tempo is blazing). Second, while
watching the video of the 1952 broadcast
of Bird and Diz playing "Hot House," I noticed that Bird had an ability
to very rapidly fix problems with his horn, when just before the bridge
during the melody he unsticks his octave key, again in mid-flight. When
I was first learning this music, I saw many other musicians do this
kind of thing, notably the great Chicago tenor saxophonist Von Freeman.
The start of the second 8 also begins with an aborted quote. I'm not
sure of the source of the quote (it sounds to me like it's from an etude
book), but I have heard Parker play it many times, for example, in
performing his blues called "Chi Chi" and in other songs so I know it
should move something like this:
However Yard stumbles a bit and it comes out like this, including the
spontaneous recovery, again a demonstration of how fast his mind worked:
Max's response to the phrase in the last eight is again one of those
funky dialogs. Max sets up this hip transition with the single snare hit
right after Parker's repeated blues exclamation, then two snare drum
hits in between Yard's phrases, followed by one of those funky ratios,
this time 4 against 6, that is Max's bass drum playing the 4 against the
cut time 6 of the beat, again timed to end on the measure before the
top. I tend to think of this kind of playing as targeting, a
technique where you calculate (using either feel, logic or both) the
destination point in time where you want to resolve your rhythm, a kind
of rhythmic voice-leading. I alluded to Bird doing something
similar above. I also dig the spontaneous counterpoint commentary of one
of the listeners during this phrase, which seems to go with what Yard
and Max are doing.
The next four choruses keep up the heat, and there is a lot to learn
from the various techniques. Some highlights are Bird playing in layers
of phrases in 3-beat groupings (0:53), the contrasts of
light-to-dark-to-light beginning with the secondary dominant in the
bridge at 1:04, the extreme cramming in the bridge at 1:26, the
modulating descending octatonic figures (i.e. diminished) at 1:44 (which
function as cycles of dominant progressions), the diminution effect in
the consequent phrase at 2:12 (somebody in the audience dug it also),
the extremely melodic phrase at 2:15, and finally the funky way that Max
sets up the fours between Bird and Miles which Max continues leading
into and throughout the fours. The way Max Roach shifts to the hi-hat
moving into the fours, and intensifies his interactions with the horn
players, also demonstrates his compositional approach to playing
spontaneously.
The fours are off the hook, brilliant, beginning with Parker's
ultra-melodic opening. The phrase he plays at 2:46 is unusual even by
Bird's standards, as it begins in a very dark dominant tonality,
progresses to a bright, dominant sound, then anticipates the move to the
subdominant with the last tritone. The energy that this phrase
generates is resumed at 2:52 (after Miles' statement) with a pair of
brilliantly placed ascending tritone progressions, unusual in their
rhythm and tonal progression. The rhythm is similar to the 4-against-3
patterns that Max has been executing, where the basic pulse of the song
is seen though a different perspective (that of 3 against Bird's 4). And
although the tonal implications are too difficult to fully explain
here, these 8 tones Bb-E-Bb-E progressing to B-F-B-F-functionally serve
to reverse the normal tonal gravity by approaching the dominant tonality
(the G7 matrix) from a 5th below instead of from the normal 5th above.
There exists an entire theory based on polarity that can explain this
kind of movement (see my website),
but here it is enough to say that the naked expression of these
tritones permits an ambiguous interpretation. The Bb-E-Bb-E tritone
could be seen to be the functional equivalent of the tonal spectrum
represented in part by C7, F#7, Gmin6, Dbmin6 (any or all of these
dominant chords, and yes, I consider a minor 6th chord as potentially
having a dominant function). Likewise the B-F-B-F tritone could be
functionally seen as G7, C#7, Dmin6, Abmin6; therefore, the progression
represents the fairly dark transition of tonalities in progressions of
ascending 5ths, which I associate with lunar energies.
This tritone phrase is a continuation of the tritone ending of Bird's
previous phrase. To my ears, Miles does not seem prepared to respond to
this statement. Bird is playing in a rapid stream of consciousness
manner, where each idea picks up from the last, interspersed with
Miles' responses. At 2:59, Yard continues this dark-to-light sound,
giving us the third consecutive statement where he appears to be tonally
emerging from a dungeon, and it becomes clear that he is on a roll.
Even his entrance into the bridge is a continuation of this approach, as
he approaches from the dark side, 7 flats or the mode of Gb
Mixolydian, and, after a snaking Gdim turn, emerges into the sunlight of
F major. This gives us his 4th consecutive lunar progression. Parker
ends with a phrase that is a functional reprise of the descending
octatonic figures earlier in the performance; however this sentence ends
with a rocking melodic progression functioning as
dominant-subdominant-dominant. Obviously he was at his creative peak
this night. Reviewer: Steve Coleman
Charlie Parker: Ornithology (Live at Birdland 1950)
I have owned several versions of this exact recording, and almost all of
them are technically flawed in one way or another. My most complete
version is a CD re-mastered with the help of the excellent drummer Kenny
Washington, who pitch-corrected the recording. Also the complete Bud
Powell solo is present in this recording, whereas on my original LP
edition that I still own, Bud's solo was edited out.
These performances are some of the strongest that I have heard from
these participants, but what makes this recording great for me is the
fact that they are all performing and interacting together. Blakey
provides a totally different kind of drum accompaniment than Max Roach.
Nevertheless, Art's driving rhythms are very effective. But it is the
front line of Parker, Navarro and Powell that is simply off the hook!
Each soloist's performance is beyond words. These cats are truly
spontaneous composers at the top of their game, their statements so
precise they could have been composed on paper.
The first thing we hear is Bud's meandering intro, very loose as always,
which starts harmonically as far away from his D pedal as possible,
sliding from Ab major to A minor to Gmaj into Bird's opening statement
of the melody. Despite the impression of rubato, Bud is actually playing
in time in the intro to the song. It sounds to me like Bud was already
playing when the recording was started, as the first sounds we hear are
measure 3, beat 3 of an 8-measure intro. At any rate, what we hear from
Bud is 51/2 measures (22 beats) before Yard enters.
A book could be written discussing just this one performance, but I'll
only point out a few things here. We can learn a lot from the various
versions of the spontaneous harmonies that Fats plays at the end of the
melody, with the harmonization at the end of the song being different
from the one at the beginning.
Fats Navarro's harmony on top staff, at the end of "Ornithology"
It seems to me that Fats' rhythmic conception and feel was the closest
to Bird's among the trumpet players of this era. They are rhythmically
as one going into the break of Bird's soaring solo. One of my favorite
sections of this recording is the woman hollering "Go Baby" right after
Parker's break, I even used to call this recording 'Go Baby!'
Fats Navarro's harmony on the top staff, going into Parker's solo on "Ornithology"
Parker's melody right after this exhortation seems to rhythmically
answer the woman's voice. Bird seemed to have an intuitive grasp for the
connection between musical and nonmusical expressions. Parker once
mentioned the connection between music and the utterances of various
animals to his band mates in the Jay McShann band on a tour through the
Ozarks. His music was full of oblique coded references that could be
understood by his colleagues on the bandstand and those musicians in the
audience who were privy to this way of communicating. Bird also
directly expressed to his last wife, Chan Parker, a desire to use music
in a more overtly linguistic fashion, and he mentioned this to many
musicians, such as bassist Charles Mingus (Charlie Parker, by Carl Woideck, pp 214-216).
I have an audio interview that Paul Desmond conducted with Charlie
Parker, where Bird mentions how telling a story with music was for him
the whole point:
CP: There's definitely stories and stories and stories that can be told
in the musical idiom, you know. You wouldn't say idiom but it's so hard
to describe music other than the basic way to describe it music is
basically melody, harmony, and rhythm. But, I mean, people can do much
more with music than that. It can be very descriptive in all kinds of
ways, you know, all walks of life. Don't you agree, Paul?
PD: Yeah, and you always do have a story to tell. It's one of the most
impressive things about everything I've ever heard of yours.
CP: That's more or less the object. That's what I thought it should be.
Most people take this in a non-literal sense, but I believe that Parker
and many other musicians were dead serious when they spoke of telling
stories through their music, as demonstrated in the discussion of the
composition "Perhaps."
In the first chorus of Ornithology its immediately clear that Bird is a
master at shifting the balance of his musical sentences. One example of
this is how he sets up a shift in momentum by building expectation with
the regularity of the phrases at 0:42 for 4 measures; which is answered
at 0:46, where Bird truncates the paraphrase to 2 measures to set up the
shifting clave-like phrase at 0:49 (the middle of measure 16 in my
example above). This is similar to the technique that Max utilized in
the "Ko-Ko" example that I discussed previously. This concept is
difficult to explain without showing it in musical form.
I hear the phrase at 0:42 in two distinct sub-sections, antecedent and
consequent, in terms of their melodic curves and emphases:
0:42 sub-section 1a (set-up antecedent):
0:44, sub-section 2a ( set-up antecedent consequent):
0:46, sub-section 1b (truncated antecedent):
0:48, sub-section 2b (extended shifting consequent):
clave pattern in above phrase, from the middle of second measure of sub-section 2b (0:49):
The antecedent phrase at 0:42, sub-section 1a, runs continuously into
its consequent at sub-section 2a. However, the antecedent phrase at
0:46, sub-section 1b, is interrupted, followed by the extended
consequent at sub-section 2b (0:48), in which the rhythmic displacement
or shift of emphasis occurs at around 0:49, from the middle of the 3rd
measure of sub-section 2b. The phrases at 0:42 (sub-section 1a) and 0:46
(sub-section 1b) are symmetrical in length. The following phrase, which
Parker did not play, is what I imagine the consequent at 0:48
(sub-section 2b) could be without the clave-like extension.
But there is even more at work here, and what I suspect is the intuitive
reason that the last consequent was extended. The opening phrases of
each antecedent are themselves clave-like, in that they contain the same
kind of offsetting rhythms (i.e. groups of 3) that are present in clave
patterns. These are answered by the extended version of these kinds of
rhythms in the consequent of sub-section 2b, at 0:49.
It is this kind of sophisticated rhythmic symmetry in the sentence
structure of Parker's music that is often overlooked when analyses of
his spontaneous compositions are attempted, but many musicians of this
period intuitively grasped it. The structure has an "Able Was I Ere I
Saw Elba" form, where the figure at the beginning of these phrases is
balanced by the same figure at the end. If you listen to this entire
passage as rhythm only, disregarding the pitches, then I think it
becomes easier to hear the rhythmic patterns I'm referring to. In an
example of one variation of this particular symmetry, the second half of
the 3rd chorus (2:01 to 2:08) contains virtually the same
antecedent-consequent structure as was played at 0:42, with a response
that is balanced in a different way, but that still uses the same
clave-like pattern.
[2:01] of "Ornithology"
This approach to balancing rhythmic phrases and the resultant dynamic
rhythmic symmetry, are reminiscent of the phrases that tap dancers and
drummers use. These devices are constant occurrences in Parker's music,
as demonstrated in this song, and Navarro and Powell demonstrate much of
the same tendencies. Of course, all of this is occurring so rapidly
that there is no such analysis as I am giving here is involved on the
part of the musicians. But I do think that these kinds of balances are
involved in the feel of the music, and this is what contributes to the
music's effect. I believe that the initiated (the musicians who are near
Parker's musical level) are the first who are affected, then they
transmit the information and influence the musicians just below their
level, and so on. The collective impact of these concepts (albeit
necessarily in diluted form) eventually gets communicated to the
public's ear.
The types of rhythms that Parker plays at 1:05 are similar to things
that I've heard drummers from the African Diaspora execute. If you
listen to it purely as rhythm, you can imagine a drummer playing exactly
the same kind of phrase in fact, Blakey does play parts of the phrase
with Bird, and you can hear Bud stressing the same rhythmic weights,
what I call pushing the beat. As with the woman's exclamation at
the beginning of his solo, I believe these lightning-fast musical
responses were as internalized in Bird's playing as fans' spontaneous
responses at sporting events.
At the top of 3rd chorus (1:40), Bird executes one of those tricks that I
think he learned from pianist Art Tatum, of turning the form around by
starting it 2 beats early. This is not easy for a melodic player to do,
as your spontaneous melody has to be strong enough that it suggests the
displacement. You can even feel Bird stop to think about what he is
about to do before he plays it.
Skipping ahead, after Fats tells his outstanding story and Bud Powell
takes an absolutely killin' solo, the two choruses of trading between
Parker and Navarro are absolutely hair-raising.
6:09 has one of those crazy cartoon quotes followed by ridiculous cram.
Two guitarist friends reminded me that this quote is from the song
"Jarabe Tapat�o," known in English as the "Mexican Hat Dance." The
original form of the melody is:
Fats responds with a similarly shaped answer.
At the top of the second choruses of the horns trading (6:25), Bird
plays this modulating tetrachord figure which he subtly changes to match
the underlying structure of the song, played in his typically laid-back
manner, and the groove is killin':
The antecedent is structured as a Lydian tetrachord, in this case G A B C, with a Bb passing tone added:
However, the consequent contains a Dorian tetrachord, with a B passing tone added:
(Notice that the references to the terms Lydian and Dorian follow the
Medieval terminology for these structures, which are based on the top
fourth of the Medieval Lydian and Dorian modes, referred to as 'species
of the fourth' in Medieval times.)
Both forms of this tetrachord are plentiful in Bird's spontaneous
melodies and are among his favorite melodic structures. Even if you did
not know the underlying harmonic structure of the song, you could
discern the melodic structure by listening to how Bird emphasizes the
second pitch from the top of the tetrachord, demonstrating which are the
main tones and which are the passing tones. This again shows the
importance of rhythm and stress in this music. Also in the consequent,
Bird contracts the end of the phrase, again highlighting the structure
of the tetrachord. Aurally this subtle change would probably be
unnoticed by most listeners, which is the point, as in this case the
consequent is really a subtle paraphrase of the antecedent. There is
functional symmetry involved here, as technically the beginning of the
two phrases contain the same pitches, but the B and Bb change function
relative to the two tetrachords. In the first figure (1st measure), B
natural is functionally part of the tetrachord and Bb is the passing
tone, whereas in the second figure (middle of the 3rd measure) Bb is
functionally part of the tetrachord and B natural is the passing tone.
