Charlie Parker (Bird): The Birth of Something Great

August twenty ninth, nineteen twenty a legend was born. Known as the inventor of bebop and the man who began the era of fast paced quick rhythms, melodies, and solos Charlie Parker took the jazz spot light by storm creating one of the most unique genres of music known today.

As World War II came to an end and the thoughts of nuclear disaster riddled the minds of Americans, many began moving away from the large cities such as New York City and Chicago and began moving into small rural towns. As American families became more afraid of what the Cold War might bring, the population within these cities began to diminish and with that so did the audiences in jazz clubs throughout America. Though this was a major blow to the popularity of jazz it only played a miniscule role compared to the destruction that popular music had on the jazz industry. As the big band and swing era came to an end young teens alike began to flock to concerts that played the popular music such as Frank Sinatra.

As Americans began to change so did their tastes, and with this change in tastes came a new risk filled music called bebop. At the center of this movement was Charlie Parker who was known to others as Bird. The inventor of this new era, Bird impressed and astonished many jazz musicians with his ability to improvise with tremendous speed and perfection and create new and unheard of melodies that no other jazz musician had created before. With the creation of the bebop album "Salt and Peanuts," Charlie Parker was one for the first musicians to record bebop so that it could be sold to the public. What made bebop so different from any other genre of jazz was the improvisation that was played in between the normal notes of a piece of music. By taking many popular songs such as Dexterity he would improvise between the notes to create a fast paced but flowing feel to the song.

Though jazz had been reinvented once again many of those who would attend nightclubs and frequented jazz rehearsals found the music to be hurried, nervous, frantic, and chaotic. Many Americans did not understand this new genre of jazz because they had become so accustomed to the swing from the big band era. Bebop brought creativity and expression back to jazz musicians. Since bebop had no swing feeling to what audiences heard previously during the big band era the crowds began to shrink even more but that did not stop jazz musicians such as Charlie Parker. For the first time jazz musicians such as Charlie Parker were no longer plying music for the audience but for themselves. Though audiences and paychecks began to shrink Charlie Parker kept playing what felt good to him and what he was good at.

Having been in the nightclub scene his entire life Charlie Parker quickly became introduced to his life long friend horse. Horse, which is a street name for heroin, became the drug of choice for Bird as organized crime found faster, easier, and cheaper ways to pump the deadly drug into the homes and neighborhoods across America. Like many other musicians who were addicted to heroin, Charlie Parkers addiction would eventually lead him to his grave.

The spread of Charlie Parkers new techniques and creative improvisations did not happen over night but instead began in a Harlem club called Minton's Playhouse. Musicians such as Thelonious Monk, Dizzy Gillespie, and Charlie Christian swarmed the playhouse each week to jam with one another and inspire new ideas. Many jazz musicians would come to see if they could play with the amazing Charlie Parker and even learn some of his techniques so that they could imitate him. Bird inspired many with his playing such as Dizzy Gillespie who is quoted as saying that Charlie Parker was the main influence on his own style. Charlie Parkers influence into the future would stretch out so far that many songs would later be named after him and jazz clubs such as Birdland in New York and Birdhouse in Chicago.

After playing in New York City for so long Bird and some of his jazz companions decided to take a trip to California where they had planned to tour from city to city playing in nightclubs and music halls. The trip was doomed to fail from the beginning, during the trip to California the train that the band was riding came to a stop in the dessert to allow its passengers to take a break and refuel itself for the rest of the trip to California. As everyone began re-boarding the train so that they could continue their trip one of the band members noticed that Charlie Parker was wondering out into the dessert. After yelling at him to come back to the train one of the band members ran out and grabbed him before the train left without him. After being retrieved from the hot dessert sun, the jazz musician who had retrieved him asked what he was doing and Parker replied, "I was looking for something." This was the beginning of Charlie Parkers odd behavior due to his addiction to heroin. Once the band arrived in California the tour which had practically began in disaster with the death of Parker ended in disaster when the band failed to make any money and decided to head back to New York City. Having been dealing with Parkers antics for months due to his heroin addiction the band left him in Los Angeles because he had sold his plane ticket back to New York City for heroin. After everyone who had actually cared about his had left him, Parker fell deeper into his heroin addiction that caused him to sign away half of his recording earnings for heroin so that he could feed his addiction. Parker began showing up to recordings, practices, and shows high until he had lost almost everything. Prior to one of his recordings Parker had consumed around two pints of whiskey causing him to have to be held up by another person. He was so intoxicated he could barely come in on beat let alone play at all. One night after he had performed Parker stumbled into the hotel that he was staying in naked, and if that was not enough as soon as he made it up to his room he set his bed a blaze, which ended with his arrest. Once arrested Parker was charged and convicted of his crimes and had to carry out his sentence at Camarillo State Mental Hospital at which he was committed for six months.

Having become clean and sober Parker took off back to New York City where he recorded some of the best recordings of his career. After returning back to his home where he had begun his career he met a young woman by the name of Chan Richardson at which he had met at Birdland, a bandstand he frequented often. After becoming acquainted with her he quickly proposed and married her adopting her only daughter. Later on during the marriage Parker had two children with Chan who he loved dearly.

Bird was known to have three lives or personas in which he lived. In his first life he was a jazz musician who would play all night every night until the early hours of the morning with his peer musicians. In his second life he was a full time junky who was always working to keep up and pay for his habit and in his third life he was a father of three and a husband who lived in a middle class suburban neighborhood. Being a father, husband, jazz musician, and a junky Parker quickly wore his body out. During the 1950's he began seeing the effects of his life long drug abuse. When he was hospitalized for an ulcer he was told that he could not perform at New York City nightclubs for fifteen months and that he had to stop drinking or else it would kill him. His booking agent stop setting up gigs as he began to miss many of them and stopped paying accompanying musicians who played with him. At the young age of only thirty-five Charlie passed away and when an autopsy was performed on his body they found that his heart, liver, lungs, and kidneys looked as if they were from a sixty year old man.

During his career Charlie Parker played with Dizzy Gillespie in the Earl Hines swing band. After playing in Earl Hines swing band and in Billy Eckstines more modern band they both formed the first bebop group in 1944. This small group went on to create a series of popular recordings called "Salt and Peanut" and "Shaw Nuff" with Red Norvo and Gillespie's Quartet. He later on formed his own quartet like Dizzy Gillespie that included trumpeter Miles Davis and drummer Max Roach. Over the years he performed hundreds of shows and traveled to many destinations. Charlie Parker inspired many musicians such as Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane, and Albert Ayler who were the leading musicians in the development of free jazz.

Charlie Parker will forever be remembered as one of the most prolific jazz improvisers inn history. His talents far outreach those of any other musician of the bebop era and will continually inspire musicians alike to reach for his talent. Though he is one of the greatest jazz musicians in history it came with a high price.

Bibliography

Gridley, Mark. Concise Guide to Jazz. 5th. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, 2007.

"Charlie Parker." Encyclopædia Britannica. 2009. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 12 Apr. 2009 .

Jazz: A film by Ken Burns. Dir. Ken Burns. DVD. PBS, 2007.