At 6:41 Parker plays another strong clave-like figure, followed by a
cram. Finally, I love the spontaneous harmonizing that Bird does on the
out head, particularly the melodically symmetrical phase at 7:39, with
the Db pickup to the next phrase (well, closer to D-flat than D-natural)
being the symmetrical axis of the preceding 10 pitches:
These are just a few examples. There is so much going on in this song
that I'll just have to stop talking about it! The main point for me is
how much we can learn from these very advanced techniques. So much more
is going on than just swinging-however, Bird does that too.
Reviewer: Steve Coleman
Charlie Parker (with Machito and His Orchestra): Mango Mangue
The kinds of shifts in phrasing that we looked at in "Perhaps" are even
more apparent in "Mango Mangue," especially against the backdrop of the
static harmonic material, a rarity in Parker's musical repertoire in
fact, rare in the music of this time period. Parker was one of the few
musicians of that era who could really wail over a vamp. Most of the
cats back then did not know how to blow over one static harmonic
palette, with the exception of blues-based improvisations, as their
entire improvisation language was constructed around playing through an
environment that involved moving chord changes. That was the difference
between Parker and many of the people influenced by him. Bird was
primarily a melodic player who played through keys. Most of the people
influenced by him played through chord changes (this is Dizzy
Gillespie's way of characterizing what Bird did). Not that Bird had no
knowledge of chord structure; it's just that he had an intuitive gift
for melody and melodic patterns that allowed him to adapt his language
to a variety of music genres.
Bud and Bird to me should go down as composers, even though they worked
within a structured context using other people's compositions. For
instance, they did things like "All The Things You Are" and "What Is
This Thing Called Love." Their solos are new classical compositions
within the structured form they used. . . . For instance, Bird called me on the phone one day and said: 'How
does this sound?' and he was playing ad-libbing to the "Berceuse," or
lullaby, section of Stravinsky's Firebird Suite! I imagine he had
been doing it all through the record, but he just happened to call me
at that time and that was the section he was playing his ad lib solo on,
and it sounded beautiful. It gave me an idea about what is wrong with
present-day symphonies: they don't have anything going on that captures
what the symphony is itself, after written.
So Mingus considered Parker a composer, a spontaneous composer, and it
is apparent from this quote that Bird had the ability to improvise on a
variety of structures. We can only imagine what progress would have been
made in the area of orchestra music had the great spontaneous composers
been given access to the symphony orchestra with all of the colors it
presents. However, Bird's melodic structures on this recording of "Mango
Mangue" are not really out of the ordinary�for him at least. It is
because of the timing and rhythmic sophistication of Parker and the
accompanying musicians that I picked this example.
At 0:46 the bongos execute a beautiful rhythmic voice-leading passage
(started by the congas), beginning with a setup on the third beat; and
then, starting on the following third beat, playing 2 identical patterns
that are each contained in 4-beat lengths; then again, starting on the
following third beat, playing 2 identical patterns that are each
contained in 3-beat lengths. This has the effect of shifting the start
of the phrases from the third beat to the second beat, and leading to
the first beat at the beginning of Bird's solo. Again this is a
demonstration of establishing a pattern, then altering it to
rhythmically to voice-lead towards specific target point in time, to
either set up another event or to terminate a process.
The shifting diminished harmonies of the saxophones are beautiful, not
often heard in American popular music at that time, and it is uncanny
how Bird's phrases fit perfectly melodically with the shifting textures
from about 1:05 to 1:19 of the song. But what really turned me on to
this song is the call-and-response montuno section at 2:11 and how
Bird's spontaneous rhythms mesh perfectly with the Cuban players.
Passages like this made me realize how often Parker's playing contained
clave-like rhythmic patterns, a clear example of African retention. Even
though the clave cannot be clearly heard, by listening to the c�scara
pattern in the previously referenced section at 0:46 of the song you can
orientate yourself to the clave (clave on top below):
Example at 0:46 of "Mango Mangue," clave (top) and cscara (bottom):
The phrase beginning at measure 9 in the example below (2:18 of the
recording) and the phrase at measure 25 (2:32 of the recording) show how
Parker's stresses hookup with the clave and cscara at key points in
the phrasing of both.
Example at 2:11 of "Mango Mangue"
Based on this musical evidence, I believe that Parker played a larger
role in integrating these two musical cultures than he is usually given
credit for. Bird is usually given a minor mention when historians talk
about the merging of African-American and Afro-Cuban music. However,
Machito and Mario Bauza paint a different picture. Machito has said that
Parker was involved with his orchestra of Cuban musicians long before
Norman Granz suggested making the recordings in 1948, and even before
they met Parker, Machito and Mario Bauza knew of Bird's music, and Bird
knew of their music. Machito declared with modesty, "Charlie Parker era un genio, yo no era nada comparado con �l."�"Charlie
Parker was a genius, I was nothing compared to him." I also read where
Bauz� remarked in an interview that Parker's rhythmic improvisations
fit naturally with the rhythms that the Cuban musicians were playing at
that time, and that Bird was one of the only musicians from America
whose rhythms fit well with theirs. By the way, in this performance
Machito's rhythm section is killin'!
Parker was on fire during this concert, in top form. The
rhythm section was not the greatest, but Bird was soaring. This is not
the most creative of the Parker recordings I've heard (it's certainly no
slouch), but it is very refined playing on par with his famous strings
version of "Just Friends." From what I read, they brought Bird on stage
for this quintet concert, which was sandwiched between two sets of
Dizzy's big band.
I dig this 1947 Carnegie Hall concert more than the May 15, 1953 Massey Hall concert
in Toronto, where the musicians were distracted they were running
across the street between solos to check out the ongoing heavyweight
championship fight in Chicago between Rocky Marciano and Jersey Joe
Walcott (Marciano won by first round knockout)! Also, I always felt
Mingus ruined the recording with the bass overdubs he did later�the bass
is way too loud and playing on top of the beat.
Parker's incredible time feel is on display from the moment he takes his
break. He swings hard, even more evident here because during these four
measures he is playing unaccompanied. The song begins in Eb major, but
just before Bird's solo the music modulates during an interlude to Db
major, then, after a second interlude, back again to Eb major for
Dizzy's solo. Yard's solo break contains a classic example of what I
call cutting corners, where Bird takes this one path, then,
beginning with his characteristic rhythmic vocal-like sigh just after
the 8th beat of the break, moves briefly into a harmonic path in the
area of Amin6, before falling back into the subdominant Gb major (of Db
major). In this case the melody that he plays is more melodic
voice-leading than harmonic, as Bird's melodic trajectory is aimed
towards the high F and Ab, both pitches that have a dominant function
from a melodic perspective in the key of Db major. So functionally this
final phrase is a subdominant-to-dominant progression.
Parker's solo break on "Groovin' High":
For the next three choruses, Parker gives a clinic on economy, telling
his story with a compact approach, getting right to the point. His
musical sentences are perfectly balanced without being predictable; he
was a master of intuitive form. But what I want to discuss here is the
loose precision that is demonstrated, a kind of playing that is
extremely relaxed and variable and yet at the same time extremely
detailed. This kind of laid-back, behind-the-beat, loose accuracy seems
to have been the norm with players like Art Tatum, Don Byas, Bird and
Bud Powell in Chicago we used to call it the beginner-professional sound.
The expression of rhythms and modes is so precise that repeated
detailed listening is like reading an advanced music theory text, only a
text that reveals more on each reading, and the words are in motion on
top of it! In this sense it's like the oral storytelling traditions, but
here the information is encoded in musical symbolism. For this reason,
I've always felt that this music really was telling stories, on many
different levels.
The melody itself is a theory lesson. So much subtle detail
is involved that it is rarely played this way by modern musicians.
Parker normally soloed first when he played with Dizzy, Birks said it
was because when Parker played first, he (Diz) was inspired to play at
his best. What's extraordinary is not only Parker's virtuosity, but the
fluidity of his ideas and how they proceed from one to the next in such a
conversational manner. Again Bird only takes three choruses, but he
tells an epic story in this short period of time.
There is a lot of cramming in this spontaneous composition. Cramming is a term I first heard used by Dizzy in his autobiography To Be Or Not To Bop
when he talked about Parker squeezing a longer rapid phrase into a
smaller time space, a phrase that was not simply double time but some
other unusual rhythmic relationship to the pulse. There is plenty of it
in this version of "Confirmation," and not all of it rapid. Bird had the
ability to land on his feet like a cat after playing some of the most
outrageous rhythmic phrases. But the key to what Yard was doing was his
incredible time feel, so smooth that the phrases do not even feel odd in
any way. In fact, most of the players who imitate his style have far
less rhythmic variety in their playing. Obviously the impression that
they get from Parker's playing is that he is playing a steady stream of
notes, all of the same rhythmic value. But nothing could be farther from
the truth. Again, the conversational aspect of Yard's playing is always
on display, the way he is always in dialog with himself, even when
there is not much in the way of dialog coming from his accompanists (as
is the case in this recording).
My analysis here comes mostly from a rhetorical and affections
perspective which deals with the poetics of the music. This perspective
is the one most stressed in the African-American community.
Parker opens with a very strong melodic statement. I love the way Bird
plays in sentences that straddle the square (every 2 or 4 beats)
progression of the harmony. Bird's statements flow right through several
tonal changes, his sentences mutating and reflecting the changing
tonalities as they move, while still being very strong melodies,
perfectly balanced. His statements make perfect intuitive melodic sense
to the uninitiated listener while simultaneously providing worlds of
sophisticated information for experienced musicians. The exclamation
starting at the second measure of the second eight is incredibly vocal
and moves into a blues-tinged statement. This second eight section ends
with a very strong melodic sentence at 1:09 that terminates with a
dominant-subdominant-tonic melodic progression, instead of the normal
dominant-tonic motion. Parker normally has strong ending statements just
before the bridges, but these terminating statements traverse an
incredible variety of harmonic paths.
The feeling of the bridge is like when another person interjects with a
different subject, or adds another part to the story. Of course this is
what occurs harmonically as well, but I am referring here only to the
character of Parker's melodic statements it's almost as if another
person is talking at this point. These statements then get resolved
going into the last eight of this first chorus, as if returning to the
original speaker. This first chorus concludes with a very strong closing
melodic statement that sums up the previous statements, which may be
the quote to some standard that I don't know. I've always heard this
last phrase at 1:32 as saying, "Well..., but it's always gonna be like that."
The beginning of the second chorus responds with "but you know we've gotta keep on goin',"
which is my personal interpretation of this response to the end of the
first chorus. This second chorus is by far the most involved and complex
part of this story, and this middle chorus feels like the meat
of the story. I noticed that the most complex passages come in the
second eight and the bridge of this second chorus; these sections are
symmetrically right in the middle of this entire spontaneous
composition! Now, either Bird planned it this way or he has a hell of an
intuition in terms of form�or both. There are several advanced rhythmic
devices, double-timing, rhymes (the phrase at 1:38 rhymes with the
phrase at 1:41), and backpedaling phrasing from the offbeats (1:46). The
double-timing phrases that begin inside the fourth measure of the
second eight (1:52) still contains all the rhythmic complexity and
clave-like phrasing that Parker is known for; however, the accuracy of
these lightning fast statements is absolutely frightening! This hyper
phrase ends in a question, both harmonically (in the form of a secondary
dominant) and melodically (the rise of the melody at this point). It's
answered moments later with a bluesy statement, a rising
subdominant descending whole-tone dominant phrase.
Second Chorus second 8 of "Confirmation":
These complex double-time statements continue in the bridge and
represent the height of the story. The opening melody of the bridge
moves through several unusual tonal areas which I hear as:
/ / / / / / / / / / / / / / / /
|| Cmin | Dbmin6 F7 | Bbmaj Ebmaj Bbmaj | Bbmaj |
This Cmin to Dbmin6 to F7 progression was something that Parker played
often, but it's one of those esoteric dominant progressions which never
caught on among the majority of musicians who were influenced by Bird.
It really says something about the level of Yard's intuition that he
could arrive at such a progression seemingly by feeling and ear alone,
although I am by no means certain that this was the approach he used.
Second Chorus Bridge of "Confirmation": The last eight continues the conversational style established in the
first chorus, a strong melodic statement that is answered by one of
those "do you know what I mean" or "understand what I'm sayin'"
phrases (2:14). The last closing statement of this chorus sounds like a
rhetorical question, which Yard leaves open for the interjections and
constant commentary of the musicians to become part of the conversation,
just as if in church.
The entire third chorus feels like a summation of what went before. The
first eight begins with a question, followed at 2:27 with a bluesy
partial response, completed with a typical Lydian secondary dominant
expression followed by one of those "understand what I'm sayin'"
phrases at 2:33. The following fragmented statement beginning at the end
of the first measure of the second eight takes the form of a
question-answer within a question. The smoother response at 2:28 is
answered by an ending which, in contrast to the ending of the second
eight of the first chorus, concludes with a statement that moves
subdominant-minor subdominant (what I call negative dominant)-tonic
(2:40).
The entire story seems to begin to come to a definite close with the
three sentences in the bridge of this chorus, some of the most
beautifully crafted phrases in this entire performance. The last eight,
after an angular sentence that briefly hangs before moving to the
subdominant, finishes with a bird-like flurry that has the sound of
someone walking away mumbling disjunct statements, not quite correct
English, but perfectly reflecting the way people normally converse. All
of this is an example of Parker's very conversational style.
Reviewer: Steve Coleman
This performance highlights the difference between Parker's form of
expression on the blues in contrast to the approaches that came before
him. I am indebted to saxophone master Von Freeman for initially
pointing out these observations.
Obviously this recording was altered to highlight the differences
between these players, as Hodges and Carter were the two major alto
saxophone stylists during the era before Parker arrived on the scene.
Based on the jump in tempo after Bird's statement, you can hear that the
original recording was edited so that Benny Carter's statement would
follow Bird's. Clearly, this was not how it was originally recorded.
The two older alto saxophonists are East Coast players; Hodges from
Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Carter from New York City. During that
time, a player's musical style seemed to reflect the region of the
country they came from; regional differences seemed more pronounced than
they are today. Of course, these differences had little to do with the
level of musicianship, but they did seem to show up in some of the
stylistic tendencies of the players. This is not at all meant as a
critique. I only wish to point out that each of these players had
different approaches to the Blues idiom, and some of that was a
reflection of which area of the country they came from.
Bird was a blues player by nature. In terms of emotional content Parker
was not very different from other blues players from this part of the
country (south Midwest). However, what Parker introduced to the music
was a level of hip sophistication that generally had not been previously
expressed in this musical form. Tenor saxophonist Von Freeman calls it
the university blues, versus what came before. What he is referring to
is the ability to preach while simultaneously being able to
interject very sophisticated melodic voice-leading. This performance by
Parker is a clear example, although there are many. The preaching begins
right from the outset, complete with exclamations and repeated gestures
for emphasis. Bird's clear and self-assured, hard-edged sound, lacking
in the exaggerated vibrato of the earlier stylists, already signals a
markedly different approach to the blues, one in which the inflections
are more subtle than in the previous era.
This first appearance of more complex voice-leading occurs at the beginning of what's called the turnback
(2:28), a pivot area in the seventh through eighth measures that
progresses from the subdominant through the tonic and dominant areas,
then back towards the subdominant, where Bird's spontaneous melody
perfectly follows Ray Brown's bass line. The cadential target on the
upbeat of the end middle of this phrase (2:30) rhymes with the target
upbeat cadence at the end (2:34) via the adroit use of contour and
paraphrase. The next phrase flips the cadential targets from upbeat to
downbeat, while simultaneously slightly lengthening the cadences, in a
motion leading to the tonic. However, immediately upon touching the
tonic, Bird progresses to the subdominant. This chorus ends with a
blues-tinged afterthought.
The second chorus begins with a miniature version of a classic blues
form, against the background chorus of the other horns functioning as
the congregation to Bird's preaching. The opening phrase is repeated
three times in an I don't believe ya heard me form, with the
middle phrase as the darker lunar expression (i.e., subdominant). After
this bluesy statement, beginning in the fourth measure, Bird, in a whispering
statement that feels like an explanation, shifts gears into a level of
sophistication rarely heard in the blues of this time. In the sixth
measure (3:07), Parker literally falls out of this mode of playing,
through an alternate tonal path in the form of a descending
semi-pentatonic figure, again melodically shadowing Brown's bass line
with sophisticated rising and falling voice-leading in the crucial
pivoting area of seventh and eighth measures, hitting every passing
tonality while still maintaining his melodic emphasis. Moving into the
tenth measure (3:19), Parker again shifts into the overdrive, ascending
as a light color, squeezing out the top of the line, descending using
shifting darker hues, then moving towards the subdominant before
doubling back on a darker dominant path towards the tonic.
Normally, this level of detail was not expressed prior to Parker's
arrival on the scene (of course there were exceptions like Art Tatum and
Don Byas). The piano players at that time generally knew more about
harmony than most of the horn players, but these pianists usually
expressed this level of detail as chordal figures, not intricate melodic
figures. In Parker's case, the sophistication is expressed in the form
of extremely melodic and expressive voice-like phrases, not simply as
basic patterns.
I believe that one key to Bird's melodic concept is that each individual
part of every phrase is a melody in miniature, a fractal-like concept
where even the smaller melodic segments are balanced melodically within
themselves. This is coupled with an uncanny ability to utilize what I
call connectants, small chain-like phrases or hooks (not in the
sense of today's popular music) that are used to connect the melodic
cells through a complicated process analogous to weaving or the peptide
bonds that connect amino acids in RNA chains. Bird had a strong sense of
the nature of melody, from its more primitive constituents to a more
universal point of view.
Parker's innate sense of balance was incredible, as is clearly
demonstrated at the end of this solo. Whereas most players today with
his level of technique would feel a need to follow the harmony
explicitly, Bird is able to suggest the voice-lead just with the shape
of his pentatonic and diatonic line, using a well developed sense of
just where to rhythmically place the tones that lead by proximity to the
target pitches that express the passing tonalities. With Parker it is
the melodic contour and path which rules supreme, not the tones in a
particular chord. The difference is subtle.
Finally, I would like to state that I think of these slow versions of
the blues as examples of secular rituals. In much West African music
there is this constant interplay of 3 communing with 2, an intimate
marriage of the ternary feel (called perfect meter in medieval times because it was related to the Trinity) and the duple feel (imperfect meter).
The intervals of the Perfect Fifth and Perfect Fourth were called
perfect for this same reason, as they were associated with the number 3,
considered perfect since ancient times. This was also true in early
European music. For example, the metered sections of some Notre Dame
organum as well as some of the secular music of medieval times was
typically governed by rhythmic modes which were all expressed in
triple meter to symbolize the Trinity. So in some ways, this connects to
what Dizzy called Parker's Sanctified Rhythms.
If you listen carefully to Parker's opening phrase, it is almost
completely in a kind of ternary feel, and this is true of the most
blues-inflected parts of his performance. Other slow blues that he
performed (for example "Cosmic Rays") exhibit this same tendency.
[Note: Also discussed below is "All the Things You Are #220" from The Complete Benedetti Recordings of Charlie Parker on Mosaic, recorded with the same personnel at the Three Deuces in New York on March 31, 1948.]
These two versions of "All The Things You Are," the first recorded in
the studio as "Bird of Paradise" five months before the second, are
examples of how Charlie Parker approached creating in a studio
environment differently than playing in live performances. It seems to
me that Bird thought of the studio as a place to present his ideas to
the public in the clearest possible form analogous to sculptures, where
each take was an attempt to improve upon the last. On the other hand,
the gigs seem to be a dynamic laboratory for experimentation, an area
for taking chances and trying out new ideas and combinations, and for
unfettered communication among the musicians and between the musicians
and audience members (who were usually rather vocal in their feedback).
Many professional musicians take this approach. From a musician's
standpoint, I much prefer listening to the live recordings, although the
sound quality, of course, is far inferior. Here I look at two versions
of the same form, one a studio recording taken at a slightly slower
tempo (although both versions serve a ballade function), the other from a
gig that featured a singer.
"Bird of Paradise" (essentially the same form as "All The Things You
Are" without a statement of the composed melody) is truly a sculpture,
pristine and refined. Parker had three attempts at creating this
masterpiece, each take a refinement of the last. Consisting of only a
one chorus statement, the form of the spontaneous composition is
exact�similar to a fine jewel. However there is little chance taking,
Charlie seems to be concentrating on getting it right.
Bird performs the live version of "All The Things You Are" with much
more abandon, being encouraged by band mates and audience members alike.
Here different kinds of devices are attempted reminiscent of the
previous performances we have looked at. After the first reserved and
extremely melodic opening phrase, there is a sudden outburst of a wild
nature, a posture which increases as the song moves on. Melodically
there are a lot more alternate paths and the rhythms are more varied; it
is clear that by this point in Parker's career, these devices had been
totally internalized and had become second nature. However, Bird's
trademark sense of melodic and rhythmic symmetry is still evident even
in his most experimental forays.
I consider this period around 1948-1949 to be Parker's most creative and
stable period. His entire professional career was about 151/2 years
total, very short by most standards, due to the chaotic nature of his
life. Many of the experiments that he wanted to try out were left
unexplored because of lack of organization and the various health
problems that plagued him in the '50s. Also during 1948-1949 he had a
stable band that worked consistently and which he rehearsed, with the
result that the arrangements and forms of the compositions were more
sophisticated. Much of the original material in his repertoire comes
from this time period as well�he composed later compositions primarily
either just before or during record dates. With the exception of Max
Roach, the sidemen in this steady working band were not on Bird's level.
Miles was still developing, beginning to hit his stride around the time
he left Parker's group, and the other musicians were competent but not
extraordinary. However this group was balanced in that everyone
fulfilled a function.
Miles Davis once mentioned that Charlie Parker's approach was not one
style, but many. I agree with this statement, and as a result I've never
liked calling Bird's style Be-Bop. Charlie Parker had a
complicated personality, and his approach to music reflected this
complexity. From the perspective of a spontaneous composer, he was in
many ways a bridge figure who came of age among accomplished veterans of
a sophisticated blues-based idiom, but had the vision to look forward
to an even more sophisticated abstract expression while still retaining
the feeling and storytelling function of folklore. Parker's time in the
physical plane was brief. However, in a short period of time he served
the function of a modern griot, an avatar for the prototypical
spontaneous composer. In the process, his creations turned the musical
world upside down.
THE MUSIC OF CHARLIE PARKER: AN EXTENSIVE VIDEO OVERVIEW, A CROSS SECTION OF RECORDINGS, MUSICAL ANALYSIS AND COMMENTARY, PLUS VARIOUS INTERVIEWS WITH MR. PARKER:
Charlie Parker - The Original Bird (Savoy 1944-49 - Vinyl Album):
Charlie Parker - Bird
The Savoy Recordings--full album:
Charlie Parker - "Hot House":
Celebrating Bird: The Triumph of Charlie Parker
Videos of three classic compositions by Charlie Parker:
1.Bongo Beep 2.Crazeology 3.Blue Bird 4.Constellation 5.Parker's Mood 6.Marmaduke 7.Merry Go-Round 8.Visa 9.Passport 10.Diverse 11.Just Friends 12.Summertime 13.Star Eyes 14.Blues 15.I'm in the Mood for Love 16.Bloomdido 17.An Oscar for Treadwell 18.Mohawk
Personnel:
Charlie Parker - Alto Sax Miles Davis - Trumpet J.J. Johnson - Trombone Irving "Duke" Jordan - Piano Tommy Potter - Bass Max Roach - Drums
Charlie Parker- "Confirmation":
'The Quintet' - The Complete Jazz at Massey Hall, 1953-- [FULL ALBUM]
Tracklist:
Perdido (Juan Tizol, Hans Lengfelder, Ervin M. Drake) Salt Peanuts (Dizzy Gillespie, Kenny Clarke) All the Things You Are (Jerome Kern, Oscar Hammerstein II) 52nd Street Theme (Thelonious Monk) Drum Solo by Max Roach Cherokee (Noble) Embraceable You (George Gershwin, Ira Gershwin) Hallelujah (Jubilee) (Grey, Robin, Youmans) Sure Thing (Bud Powell) Lullaby of Birdland (Shearing, Weiss) I've Got You Under My Skin (Porter) Wee (Allen's Alley) (Denzil Best) Hot House (Tadd Dameron) A Night in Tunisia (Gillespie, Frank Paparelli)
Jazz
at Massey Hall is a live jazz album featuring a performance by "the
Quintet" given on 15 May 1953 at Massey Hall in Toronto. The quintet was
composed of several leading 'modern' players of the day: Dizzy
Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Bud Powell, Charles Mingus, and Max Roach. It
was the only time that the five men recorded together as a unit, and it
was the last recorded meeting of Parker and Gillespie.
Charlie Parker with Strings. The Complete Master Takes (Bonus Track Version):
Charlie Parker performs his composition "Ornithology" in Live Performances On Savoy 1947 Max
Charlie Parker (Savoy Jazz Originals) The Complete Live Performance On Savoy 1947/1950:
Formazione : Charlie Parker - sax alto Miles Davis - tromba Eli "Lucky" Thompson - sax tenore Michael "Dodo" Marmarosa - pianoforte Vic MicMillan - contrabbasso Roy Porter - batteria
"A Night In Tunisia" - Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker at 1945 Concert:
Charlie Parker & Coleman Hawkins 1950:
CHARLIE PARKER alto sax and COLEMAN
HAWKINS tenor sax (date 1950) with: Hank Jones - Piano, Ray Brown - Double bass, Buddy Rich - Drums
Several Parker interviews have been issued on LP and CD: May 1950, New York: with Marshall Stearns and John Maher
February 1951, New York: with Leonard Feather June 1953, Boston: with John McLellan January 1954, Boston: with John McLellan and Paul Desmond
Interview with Marshall Stearns and John Maher. Chan Parker is present. Location unknown, although the date can be fixed by references to the rehearsals of the Gene Roland "Band that Never Was" (March 30 and April 3, 1950) and to Parker's mother's graduation from nursing school (April 20, 1950). The interview appears on Bird Box Volume 3 and Philology Volume 7 (W 57).
STEARNS: Now at 17 years old you were on an automobile trip.
PARKER: Yeah.
STEARNS: And you got in an accident.
PARKER: Yeah.
STEARNS: And was that in Kansas City?
PARKER: That was going, that was between Kansas City and Jefferson City, Missouri.
STEARNS: Oh, playing a gig or something?
PARKER: Yeah. I was going on a Thanksgiving gig.
STEARNS: Oh, I see.
PARKER: And there was an accident.
STEARNS: And what happened? You broke how many ribs?
PARKER: I broke three ribs and had a spinal fracture.
STEARNS: That was an awful thing to happen to you at that age, you know.
PARKER: Oh yeah, it was. I mean everybody was so afraid that I wouldn't walk right no more, but everything was all right and, uh...
STEARNS: Well, look! What happened? You say then you got a job...
PARKER: Yeah.
STEARNS: And you studied...
PARKER: In Jefferson City, yeah...
STEARNS: In Jefferson...
PARKER: I got a job in this place, working, you know, but prior to that, this was when they were laughing at me. I knew how to play, um, I figured, I had learned the scale. I'd learned how to play two tunes in a certain key, in the key of D for your saxophone, F concert. I learned to play the first eight bars of "Lazy River" and I knew the complete tune of "Honeysuckle Rose." I didn't never stop to think about different keys or nothing like that. [Laughter] So I took my horn out to this joint where a bunch of fellows I had seen around were, and the first thing they started playing was "Body And Soul," Longbeat, you know? Shit! So I got to playing my "Honeysuckle Rose," I mean, an awful conglomeration. They laughed me off the bandstand. They laughed at me so hard.
STEARNS: How old, how old were you then?
PARKER: Oh, this was about along at the same time, 16, 17...
STEARNS: Before the accident?
PARKER: Yeah.
MAHER: Ah, yeah.
PARKER: About a year before the accident.
STEARNS: Where did you get your sax then?
PARKER: Well, my mother brought me a horn, oh, it was years before that, but I wasn't interested. I wasn't ready for it then. I didn't get interested in a horn until I got interested in the baritone horn when I was at High School. But I'd had that saxophone for a few years.
MAHER: Where did you go to High School, Charlie?
PARKER: Kansas City, Missouri. I went to Lincoln.
MAHER: In Kansas City?
PARKER: Yeah.
MAHER: Did you play in the High School marching band?
PARKER: Uh huh.
MAHER: Oh, did you play in that? Did they have a symphony band in High School?
PARKER: They had a, what they called a symphony band.
MAHER: Did you play in that? Baritone horn?
PARKER: Baritone horn, that's right.
STEARNS: And you'd learned "Honeysuckle Rose" and you'd learned the first eight bars of, which tune was it?
PARKER: "Up The Lazy River."
STEARNS: "Lazy River"... [Laughter] And you were just innocent enough so that when you walked in.
PARKER: I never thought about that, keys.
STEARNS: And you played it all in, what key was it?
PARKER: D for saxophone.
STEARNS: In D for saxophone. Oh, what a story! [Laughter]
MAHER: What a slaughter of the innocents! [Laughter]
PARKER: They murdered that tune, oh, boy!
STEARNS: Who did you play with? I mean, what band did you walk in on?
PARKER: Oh, it was a band working in a joint. There was a bunch of young fellows that had a band around Kansas City. Uh, it was Jimmy Keith's Band then, so it was Keith and a piano player, and Robert Wilson and James Ross and Shipley Gavan. That's the fellows' names that were working at this club in Kansas City.
STEARNS: Well, so after that you decided "I'm going home and work it out"?
PARKER: Yeah, that's it! [Laughter] Yeah, then I knew it must be figured out some kind of way. [Laughter] That was it...
STEARNS: And then you went back and it was only, what? two or three months that you...?
PARKER: Yeah, I was away for about two or three months.
STEARNS: And then where did you go when you say you were away? Were you outside of Kansas City?
PARKER: Yeah, actually I was on this job. The name of the town was Eldon, Missouri. It's about...
STEARNS: Eldon. E, L, D, O, N?
PARKER: Yeah, it's about 35 miles from Jefferson City.
STEARNS: Oh, I see. And did you play a job there? Or was it...
PARKER: Yeah, it was a job. It's a resort, a summer resort, about during all the summer months, June resort, something like that.
MAHER: And that was where you had the chance to study while you were playing?
PARKER: Yeah.
CHAN: Bird bought his son a horn.
PARKER: Yeah, he got an alto.
MAHER: How old is he now?
PARKER: Fourteen.
MAHER: Fourteen? Does he play with it now?
PARKER: Made him bring it to the dance, stay around. It sure is a lot of fun having a son that old, you know?
STEARNS: Only 12 years old... It's a lot of fun, she played a C-melody once and I'm not looking. [Laughter] They never had any C-melody saxes, did they, when you were a kid?
PARKER: Yeah! They were more popular then than alto.
STEARNS: Were they?
PARKER: Sure! '32, '33, there was Guy Lombardo was just getting popular then, that's when he was using it.
STEARNS: Frankie Trumbauer was playing C-melody.
STEARNS: Charlie, what do you remember of your father? Was he around when you were growing up?
PARKER: Some of the time. He died when I was, uh, oh, about when I was married and the baby was born.
STEARNS: And what sort of work was he in?
PARKER: He was like a, in his active years he was a waiter on this train, Santa Fe. Runs from Kansas City to Chicago, Los Angeles and back, Florida and back, Texas and back.
STEARNS: I see.
PARKER: He sure was a well-tutored guy. He spoke two, three languages.
STEARNS: Yeah? Did he play any instruments?
PARKER: Nah! He was a dancer in his real young years.
STEARNS: Really?
PARKER: Was in this circus on the TOB line. Ringling Brothers.
MAHER: What was he on? Was he on TOBA?
PARKER: Yeah, that was the circus, yeah.
MAHER: He was with an old circus, yeah! (sings)
STEARNS: TOBA
PARKER: Yeah, sure. Ha-ha!
MAHER: Some years ago I heard about that, during the old Keith, Orpheum circuit days. It was dying out then, late twenties.
STEARNS: And he met your mother in Kansas City?
PARKER: Yeah, they met in Kansas City.
STEARNS: How is your mother now? She's still alive, isn't she?
PARKER: Yeah! She's very much alive! [Laughter]
STEARNS: Is she?
PARKER: Fine, yeah!
STEARNS: She got a lot of energy?
PARKER: Activity, yeah! She just graduated from nurses' school a couple of months ago.
STEARNS: No!
CHAN: No kidding!
PARKER: Yeah, invitation, I sent her a watch.
CHAN: How old is she?
PARKER: Boy! 62.
CHAN: 62. [Parker laughs]
STEARNS: How old did you say?
PARKER: 62.
STEARNS: 62 years old.
PARKER: 62.
STEARNS: Wonderful!
PARKER: She's graduated from nurses' school. [Laughter]
MAHER: Hey, that's wonderful!
PARKER: She's active as can be, man. She don't look and act it, you know. I mean, she's spryer than me, you know. She's very seldom ill.
STEARNS: Yeah.
PARKER: She lives in that good climate in the country. She takes good care of herself, she owns her own home. She's got, she's very well, she's very well situated.
STEARNS: Do you have any brothers and sisters, Charlie?
PARKER: I got a brother.
STEARNS: Older or younger?
PARKER: Older.
STEARNS: You got an older brother?
PARKER: Yeah.
STEARNS: Did he ever play any instruments?
PARKER: No. He's a mail inspector at the Post Office at Kansas.
STEARNS: And no sisters.. Hi, darling!...
[Chan's 3 year old daughter, Kim, interrupts]
So your mother is a very, very energetic, lively person, huh? You think, in a way, that's where you got your spirit? [Laughter]
PARKER: I guess so.
STEARNS: Your dad was a dancer, that has the rhythm so, that could explain part of that, you know?
PARKER: Yeah, that's right.
MAHER: When I first read that you ever played on a baritone horn with a marching band with a...
PARKER: When I first went to High School, I was interested in music, you know. So they gave me one of these, um, alto horns, you know? 'Coop, coop! Coop, coop! Coop, coop! Coop, coop!', so then I liked the baritone horn. When my successor graduated I got right in, you know? When what's-her-name graduated, the baritone player, the euphonium player....
MAHER: Is that a big brass horn? Not like a tuba?
PARKER: No, it isn't as big as a tuba. It's got three valves. It's between a tuba and an alto horn, pretty big. You hold it like this, you know, like this... [Laughter]
STEARNS: I can't figure you playing that! When did you get on reeds? When your mother gave you the saxophone, huh?
PARKER: Yeah, well, I mean, she, I had the saxophone then, but it was loaned out. A friend of mine was playing saxophone at the time. He had a band so he borrowed the horn from me. He kept it over two years, too. He kept it maybe a year after I got out of High School. I got out of High School in '35. MATTER: The year after I did.
PARKER: Oh, a gang of things happened that year! I got the horn, I gotten married...
STEARNS: Listen! You, when you were born, what was your, born in what? Nineteen...
STEARNS: What happened in '36? You graduated from High School? You were playing saxophone by then weren't you?
PARKER: Uh huh. Gotten married.
STEARNS: Married...
PARKER: Did a gang of things that year.
STEARNS: And this was all in Kansas City, huh?
PARKER: Yeah.
STEARNS: I was out through Kansas City in about '40 and I caught Harlan Leonard and Jay McShann out there and I don't know, maybe you were with McShann then. I've been kicking myself ever since, you know, I didn't.
PARKER: Yeah, I was with McShann's band then...
STEARNS: I came out with George Avakian.
PARKER: McShann didn't have a big band then, did he?
STEARNS: No, it was a little seven or eight piece.
PARKER: I was in that band.
STEARNS: You were?
PARKER: It was at the Plaza, way out of Kansas City.
STEARNS: Yes, we had to go outside of town to catch that band. And I heard that and I didn't know it!
STEARNS: I want to ask you about some of those recording dates, what happened on them, you know. What a story about that Rubberlegs Williams! [Laughter]
PARKER: He sure did that. The coffees got confused some kind of way and I was looking for the coffee that I had because I'd marked the container, you know...
STEARNS: You had the coffee in a...
PARKER: It was all in containers. They sent out for coffee and sandwiches in a container. It was all in containers, you know. Everybody was eating the sandwiches so I set my cup down beside the chair and dropped a benzedrine in it, you know, and I was waiting for it to dissolve. Somehow or another, Rubberlegs gets hungry and he goes to collect his coffee and he got it mixed up with mine. And about 20 minutes later he was all over the place. [Laughter] You really ought to have seen him. He couldn't do nothing. He really got busy, you know what I mean? [Laughter] It was a funny thing! [Laughter]
STEARNS: Well, he was really singing seriously, was he? He wasn't trying to kid you, was he?
PARKER: No he wasn't, not a bit, and, ordinarily, if it hadn't been for that, I mean, he would, he'd have sung in a different style altogether.
STEARNS: He would've?
PARKER: Yeah. You never heard any of those records when he was, you know, normal, y'know? He's got records out when, you know, he was normal.
MAHER: Much smoother.
PARKER: Much smoother.
STEARNS: These records you made with, uh, Trummy Young was on some of them.
PARKER: Yeah.
STEARNS: Remember? And All-Stars? And some came out on Manor, some came out on...
PARKER: Continental.
STEARNS: Isn't that the one that...
PARKER: Some came out on the Continental label.
CHAN: Isn't that the one where you play "I Can't Get Started"? That was made that day, wasn't it?
PARKER: No.
CHAN: It wasn't?
PARKER: Um, "Dream Of You," "Seventh Avenue."
STEARNS: Yeah.
PARKER: Two other sides were made that day.
STEARNS: Were they all made for the same company that day? Then they just got 'em out on different...
PARKER: Oh, that date was made for Continental, yeah, but I have seen some of those records out on the Manor label, I tell you.
STEARNS: Was it more fun playing with the Hines Band or the Eckstine Band on big bands?
PARKER: I think it was more fun playing with the Eckstine Band.
STEARNS: The Eckstine Band.
PARKER: But the Hines Band was much smoother.
STEARNS: Billy makes a very easygoing leader and everybody's having a ball.
CHAN: Swinging!
STEARNS: This Tiny Grimes date, you made "Red Cross" and "Tiny's Tempo" and soon, they since put it out with your name on it.
PARKER: They did?
STEARNS: Yeah. They figured it would sell more records, you see. Came out under Tiny's name.
CHAN: They're not allowed to do that, are they?
STEARNS: I don't know.
PARKER: Yeah.
STEARNS: Reissued under Parker's name...
PARKER: They're not supposed to do that but, I mean, Herman Lubinsky does a gang of things he ain't supposed to do.
MAHER: All guys do. It's the old, old story. You can't, you can copyright a label but you can't copyright a performance and, once you sell your time that day you're...
CHAN: I heard he has eleven sets of books, whoever wants to see the books... [Laughter]
STEARNS: Well, Charlie, is it true that "Mop, Mop" was your idea originally? Leonard [Feather] says here that "Mop, Mop" was one of the things that you threw off and then, finally, I don't know who.., somebody else...
PARKER: It could've been, man, 'cause we used to do that a long time ago in Kansas City.
STEARNS: You did "Mop, Mop" in Kansas City?
PARKER: Years ago. That was just, put in drum beats in there just for the four, we'd just play, when we got to the channel we used to play sometimes [Parker sings] you know, just put it in.
Chan has photographs of the recent rehearsals with the Gene Roland Band.
CHAN: Would you like to see these? Did you hear about Gene Roland's Band?
STEARNS: No.
CHAN: Tell him about it, Bird. It had eight reeds.
PARKER: Yeah. Twenty-seven piece band rehearsing.
STEARNS: How long ago was this?
PARKER: A month, three weeks ago, a month ago.
CHAN: Do you know all those people?
STEARNS: No.
PARKER: Eight reeds, six trombones and eight brass.
CHAN: If you like...
STEARNS: But who, what label did they record for?
CHAN: They're not. They just rehearsed.
PARKER: Didn't record, just rehearsed.
CHAN: This is Sonny Rich, Eddie Bert, Zoot Sims and John Simmons, Al Cohn, Buddy Jones, this is Gene and the Band, and the trumpet section, of course, every day at rehearsal they had different people, Jon Nielson, Sonny Rich, Marty Bell, Red, Al Porcino, and here's Gene, Don and Zoot and Al Cohn, Bird, Joe Maini...
STEARNS: Wow! Look at that reed section! What a...
PARKER: Eight saxophones.
STEARNS: How'd it sound?
CHAN: Wonderful!
PARKER: It was solid, Wild!
CHAN: They had three drummers.
STEARNS: Who was doing the arrangements?
PARKER: Gene Roland.
STEARNS: Well, you did record 'em, didn't you?
PARKER: On this tape recorder.
STEARNS: Who has the tape? Do you have it?
PARKER: Made one recording, no, I don't have it. Made one, made one record.
CHAN: Gene has it.
PARKER: But the balance was bad.
STEARNS: Oh,where were they made?
PARKER: It was made at Nola's.
STEARNS: Nola's?
PARKER: Gene has all those covered. He was recording all summer...
STEARNS: It's awful hard to record a big sound in New York, because there are so few rooms that are...
PARKER: Sure! You know, at first the theory was that they must have a very toned-down room, something with a lot of soft things in it, to really get these acoustics, that's all wrong, man!
STEARNS: Yeah!
PARKER: Because in Europe they have much better balance on records than we do here, and they record in old temples and old cathedrals and old churches, backyards and everything, with no acoustics whatsoever, just nothing but a chamber, an echo chamber, and the records come out with a great big sound.
MAHER: You know, in these small rooms, I guess, particularly in the higher register, everything compresses, it gets squeezed.
Interview with Leonard Feather broadcast on the Voice of America's "Jazz Club USA." It appears on Philology Volume 9 (W 120) and Ember/Fat Boy FBB-901.
FEATHER: Do you have any plans at the moment about any future engagement?
PARKER: Well, about future engagements, no, not any exact plans. I guess you heard I'm breaking with my manager.
FEATHER: Yes, as a matter of fact, I sent an item to Down Beat about that just last week.
PARKER: Yes, well, I mean, after that maybe plans can be made but no, nothing special right now.
FEATHER: Well, lets talk about your recent trip to Europe, because I have a couple of records coming up by people you probably met over there, and I know you had a very interesting experience. It was quite a short trip, but a very eventful one. How long were you over there?
PARKER: Well, I was in Scandinavia eleven days and I was in Paris for four days, in Europe.
FEATHER: The Paris part was not for, actually for playing, was it? Just, it was a visit.
PARKER: Oh, just a visit, I went there strictly for a visit.
FEATHER: What did you do in Scandinavia? Who was with you there?
PARKER: Well, in Scandinavia I had the pleasure of working with Roy Eldridge, along with a Swedish band which consisted of RoIf Ericson, I guess you remember him? He was here with Woody Herman.
FEATHER: Oh, I certainly do.
PARKER: And I, er, some of the names I can't pronounce. Anyway, there were five musicians with me all the while, and then Roy had his own band and he did his thing with them. I did the thing...
FEATHER: Yeah, and where is Roy Eldridge now? Is he back?
PARKER: Well, he's in Paris.
FEATHER: Aha, does he intend to come back here? Or is he going to stay over indefinitely?
PARKER: Well, I don't know. I think he intends to come back. Anyway, he has his ticket back.
FEATHER: Oh, well, that's good news because we sure miss him. I got some records that he made in Paris and I want to play them on the show some day. I have one.thing where he sings the blues in French. It's really strange.
PARKER: Yes, I think I've heard that.
FEATHER: Yeah, that's great. Well, while we're talking about that, how about cutting in for a moment for some music that comes from over there. James Moody is the chief musician on this next side. Did you meet him over there?
PARKER: Yes, I saw him over there. I met him here first, though.
FEATHER: Did you work with him ever?
PARKER: No, I haven't, he's a very fine, only on the concert in 1949, in Paris that was.
FEATHER: Oh, I see. This is one of the sides he made I believe in Scandinavia and the title is "Blue and Moody."
[Feather plays the record.]
FEATHER: Do you know who Reinhold Svenson is?
PARKER: Reinhold Svenson? Sure, I know Reinhold Svenson.
FEATHER: Tell me about him.
PARKER: Well, he's a blind pianist, he's blond, he weighs about two hundred 35, 40 pounds...
FEATHER: No kidding?
PARKER: Very clever, very good musician, very jovial.
FEATHER: He certainly is very talented, too. He made a whole series of sides with a quintet over there, I think patterned after George Shearing, wasn't it?
PARKER: Yes, yes, that could be.
FEATHER: Sounds very much like it. Anyway, we have one of those sides here. They just brought out an LP consisting of eight Reinhold Svenson numbers and I think you'll like this one, "Dearly Beloved."
[Feather plays the record.]
FEATHER: Say one thing for that record, it has a fine surface, a lot of surface, anyway. Well, the music is good. Well, Charlie, I would like to get your opinion on something. I read a very interesting article just a few days ago in Ebony Magazine under the byline of Cab Calloway. Did you read it?
PARKER: Yes, Leonard, I saw such an article, and I've never read or heard of such a violent and contentious thing against musicians of today.
FEATHER: Well, that's a pretty strong statement. I think we'd better tell our listeners what the article is about.
PARKER: Well, Okay, let's tell our listeners. Let's tell them this way -- if they should like to read the article, it's published in Ebony Magazine under the name of Cab Calloway, the rest will speak for itself.
FEATHER: Well, ah, can I go into a few details anyway? Cab Calloway says in the article, or implies in the article, that narcotics are ruining the music business, and, oh, he makes it very clear that he thinks a large number of musicians are using narcotics, and that he goes into a great number of details about this thing, which we won't go into on the air, but, anyway, it's a very provocative article. Would you say that it represents the true picture of the situation?
PARKER: I'd rather say that it was poorly written, poorly expressed, and poorly meant. It was just poor.
FEATHER: Well, that makes it pretty definite. As a matter of fact, I'm inclined to agree with you, Charlie. I think the article was perhaps badly timed, and perhaps didn 't go into a careful enough examination of the real facts. As a matter of fact, it quoted something that I wrote several years ago about the same subject in Esquire, and it misquoted, or rather made an incomplete quote that gave a wrong picture of my feeling about the thing. I certainly don't think that a musician necessarily plays better under the influence of any stimulus of any kind, and I am pretty sure you agree with me, don't you?
PARKER: Well, um, yes, I'd rather agree with you to an extent. I think you are quoting something that I once said to you about this.
FEATHER: That's right, exactly. You said that to me quite a while ago.
PARKER: That's exactly right. Well, nobody's fooling themselves, never, anymore. Anyway, we'll put it that way, and in case an investigation should be conducted, it should be done in the right way instead of trying to destroy musicians and their names. I don't think it's quite a good idea.
FEATHER: Yeah, well, I think that maybe Cab is going to think twice about whether it was a good idea to have that article appear in...
PARKER: He has already expressed his thoughts.
FEATHER: He has? You mean in the magazine? Well, that's true.
PARKER: That's exactly right.
FEATHER: Well, that's true, but I haven't talked to him since the article came out, and I'd be very interested to hear what he has to say about the musicians' reaction to that article, because there's going to be a pretty violent reaction, just as yours is.
PARKER: Well, would you expect anything less?
FEATHER: No, as a matter of fact, you're right. I think it's bound to cause a lot of talk, and a lot of unfavorable talk, certainly. Well, Charlie, it's been very, very good talking about all these subjects with you, and before you go, I'd like to say that as soon as you have your plans set, please come up here and tell us all about it, tell us who your new manager is, and where your new bookings will be and, of course, as far as what your new records are, we'll be keeping in touch with that and reviewing them as they come along, and I know they'll be all A's and B's.
PARKER: All right, Leonard, thanks a lot.
Interview with John McLellan (aka John T. Fitch) for Boston's WHDH radio station. The date is Saturday, June 13, 1953; Parker is booked at the Hi-Hat Club for a week (June 8-14) during which time at least one performance is broadcast on station WCOP. The interview appears on Philology Volume 18 (W 848).
McLELLAN: Welcome to Boston, Charlie, and more particularly to our show.
PARKER: Thank you, John, it's a pleasure to be on this show.
McLELLAN: We thought that with an unusual guest, perhaps we'd try a few unusual things this evening. So I've given you partly no indication of the sort of questions that I'm going to ask you, or, for that matter, the type of music that I'm going to play for you. Although, of course, in discussing it briefly last night over at the Hi-Hat where you're appearing, incidentally, through when?
PARKER: Through Sunday.
McLELLAN: Through Sunday, Sunday night, and you have an afternoon...
PARKER: Afternoon session there, running from 4 to 8.
McLELLAN: Well, I'm sure that many of our listeners will want to drop in and catch you either tonight, tomorrow afternoon or tomorrow evening at the Hi-Hat at Columbus and Massachusetts Avenue, because I know that they will be in for a very good show.
Well, as I started to say, in the brief talk we did have a chance to have last night, I did find out a few of the artists that Charlie Parker himself listens to, including some of the music of a different nature, it may surprise some of our listeners. So, if you're game, I'm set to play something for you to get the ball rolling. You set to listen?
PARKER: Alright Johnny, go ahead.
McLELLAN: All right, let's try this...
[McLellan plays a record by Bartok.]
McLELLAN: Hmm, I don't know quite what to ask you about that selection. Are you familiar with it?
PARKER: Yes, it's one of Bartok's works, I forget the name, but Bartok is my favorite, you know.
McLELLAN: Well, that was one of the things I picked up yesterday in the brief chance we had to get together. That in particular was just a very small fragment from the, from one of my favorite works, the "Concerto for..." no, no, it's not a concerto, it's "Music for Stringed Instruments, Percussion and Celeste."
PARKER: Yes.
McLELLAN: Well, the reason I chose that particular little portion of it was because of its violent rhythmic ideas that he brings out in that. And so, if you'd like to say a few words about your favorite composer, why, go right ahead.
PARKER: Well, I mean, as far as his history is concerned, I mean, I've read that he was Hungarian born. He died an American exile in a General Hospital in New York, in 1945. At that time, I was just becoming introduced to modern classics, contemporary and otherwise, you know, and to my misfortune, he was deceased before I had the pleasure to meet the man. As far as I'm concerned, he is beyond a doubt one of the most finished and accomplished musicians that ever lived.
McLELLAN: Oh, now you made a very interesting point then when you said that you heard him in 1945...
PARKER: Yeah.
McLELLAN: Because this brings up a question that I'd like to ask you, and if some of these questions sound as though I wrote them out ahead of time, I did. At a certain point in our musical history, prior to 1945 as a matter of fact, you and a group of others evidently became dissatisfied with the stereotyped form into which music had settled, so you altered the rhythm, the melody and the harmony, rather violently, as a matter of fact. Now, how much of this change that you were responsible for do you feel was spontaneous experimentation with your own ideas, and how much was the adaptation of the ideas of your classical predecessors, for example as in Bartok?
PARKER: Oh, well, it was 100% spontaneous, 100%. Nor a bit of the idiom of the music which travels today known as progressive music was adapted or even inspired by the older composers or predecessors.
McLELLAN: It's rather strange we have this almost a progressive series of not coincidences, but where one follows the other -- for example, after Debussy, considerably after, you have piano players like Erroll Garner, who is respected, of course, by a great many people. But, even earlier than that, the trumpet playing of Bix Beiderbecke and his piano compositions was largely taken, I mean,from the Debussy form...
PARKER: Uh huh.
McLELLAN: Very impressionistic, lush, rippling chords and clusters of chords, and even the titles of things like "In A Mist," "Clouds" remind you of Debussy. I just wondered if in this case, it was partly the same thing, or whether this was actually spontaneous.
PARKER: Well, I'm not too familiar with the Beiderbecke school of music, but the things which are happening now known as progressive music, or by the trade name Bebop, not a bit of it was inspired, or adapted, from the music of our predecessors Bach, Brahms, Beethoven, Chopin, Ravel, Debussy, Shostakovich, Stravinsky, etc.
McLELLAN: Then, whom do you feel were the really important persons, besides yourself, who evidently were dissatisfied with music as it was, and started to experiment?
PARKER: Well, let me make a correction here, please. It wasn't that we were dissatisfied with it, it was just that another conception came along, and this was just the way we thought it should go. During that time -- this happened in 1938, just a little bit before '45 -- Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, Kenny Clarke, there was Charlie Christian -- '37 I guess -- there was Bud Powell, Don Byas, Ben Webster, yours truly...
McLELLAN: Ahh, the storybook names, the ones that we read about in our history, musical history books of that time. Well, now, I know it's difficult to sort of categorize musicians and schools of music, but in thinking this over I did sort of group what we hear today into seven different categories and I'd like to ask you what you feel, not only about the music, but about the future of each of these forms. For example, taking the earliest, just straight Dixieland, I mean, do you hear that today, it's featured in a lot of clubs, now do the musicians who play that merely satisfy the demand of the college crowd or whoever it is that particularly wants to hear that, or do they honestly want to play that?
PARKER: Well, I'd rather say they honestly wanted to play that. That's their conception, that's their idea. That's the way they think it should go, and so they render likewise.
McLELLAN: And how often and how long will they continue to play "High Society" and "When the Saints Go Marching In"?
PARKER: There's no time, there's no way in the world you can tell how long that will go on, you know.
McLELLAN: With roughly the same solos, the same...
PARKER: Yeah, roughly the same. Well, that's the skeleton, that's the way that music was set up, you know, with certain, I guess you'd call them choruses, little ad lib choruses that were remembered, and handed down from person to person, and they just respect the solos of the older age, you know, rather than improvisation, spontaneous improvisation, that is.
McLELLAN: But as I can probably gather, you have no interest in that subject at all.
PARKER: Well, I like Dixieland, I like good Dixieland, you know. I just don't play it because, I most likely wouldn't make a good job at it. Anyway, I just think it should go another way.
McLELLAN: Sure. Now what about the musicians who don't play bebop, as you referred to it, and have also grown tired of Dixieland cliches. I don't even know what to call their music. But, I mean, people like Vic Dickenson, Doc Cheatham, Rex Stewart, many fine musicians who are not particularly Dixieland addicts, but who play, well, I just don't know what to call it?
PARKER: Well, that came along during the Swing Era, say, for instance, Dixieland I think was introduced in '14 or '15, and then the Swing Era came in 1928 and lasted 'till 1935, '36. I guess you'd put them, say like, if you just had to categorize, you'd say that was the Swing Era, you know.
McLELLAN: Of course, there are a lot of them still around and many of them, as Nat Hentoff has pointed out recently in Down Beat, are finding it pretty tough to work because people are, that is, the audiences are pretty violently split between Dixieland and Cool music, and there seems to be no room for these middle of the road swing musicians.
PARKER: Oh, I'd like to differ, I beg to differ, in fact. There's always room for musicians, you know. There's no such thing as the middle of the road, it will be one thing or the other -- good music or otherwise, you know. And it doesn't make any difference which idiom it might be in -- swing, bebop, as you might want to call it, or Dixieland -- if it's good it will be heard.
McLELLAN: What about the musicians who were in on the growth of bebop, but who quickly standardized a few cliches and now cater exclusively to the go-go-go crowd? Is that just a fad, or are we going to have that with us for some time?
PARKER: That I wouldn't know either, since I don't cater for that particular thing, I wouldn't know. I mean, as far as I'm concerned, it's just more or less the way a man feels when he plays his instrument. I mean, if he feels that about it it will stay, if he's just trying to commercialize on it it will most likely vary from one thing to another.
McLELLAN: Another group might be the experimenters and -- I dreamed my own term -- classical jazz, those who are well-schooled and have adapted a number of things that they've been taught into their music. I'm speaking particularly of Dave Brubeck and Gerry Mulligan, Gerry Mulligan who is devoted almost entirely to a real contrapuntal music without even having a piano to lend any harmony to the things he plays. What about, what do you feel about them?
PARKER: Well, the two men you mentioned being extremely good friends of mine, even if they weren't friends of mine I'd find their music very very interesting, not only from an intellectual standpoint -- it's very intelligent music, and it's very well played, it's got a lot of feeling and it isn't missing anything. It's definitely music 100%.
McLELLAN: Would you feel yourself fitting into a group like that if you played with them?
PARKER: Oh, I imagine I could become acclimated, yes, I would like something like that.
McLELLAN: Another group might be called the avant-garde, as primarily exemplified by Lennie Tristano.
PARKER: Ah ha.
McLELLAN: There we have what they try to do occasionally, complete collective improvisation with no theme, no chords, no chord changes on which to work, just six men, or whatever it may be, improvising together. It's that, er, it's always struck me as being extremely difficult to understand how it's possible in the first place.
PARKER: Oh, no. Those are just like you said most improvisations, you know, and if you listen close enough you can find the melody travelling along within the chords, any series of chord structures, you know, and rather than to make the melody predominant. In the style used that Lennie and they present, it's more or less heard or felt.
McLELLAN: Well, I refer particularly... They made one record called "Intuition," and I heard them do it in concert, in which they started off with no key, no basic set of chord changes, or anything.
PARKER: Aha... It must be a build-up to, both the key signature and the chord structure tend to create the melody...
McLELLAN: As they go along.
PARKER: Yes.
McLELLAN: Then there's a sort of a field apart, including mostly individuals who stick out... like Duke Ellington, Ralph Burns writing for Woody Herman and Stan Kenton, whom you expressed an interest in. I think that before we go any further I'd like to get your comments on a particular Stan Kenton record. If you'd like to listen to one now...
[McLellan plays Kenton's "My Lady."]
McLELLAN: There you have Stan Kenton. Oh, I guess that's rather obvious, but I'll turn to Charlie Parker for at least the featured soloist on that record.
PARKER: Yeah, it was Lee Konitz. Very fine alto work on that record, too. I hadn't heard that before, Johnny. What was the name of that?
McLELLAN: It's called "My Lady."
PARKER: Very beautiful.
McLELLAN: I'm not sure, but I think perhaps Lee wrote it himself, I'm not sure of that.
PARKER: It's a beautiful tune -- very well done, too.
McLELLAN: Well, now I'm giving you an opportunity to speak of Stan Kenton.
PARKER: Yeah, well, as I was going on to say, Stan holds my definite interest. I mean, in lots of ways he has pioneered quite a bit in this progressive style of music. One particular record I was asking you about a few minutes ago, have you paid any attention, particular attention to "House of Strings"?
McLELLAN: We haven't played "House of Strings." We did play "City of Glass" not too long ago, and we had a very interesting discussion here with Nat Hentoff and Rudolph Ely, the music critic of the Herald and Traveller but, adding a little more to that, I would like just to mention an article in this current edition of Down Beat magazine, written by Leonard Bernstein, in which in the course of discussing a number of things, he mentions this -- I'd just like to read this to you for your comments --
PARKER: All right.
McLELLAN: "Pretentiousness means calling attention to oneself. It means the guy is saying 'Look at me -- I'm modern' and I think that's about the most old-fashioned attitude anyone can assume. I found that about Kenton: it's modernistic, like old-fashioned modern furniture which is just unbearable, it's moderne." Composition is an important word, it means that somebody has to make a piece which is a work, which hangs together from beginning to end. Now I think in particular he's referring to things of that nature -- "House of Strings," "City of Glass," which are completely scored, with perhaps little opening for improvisation by any soloist.
PARKER: No... Well, you had two factors moving there -- you say Nat wrote that?
McLELLAN: No, this is written by Leonard Bernstein.
PARKER: Anyway, Leonard Bernstein, yeah, I can understand how he meant when he says the guy says "Look at me, I'm modern." That's strictly from the publicity agent's mouth. You know, Stan never has made such a statement, I know he hasn't, and most likely he never will. But he's still done many things, many good things, towards the pioneering of this music, introducing strings, different instrumentations, different chord structures and just pioneering in general -- a definite asset to the music.
McLELLAN: What do you feel about a longer piece of music, which is completely scored, which doesn't leave any opening for improvisation -- is that still jazz?
PARKER: Well, it depends on how it's written. It could be, yes.
McLELLAN: I see. What about your own group, the people you work with, the other musicians who started with you? I've noticed that, for example, you play "Anthropology" and "52nd Street Theme" perhaps, but they were written a long time ago. What is to take their place, and be the basis for your future?
PARKER: Hmm, that's hard to tell too, John, you see your ideas change as you grow older. Most people fail to realize that most of the things they hear coming out of a man's horn, ad lib, or else things that are written, original things, they're just experiences, the way he feels -- the beauty of the weather, the nice look of a mountain, or maybe a nice fresh cool breath of air, I mean all those things. You can never tell what you'll be thinking tomorrow. But I can definitely say that the music won't stop, you keep going forward.
McLELLAN: And you feel that you, yourself change continuously?
PARKER: I do feel that way, yes.
McLELLAN: And listening to your earlier recordings-- you become dissatisfied with them? You feel that...
PARKER: Okay, I still think that the best record is yet to be made, if that's what you mean.
McLELLAN: That's about what I mean. I understand that you have something new in the offing.
PARKER: Yes, we did it two weeks ago, Monday. Twelve voices, clarinet, flute, oboe, bassoon, French horn and three rhythm. I hope that they might sound okay.
McLELLAN: Well, we will be very much interested hearing them when they do come out. In the concluding moments of our show I would like to play something else that I'm reasonably sure you haven't heard, which might be considered a salute to you. We won 't have time to hear it all, but I'm sure you will be interested in, at least, hearing a bit of Stan Getz and his "Parker 51"...
[McLellan plays Getz's "Parker 51."]
McLELLAN: And there we have about all we have time to hear of "Parker 51" -- Stan Getz from his "Jazz at Storyville" album, and his obvious salute to you. Is that the first time you've heard that?
PARKER: Yes, that's the first time I've heard it, John.
McLELLAN: Do you feel he captured your own mood?
PARKER: Oh, yes. He's really too much. I sure like that, that was "Cherokee," a sad time "Cherokee."
McLELLAN: Well, I'm afraid that our time has about run out. I certainly want to wish you a continuing good stay at the Hi-Hat. I did get the time to hear you play twice. I enjoyed it thoroughly. I feel that, if possible, you're playing better than ever. I hope that many of our listeners will take the opportunity to hear you, either tonight, or tomorrow afternoon at three, or your last night, Sunday night, and, Charlie, thank you very much for being with us on the Top Show this evening.
PARKER: Thank you, John, it's always a pleasure to be on your show. MCLELLAR: Thank you. And now this is John McLellan hoping you've enjoyed our program with recorded music, hoping too, you'll join us Saturday at seven with our music from the Top Show...
Interview with John McLellan and Paul Desmond on station WHDH; Parker is booked at the Hi-Hat Club for a week (January 18-24), during which time several performances are broadcast on station WCOP. The interview appears on Philology Volume 8 (W 80).
DESMOND: That music, because there's many good people playing in that record, but the style of the alto is so different from anything else that's on the record, or that went before. Did you realize at that time the effect you were going to have on jazz -- that you were going to change the entire scene in the next ten years?
PARKER: Well, let's put it like this, no. I had no idea that it was that much different.
McLELLAN: I'd like to stick in a question, if I may. I'd like to know why there was this violent change, really. After all, up until this time the way to play the alto sax was the way that Johnny Hodges and Benny Carter played alto, and this seems to be an entirely different conception, not only of how to play that particular horn, but of music in general.
DESMOND: Yeah, how to play any horn.
PARKER: I don't think there's any answer to...
DESMOND: ...it's like the way you eat.
PARKER: That's what I said when I first started talking, that's my first conception, man, that's the way I thought it should go, and I still do. I mean, music can stand much improvement. Most likely, in another 25, maybe 50 years, some youngster will come along and take this style and really do something with it, you know, but I mean, ever since I've ever heard music I've always thought it should be very clean, very precise... as clean as possible, anyway... you know, and more or less to the people, you know, something they could understand, something that was beautiful, you know... there's definitely stories and stories and stories that can be told in the musical idiom, you know -- you wouldn't say idiom, but it's so hard to describe music other than the basic way to describe it -- music is basically melody, harmony and rhythm, but, I mean, people can do much more with music than that. It can be very descriptive in all kinds of ways, you know, all walks of life. Don't you agree, Paul?
DESMOND: Yeah, and you always do have a story to tell -- it's one of the most impressive things about everything I've ever heard of yours.
PARKER: That's more or less the object, that's what I thought it should be.
DESMOND: Uh-huh. Another thing that's a major factor in your playing, is this fantastic technique, that nobody's quite equalled. I've always wondered about that, too -- whether there was, whether that came behind practicing or whether that was just from playing, whether that evolved gradually.
PARKER: Well, you make it so hard for me to answer you, you know, because I can't see where there's anything fantastic about it all. I put quite a bit of study into the horn, that's true. In fact, the neighbours threatened to ask my mother to move once. We were living out West. She said I was driving them crazy with the horn. I used to put in at least 11 to 15 hours a day.
DESMOND: Yes, that's what I wondered.
PARKER: That's true, yes. I did that for over a period of 3 or 4 years.
DESMOND: Because that's the answer.
PARKER: That's the facts, anyway.
DESMOND: I heard a record of yours a couple of months ago that somehow I've missed up to date, and I heard a little 2 bar quote from the Close book that was like an echo from home... [Desmond hums the passage.]
PARKER: Yeah, yeah -- well, that was all done with books, you know, naturally it wasn't done with mirrors this time, it was done with books.
DESMOND: Well, that's very reassuring to hear, because somehow I got the idea that you were just sort of born with that technique, and you never had to worry too much about it, about keeping it working.
McLELLAN: You know, I'm very glad that he's bringing up this point, because I think that a lot of young musicians tend to think that...
DESMOND: Yeah, they do. They just go out...
McLELLAN: It isn 't necessary to do this.
DESMOND: And make those sessions and live the life, but they don't put in those 11 hours a day with any of the books.
PARKER: Oh, definitely, study is absolutely necessary, in all forms. It's just like any talent that's born within somebody, it's like a good pair of shoes when you put a shine on it, you know, like schooling just brings out the polish, you know, of any talent, it happens anywhere in the world. Einstein had schooling, but he has a definite genius, you know, within himself, schooling is one of the most wonderful things there's ever been.
McLELLAN: I'm glad to hear you say this.
PARKER: That's absolutely right.
DESMOND: Yeah.
PARKER: Well...
DESMOND: What other record?
PARKER: Which one should we take this time?
McLELLAN: I want to skip a little while. We... Charlie, picked out "Night and Day," that's one of his records. Is this with a band or with strings?
PARKER: No, this is with the live band... I think there's about 19 pieces on this.
McLELLAN: Why don't we listen to it, then and talk about it.
[McLellan plays "Night and Day."]
DESMOND: Charlie, this brings us kind of up to when you and Diz started joining forces -- the next record we have coming up. When did you first meet Dizzy Gillespie?
PARKER: Well, the first time, our official meeting I might say, was on the bandstand of the Savoy Ballroom in New York City in 1939. McShann's band first came to New York... I'd been in New York previously, but I went back West and rejoined the band and came back to New York with it. Dizzy came by one night -- I think at the time he was working with Cab Calloway's band -- and he sat in on the band and I was quite fascinated by the fellow, and we became very good friends and until this day we are, you know. And that was the first time I ever had the pleasure to meet Dizzy Gillespie.
DESMOND: Was he playing the same way then, before he played with you?
PARKER: I don't remember precisely. I just know he was playing, what you might call, in the vernacular of the streets, a beaucoup of horn, you know?
DESMOND: Beaucoup?
PARKER: Yeah.
DESMOND: Okay.
PARKER: You know, just like all of the horns packed up in one, you know.
DESMOND: Right.
PARKER: And we used to go around different places and jam together, and we had quite a bit of fun in those days, and shortly after the McShann band went out West again, I went out with them and I came back to New York again... I found Dizzy again, in the old Hines organization in 1941, and I joined the band with him. I was in New York... I, we, both stayed on the band about a year. It was Earl Hines, and Dizzy Gillespie, Sarah Vaughan, Billy Eckstine, Gail Brockman, Thomas Crump, Shadow Wilson... quite a few names that you'd recognize in the music world today, you know, were in that band.
DESMOND: That's quite a collection.
PARKER: And then that band broke up in '41. In '42 Dizzy was in New York and formed his own new combination in the Three Deuces, in New York City, and I joined his band there, and that's when these records you're about to play now... we made these in '42 in New York.
DESMOND: Yeah, I guess the first time I heard that group was, you came out to Billy Berg's?
PARKER: Oh, yes, but that was '45, that was later -- we'll get to that.
DESMOND: I'm just illustrating how far I was behind all this.
PARKER: Oh, don't be that way, modesty will get you nowhere.
DESMOND: I'm hip.
McLELLAN: So, shall we spin this 1942 one, "Groovin' High"?
DESMOND: Yes.
McLELLAN: Okay. This is Dizzy and Charlie...
[McLellan plays "Groovin' High."]
McLELLAN: I guess this is Slam Stewart and Remo Palmieri... I guess I don't know who it is on piano.
PARKER: Yes, I think that was Clyde Hart.
McLELLAN: Yes, I think so.
PARKER: And Big Sid Catlett, deceased now.
DESMOND: You said at that time, New York was jumping in '42.
PARKER: Yeah, New York was, well, those were what you might call the good old days, you know, Paul -- gay youth.
DESMOND: Tell me about it.
PARKER: Well, descriptively, just like I was going to say, gay youth, lack of funds...
DESMOND: Listen at grandfather Parker talking here.
PARKER: There was nothing to do but play, you know, and we had a lot of fun trying to play, you know. I did plenty of jam sessions -- meant much late hours, plenty good food, nice clean living, you know, but basically speaking, much poverty.
DESMOND: That's always good, too... no worries.
PARKER: It had it's place, definitely, in life.
DESMOND: Would you like that sort of situation to have continued indefinitely?
PARKER: Well, whether I liked it or not, it really did, Paul... I'm glad it finally blew over of a sort -- and I do mean of a sort.
DESMOND: Yes.
PARKER: Yeah, I enjoy this a little, much more, in fact, having the pleasure to work with the same guys of the sort that I've met. and I've met other young fellows, you know, that come along and I enjoy working with them when I have the pleasure to. If I might say, you, yourself Paul.
DESMOND: Oh, thanks.
PARKER: Sure, I've had lots of fun working with you, man... that's a pleasure in a million. And David, Dave Brubeck... David Brubeck, lots of other fellows have come along, you know, since that era, that particular era. It makes you feel that everything you did wasn't for nought, you know, that you really tried to prove something, and...
DESMOND: Well, man, you really did prove it. I think you did more than anybody in the last 10 years to leave a decisive mark on the history of jazz.
PARKER: Well, not yet, Paul, but I intended to. I'd like to study some more, I'm not quite through yet, I'm not quite -- I don't consider myself too old to learn.
DESMOND: No, I know many people are watching you at the moment, with the greatest of interest, to see what you're going to come up with next, in the next few years -- myself among the front row of them. And what have you got in mind? What are you going to be doing?
PARKER: Well, seriously speaking, I mean, I'm going to try to go to Europe to study. I had the pleasure to meet one Edgar Varese in New York City. He's a classical composer from Europe... he's a Frenchman, very nice fellow, and he wants to teach me. In fact, he wants to write for me, because he thinks I'm more for, more or less on a serious basis, you know -- and if he takes me on, I mean, when he finishes with me, I might have a chance to go to the Academie Musicale in Paris itself, and study, you know. My prime interest still is learning to play music, you know.
McLELLAN: Would you study playing or composition, or everything?
PARKER: I would study both -- never want to lose my horn.
DESMOND: Yeah, and you never should. That would be a catastrophe.
PARKER: I don't want to do that. That wouldn't work.
McLELLAN: Well, we're kind of getting ahead of the record sequence here, but it's been most fascinating. Do you want to say something about Miles Davis?
PARKER: Yeah, well I'll tell you how I met Miles. In 1944, Billy Eckstine formed his own organization -- Dizzy was on that band also, Lucky Thompson, there was Art Blakey, Tommy Potter, a lot of other fellows, and last and least, yours truly.
DESMOND: Modesty will get you nowhere, Charlie.
PARKER: I had the pleasure to meet Miles, for the first time, in St. Louis, when he was a youngster. He was still going to school. Later on he came to New York. He finished Juilliard, Miles did, he graduated from Juilliard and, at the time, I was just beginning to get my band together, you know, five pieces here, five pieces there. So I formed a band and took it into the Three Deuces for maybe seven to eight weeks, and at the time, Dizzy -- after the next time the organization broke up -- Dizzy was about to form his own band. There was so many things taking place then, I mean, it's hard to describe it, because it happened in a matter of months. Nevertheless, I went to California in 1945 with Dizzy, after I broke up my band, the first band I had, then I came again back to New York in '47, the early part of '47, and that's when I decided to have a band of my own permanently, and Miles was in my original band. I had Miles, I had Max, I had Tommy Potter and Al Haig in my band. Another band I had, I had Stan Levey, had Curley Russell, I had Miles and George Wallington. But I think you have a record out there, one of the records that we made with Max and Miles, I think, and yours truly, Tommy and Duke Jordan. What is it? I think it's "Perhaps." Is it not so? Well, this came along in the years of say '47... '46, '47. These particular sides were made in New York City, WOR 1440 Broadway, and this is the beginning of my career as a bandleader.
McLELLAN: Okay. Well, let's listen to "Perhaps."
[McLellan plays "Perhaps."] Creative Commons License All original content on this website is licensed under a Creative Commons License.
Charles Parker, Jr. (August 29, 1920 – March 12, 1955), also known as "Yardbird" and "Bird", was an American jazz saxophonist and composer.[1]
Parker was a highly influential jazz soloist and a leading figure in the development of bebop,[2]
a form of jazz characterized by fast tempos, virtuosic technique and
improvisation. Parker introduced revolutionary harmonic ideas including
rapid passing chords, new variants of altered chords, and chord
substitutions. His tone ranged from clean and penetrating to sweet and
somber. Parker acquired the nickname "Yardbird" early in his career;[3]
this and its shortened form, "Bird", which continued to be used for the
rest of his life, inspired the titles of a number of Parker
compositions, such as "Yardbird Suite", "Ornithology", "Bird Gets the Worm", and "Bird of Paradise". Parker was an icon for the hipster subculture and later the Beat Generation, personifying the jazz musician as an uncompromising artist and intellectual rather than just an entertainer.[4]
Charles Parker, Jr. was born in Kansas City, Kansas, and raised in Kansas City, Missouri, the only child of Adelaide "Addie" (Bailey) and Charles Parker.[5] He attended Lincoln High School[6] in September 1934, but withdrew in December 1935, just before joining the local musicians' union.[why?]
Parker began playing the saxophone at age 11, and at age 14 he joined
his school's band using a rented school instrument. His father,
Charles, was often absent but provided some musical influence; he was a
pianist, dancer and singer on the T.O.B.A. circuit. He later became a Pullman waiter or chef on the railways. Parker's mother Addie worked nights at the local Western Union office. His biggest influence at that time was a young trombone player who taught him the basics of improvisation.[citation needed]
Early career
In the late 1930s Parker began to practice diligently. During this
period he mastered improvisation and developed some of the ideas that
led to bebop. In an interview with Paul Desmond, he said that he spent three to four years practicing up to 15 hours a day.[7]
Bands led by Count Basie and Bennie Moten
certainly influenced Parker. He played with local bands in jazz clubs
around Kansas City, Missouri, where he perfected his technique, with the
assistance of Buster Smith, whose dynamic transitions to double and triple time influenced Parker's developing style. In 1938, Parker joined pianist Jay McShann's territory band.[8] The band toured nightclubs and other venues of the southwest, as well as Chicago and New York City.[9][10] Parker made his professional recording debut with McShann's band. As a teenager, Parker developed a morphine addiction while hospitalized after an automobile accident, and subsequently became addicted to heroin. He continued using heroin throughout his life, which ultimately contributed to his death.
New York City
In 1939 Parker moved to New York City, to pursue a career in music.
He held several other jobs as well. He worked for nine dollars a week as
a dishwasher at Jimmie's Chicken Shack, where pianist Art Tatum performed.[11]
According to an interview Parker gave in the 1950s, one night in 1939 he was playing "Cherokee"
in a jam session with guitarist William "Biddy" Fleet when he hit upon a
method for developing his solos that enabled one of his main musical
innovations. He realized that the 12 semitones of the chromatic scale can lead melodically to any key, breaking some of the confines of simpler jazz soloing.
Early in its development, this new type of jazz was rejected by many
of the established, traditional jazz musicians who disdained their
younger counterparts. The beboppers responded by calling these
traditionalists "moldy figs". However, some musicians, such as Coleman Hawkins
and Tatum, were more positive about its development, and participated
in jam sessions and recording dates in the new approach with its
adherents.
Because of the two-year Musicians' Unionban of all commercial recordings
from 1942 to 1944, much of bebop's early development was not captured
for posterity. As a result, it gained limited radio exposure. Bebop
musicians had a difficult time gaining widespread recognition. It was
not until 1945, when the recording ban was lifted, that Parker's
collaborations with Dizzy Gillespie, Max Roach, Bud Powell
and others had a substantial effect on the jazz world. (One of their
first small-group performances together was rediscovered and issued in
2005: a concert in New York's Town Hall on June 22, 1945.) Bebop soon gained wider appeal among musicians and fans alike.
On November 26, 1945, Parker led a record date for the Savoy
label, marketed as the "greatest Jazz session ever." Recording as
Charlie Parker's Reboppers, Parker enlisted such sidemen as Gillespie
and Miles Davis on trumpet, Curly Russell on bass and Roach on drums. The tracks recorded during this session include "Ko-Ko", "Billie's Bounce" and Now's the Time".
Shortly afterward, the Parker/Gillespie band traveled to an unsuccessful engagement at Billy Berg's
club in Los Angeles. Most of the group returned to New York, but Parker
remained in California, cashing in his return ticket to buy heroin. He
experienced great hardship in California, eventually being committed to Camarillo State Mental Hospital for a six-month period.
Addiction
Parker's addiction to heroin caused him to miss gigs and be
considered unemployable. He frequently resorted to busking, receiving
loans from fellow musicians and admirers, and pawning his saxophones for
drug money. Heroin use was rampant in the jazz scene, and users could
acquire it with little difficulty.
Although he produced many brilliant recordings during this period,
Parker's behavior became increasingly erratic. Heroin was difficult to
obtain once he moved to California, where the drug was less abundant, so
he used alcohol as a substitute. A recording for the Dial
label from July 29, 1946, provides evidence of his condition. Before
this session, Parker drank a quart of whiskey. According to the liner
notes of Charlie Parker on Dial Volume 1,
Parker missed most of the first two bars of his first chorus on the
track, "Max Making Wax". When he finally did come in, he swayed wildly
and once spun all the way around, away from his microphone. On the next
tune, "Lover Man", producer Ross Russell
physically supported Parker. On "Bebop" (the final track Parker
recorded that evening) he begins a solo with a solid first eight bars;
on his second eight bars, however, he begins to struggle, and a
desperate Howard McGhee, the trumpeter on this session, shouts, "Blow!" at him. Charles Mingus considered this version of "Lover Man" to be among Parker's greatest recordings, despite its flaws.[13] Nevertheless, Parker hated the recording and never forgave Ross Russell for releasing it. He re-recorded the tune in 1951 for Verve.
When Parker received his discharge from the hospital, he was clean
and healthy. Before leaving California, he recorded "Relaxin' at
Camarillo" in reference to his hospital stay. He returned to New York,
resumed his addiction to heroin and recorded dozens of sides for the Savoy
and Dial labels, which remain some of the high points of his recorded
output. Many of these were with his so-called "classic quintet"
including Davis and Roach.[citation needed]
In 1953, Parker performed at Massey Hall in Toronto,
Canada, joined by Gillespie, Mingus, Powell and Roach. Unfortunately,
the concert happened at the same time as a televised heavyweight boxing
match between Rocky Marciano and Jersey Joe Walcott, so the musical event was poorly attended. Mingus recorded the concert, resulting in the album Jazz at Massey Hall. At this concert, Parker played a plastic Grafton saxophone.[citation needed]
At this point in his career he was experimenting with new sounds and
materials. Parker himself explained the purpose of the plastic saxophone
in a May 9, 1953 broadcast from Birdland and did so again in a
subsequent May 1953 broadcast. Parker is known to have played several
saxophones, including the Conn 6M, the Martin Handicraft and Selmer Model 22. He is also known to have performed with a King "Super 20" saxophone. Parker's King Super 20 saxophone was made specially for him in 1947.[citation needed]
Death
Parker's grave at Lincoln Cemetery
Parker died on March 12, 1955, in the suite of his friend and patroness Baroness Pannonica de Koenigswarter at the Stanhope Hotel in New York City, while watching The Dorsey Brothers' Stage Show on television. The official causes of death were lobar pneumonia and a bleeding ulcer, but Parker also had an advanced case of cirrhosis
and had suffered a heart attack. The coroner who performed his autopsy
mistakenly estimated Parker's 34-year-old body to be between 50 and 60
years of age.[15]
Since 1950, Parker had been living with Chan Berg, the mother of his son Baird (who lived until 2014)[16] and his daughter Pree (who died as an infant of cystic fibrosis).
He considered Chan his wife although he never married her, nor did he
divorce his previous wife, Doris, whom he had married in 1948. His
marital status complicated the settling of Parker's estate and would
ultimately serve to frustrate his wish to be quietly interred in New
York City.
Parker wished never to return to Kansas City, even in death.[citation needed]
He had told Chan that he wanted to be buried in New York, the city he
considered his home. Dizzy Gillespie paid for the funeral arrangements[17] and organized a lying-in-state, a Harlem procession officiated by Congressman and Reverend Adam Clayton Powell, Jr.,
as well as a memorial concert. Parker's body was flown back to
Missouri, in accordance with his mother's wishes. Parker's widow
criticized the dead man's family for giving him a Christian funeral even
though they knew he was a confirmed atheist.[18]
Parker was buried at Lincoln Cemetery in Missouri, in a hamlet known as
Blue Summit, located close to I-435 and east Truman road.
Parker's style of composition involved interpolation of original melodies over existing jazz forms and standards, a practice known as contrafact and still common in jazz today. Examples include "Ornithology", "How High the Moon", and "Yardbird Suite",
the vocal version of which is called "What Price Love", with lyrics by
Parker. The practice was not uncommon prior to bebop, but it became a
signature of the movement as artists began to move away from arranging
popular standards and toward composing their own material. While tunes such as "Now's The Time", "Billie's Bounce", "Au Privave", "Barbados", "Relaxin' at Camarillo", "Bloomdido", and "Cool Blues" were based on conventional 12-bar blues changes, Parker also created a unique version of the 12-bar blues for tunes such as "Blues for Alice", "Laird Baird", and "Si Si." These unique chords are known popularly as "Bird Changes".[citation needed]
Like his solos, some of his compositions are characterized by long,
complex melodic lines and a minimum of repetition although he did employ
the use of repetition in some tunes, most notably "Now's The Time".
Parker contributed greatly to the modern jazz solo, one in which triplets and pick-up notes were used in unorthodox ways to lead into chord tones, affording the soloist with more freedom to use passing tones,
which soloists previously avoided. Parker was admired for his unique
style of phrasing and innovative use of rhythm. Via his recordings and
the popularity of the posthumously published Charlie Parker Omnibook, Parker's identifiable style dominated jazz for many years to come. Other well-known Parker compositions include "Ah-Leu-Cha", "Anthropology", co-written with Gillespie, "Bird Gets the Worm", "Cheryl", "Confirmation", "Constellation", "Donna Lee", "Moose the Mooche", and "Scrapple from the Apple". Miles Davis once said, "You can tell the history of jazz in four words: Louis Armstrong. Charlie Parker."[19]
Recordings of Charlie Parker were inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame,
which is a special Grammy award established in 1973 to honor recordings
that are at least twenty-five years old, and that have "qualitative or
historical significance."
Weather Report's jazz fusion track and highly acclaimed big band standard "Birdland", from the Heavy Weather album (1977), was a dedication by bandleader Joe Zawinul to both Charlie Parker and the New York 52nd Street club itself.
The biographical song "Parker's Band" was recorded by Steely Dan on its 1974 album Pretzel Logic.
The 1957 story "Sonny's Blues" by James Baldwin features a jazz/blues playing virtuoso who names Bird as the "greatest" jazz musician, whose style he hopes to emulate.
In 1949, the New York night club Birdland was named in his honor. Three years later, George Shearing wrote "Lullaby of Birdland", named for both Parker and the nightclub.
A memorial to Parker was dedicated in 1999 in Kansas City at 17th Terrace and The Paseo, near the American Jazz Museum located at 18th and Vine, featuring a 10-foot (3 m) tall bronze head sculpted by Robert Graham.
In one of his most famous short story collections, Las armas secretas (The Secret Weapons), Julio Cortázar dedicated "El perseguidor"
("The Pursuer") to the memory of Charlie Parker. This piece examines
the last days of Johnny, a drug-addict saxophonist, through the eyes of
Bruno, his biographer. Some qualify this story as one of Cortázar's
masterpieces in the genre.
In 1984, legendary modern dance choreographer Alvin Ailey created the piece For Bird – With Love in honor of Parker. The piece chronicles his life, from his early career to his failing health.
In 2005, the Selmer Paris saxophone manufacturer commissioned a special "Tribute to Bird"[30] alto saxophone, commemorating the 50th anniversary of the death of Charlie Parker (1955–2005).
Parker's performances of "I Remember You" and "Parker's Mood"
(recorded for the Savoy label in 1948, with the Charlie Parker All
Stars, comprising Parker on alto sax, Miles Davis on trumpet, John Lewis on piano, Curley Russell on bass, and Max Roach on drums) were selected by Harold Bloom
for inclusion on his shortlist of the "twentieth-century American
Sublime", the greatest works of American art produced in the 20th
century. A vocalese version of "Parker's Mood" was a popular success for
King Pleasure.
Jean-Michel Basquiat created many pieces to honour Charlie Parker, including Charles the First, CPRKR and Discography I.
Charlie Watts, drummer for the Rolling Stones, wrote a children's book entitled Ode to a High Flying Bird as a tribute to Parker. Watts has cited Parker as a major influence in his life as a youth learning to play jazz.
"Charlie Parker". The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz. Retrieved 23 April 2012.
"Yardbird". Birdlives.co.uk. Retrieved December 19, 2013.
The 1959 Beat parody album How to Speak Hip
lists the three top most "uncool" actions (both in the audio and in the
liner notes) as follows: "It is uncool to claim that you used to room
with Bird. It is uncool to claim that you have Bird's axe. It is even less cool to ask 'Who is Bird?'"
Gitler, Ira (2001). The Masters of Bebop: A Listener's Guide. Da Capo Press. p. 33. ISBN0-306-81009-3. Charles
Mingus once chose it when asked to name his favorite Parker recordings.
'I like all', he said, 'none more than the other, but I'd have to pick Lover Man for the feeling he had then and his ability to express that feeling.'
Ross Russell Bird Lives! The High Life & Hard Times of Charlie (Yardbird) Parker, 1973, New York: Charterhouse, p. 273; ISBN 0-306-80679-7
Reisner, Robert, ed. (1977). Bird: the Legend of Charlie Parker. New York: Da Capo Press. p. 133.
Ross Russell (1996). Bird Lives!: The High Life And Hard Times Of Charlie (yardbird) Parker. Da Capo Press. p. 361. ISBN9780306806797. A confirmed atheist, he had not been inside a church in years.
Griffin, Farah Jasmine; Washington, Salim (2008). Clawing at the Limits of Cool: Miles Davis, John Coltrane, and the Greatest Jazz Collaboration Ever. New York: Thomas Dunne Books. p. 237.
But that’s not what makes this song special. That’s just the employing
of a fetching component of music’s making. The rhythmic line—independent
of key or anything else—is an incredibly new way of making music. It’s
the definitive element of breakthrough, and it’s why virtually anyone
even casually familiar with jazz can hear that something new is going on
in the music. [Photo of Charlie Parker by Herman Leonard/CTSImages.com]
members. He originally planned to record two blues—Now’s the Time and Billie's Bounce, both in F concert—a ballad based on Embraceable You and a tune based on I Got Rhythm’s chord changes, which we now know as Anthropology. 
doing and said, “Hey, man, that’s what we should record!” Bird agreed and the group recorded Warming Up a Riff and Ko-Ko, both of which were based on Cherokee. They scrapped the I Got Rhythm tune and dropped Embraceable You at the end to make room for Ko-Ko.
based on Cherokee. They also record takes No. 4 and 5 of Billie’s Bounce, followed by four takes of Now’s the Time and three takes of Thriving From a Riff. There’s only take of Embraceable You, known as Meandering. But eventually the last song is dropped for Ko-Ko, the fifth title recorded that day.
harmony Parker executed earlier on Warming Up a Riff, on which he takes a three chorus solo.
It's safe to say that without Charlie Parker, the music we now
call bebop might never have existed. While other musicians in New York —
Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, and Bud Powell among them — were
creating the musical building blocks that would later become part of
bebop, it was Parker's innovative phrasing on alto saxophone that
provided the glue that brought it all together as a new jazz revolution.
In the first of a two-part Jazz Profiles, we explore Parker's formative
years and his arrival in New York.
The music of Charles Christopher Parker as well as the music of many
other musicians probably has the greatest influence on my own music. I
view Parker as a major composer, albeit primarily a spontaneous
composer. His written compositions, similar to many other very strong
spontaneous composers, were mainly jumping-off points for his
spontaneous discussions. Parker was also someone whose function would be
analogous to the role of a master drummer in traditional West African
societies. For me, Parker translated these combined ideas, via a style
that is a sophisticated version of the Blues, into something that can
express life, from the point of view of the African-American experience
in the 20th century. Many others, John Coltrane for example, contributed
to the expression of this transitional music on a technical,
intellectual and spiritual level.
Stratification is just my term for the funky nature of the
melody and Max's accompaniment. With this music I always paid more
attention to the melody, drums and bass; however, this song form is
composed of only melody and drums, with Max's part being spontaneously
composed. The way Max scrapes the brushes rhythmically across the snare,
frequently pivoting in unpredictable places, adds to the elusiveness
and sophistication of this performance. For example, during the head and
under Miles' first interlude improvisation (starting at measure 9), Max
provides an esoteric commentary, filling in a little more as Parker
enters (in measure 17)�however, the beat is always implicit, never
directly stated. On this rendition of "Ko-Ko," Bird's temporal sense is
so strong that his playing provides the clues for the uninitiated
listener to find his/her balance. 
One rarely hears this kind of commentary from drummers, as
much of today's music is explicitly stated. The way Max chooses only
specific parts of the melody to use as points for his commentary is part
of what makes the rhythm so mysterious. Much is hinted at, instead of
directly stated. This continues in the spontaneously composed sections
of this performance, as Yard plays in a way where there are very hard
accents which form an interplay with Max's spacious exclamations.
Punches are being mixed here, some hard, some soft, upstairs and
downstairs, in ways that form a hard-hitting but unpredictable groove.
I've always felt that the obvious speed and virtuosity of this music
obscures its more subtle dimensions from many listeners, almost as if
only the initiates of some kind of secret order are able to understand
it. This kind of slickness and dialog continues throughout this
performance, building in ways that ebb and flow just as in a
conversation. By the way Miles plays the F in measure 28 early; based on
the original 1945 studio recording with Diz and Bird playing the
melody, this F should fall on the first beat of measure 29. However,
Yard and Max play their parts correctly, so the still developing Miles
Davis probably had trouble negotiating this rapid tempo.
Following up on what Mingus referred to as new melodic concepts, many times musicians use what I call Invisible Paths,
meaning that they are not necessarily following the exact path of the
composed or accepted harmonic structure for a particular composition,
but instead following their own melodic and harmonic roads which
functionally perform the same job. The musical description of that job
is to form dynamic roads that lead to the same tonal and rhythmic
destinations as the composed harmony. This differs slightly from the
academic concept of chord substitutions, because these Invisible Paths
can be entire alternate roads that are not necessarily related to the
composed harmony on a point-by-point basis, and resist being explained
as such, but nevertheless perform the same function of voice-leading to
the cadential points within the music. These paths may be
rhythmic, melodic or harmonic in nature; all that is required are the
same three elements that are required with a physical path an origin, a
path structure and a destination.
The bridge is even more varied, with Bird's melodic paths creating
their own internal logic, which then resolve back into the logic of the
composition. 
(at 0:26 )
versus:
(at 0:55)
It's clear that this groove emotionally hits those who are present, as
can be heard by the various exclamations. This reaction from the people
is what I love about live recordings in general�at least recordings done
in the presence of responsive audiences. The steady rhythm of the
rising spontaneous melody that Yard plays in the opening eight measures
creates tension and is perfectly offset by the snaking melody of the
second eight, with its dancing, shifting, clave-like patterns that begin
in the 11th measure (at 0:42): 
Again, this demonstrates the use of rhythms that reveal elements retained from West-African concepts. 
Starting from the second eight of the first chorus of the solo we hear
the kind of smooth melodic voice-leading that Parker popularized in this
music. 
These types of clear and precise statements were already present in the
music of some spontaneous composers, such as tenor saxophonist Don Byas.
However, it was through Parker's dynamic performances that most
musicians were exposed to this concept, due in large part to Bird's
unique phrasing and advanced rhythmic conception. Both Byas and Yard
were from the Midwest and both had that Midwest sanctified rhythm thing
happening. Byas was from Muskogee, Oklahoma, and Bird developed his
musical skills in Kansas City, Missouri, although he was born in Kansas
City, Kansas. The Midwest produced many great musicians. For example,
Oscar Pettiford, was a fantastic bass player from Okmulgee, Oklahoma,
who made tremendous contributions to this music, although these
contributions are rarely acknowledged in proportion to their importance.
Both Muskogee and Okmulgee are in the eastern part of Oklahoma, just
south of the Kansas City metropolitan area, so this area of the country
was a hotbed of activity during the 20s, 30s and 40s.
However Yard stumbles a bit and it comes out like this, including the
spontaneous recovery, again a demonstration of how fast his mind worked:
Max's response to the phrase in the last eight is again one of those
funky dialogs. Max sets up this hip transition with the single snare hit
right after Parker's repeated blues exclamation, then two snare drum
hits in between Yard's phrases, followed by one of those funky ratios,
this time 4 against 6, that is Max's bass drum playing the 4 against the
cut time 6 of the beat, again timed to end on the measure before the
top. I tend to think of this kind of playing as targeting, a
technique where you calculate (using either feel, logic or both) the
destination point in time where you want to resolve your rhythm, a kind
of rhythmic voice-leading. I alluded to Bird doing something
similar above. I also dig the spontaneous counterpoint commentary of one
of the listeners during this phrase, which seems to go with what Yard
and Max are doing. 
The phrase beginning at measure 9 in the example below (2:18 of the
recording) and the phrase at measure 25 (2:32 of the recording) show how
Parker's stresses hookup with the clave and cscara at key points in
the phrasing of both. 
These complex double-time statements continue in the bridge and
represent the height of the story. The opening melody of the bridge
moves through several unusual tonal areas which I hear as:
is a New York original. For the uninitiated, Phil, 59, is best known as the host of Bird Flight, a
radio show on WKCR that's devoted to Charlie Parker. But that isn't
really what's remarkable. What's special is Phil's unrivaled passion for
the subject, his nitty-gritty knowledge, and the fact that the show has
been on the air every weekday from 8:20 to 9:40 a.m. since 1983. Many
people who know about Charlie Parker and his music gained their smarts
and appreciation through Phil's show. 
WKCR's "Charlie Parker Birthday Broadcast" on the August 28 and 29, I
decided to pose five Parker questions to Phil. In today's post, we focus
on the famed Ko-Ko session of November 26, 1945:
session as a leader. He also is mapping out for you precisely what came to him while playing over Cherokee's chord
changes. It’s a eureka moment for him in terms of where jazz might be
going. He’s returning to a piece that was so essential to his
development. Through the music, Parker is returning to Cherokee and telling you how the new music—bebop—came to him. [Photo by William P. Gottlieb, Library of Congress]
back as 1939. They also wouldn't know that it’s through this song that Parker saw the door open for what would become bebop. Ko-Ko is the pinnacle of what this new form of expression is all about. 
harmony that is effectively displayed through improvisation. And the
unleashing of a new rhythmic arc through phrasing, meaning the music now
has a completely different feel and sound than swing, which preceded
it. The last of the three emphasis points—the rhythmic arc and
phrasing—actually is bebop's biggest innovation. 
Media related to Charlie Parker at Wikimedia Commons