Charlie Parker

August 20, 1920-??, 1955

Born: Kansas City, MO

Alto saxophonist Charlie Parker revolutionized the harmonic possibilities and rhythmic syntax of jazz improvisation to the extent that a whole new language, or at the very least a fresh jazz dialect, emerged. His style has engaged successive generations of players ever since.

In the late '30s he jobbed around Kansas City, honing his technique and tone. He first recorded with the Jay McShann orchestra in between 1940 and 1942. The early 1940 radio tranions and the later commercial sessions for Decca show Parker pushing at the edges of the swing parameters with an explosive gift for unexpected phrasing and twists.

His progress over the next two years was striking but largely undocumented, due to a recording ban imposed by the musicians union. By the time he resumed recording in 1944-'45, his dazzling improvisations at breakneck tempos ("Ko Ko," "Donna Lee," "Shaw Nuff") astonished young jazz players as profoundly as they threatened veteran ones, thus setting the new against the old and triggering the first major internecine musical controversy in jazz history. But the battle deepened into a cultural as well as a musical war as Parker's penchant for hard drugs and hard living further defined bebop as an outlaw music with an implied lifestyle that many chose to follow.

The definitive recordings of Parker's career were made for Savoy between 1945 and '48 ("Now's the Time," "Thriving Of A Riff," "Billie's Bounce"), and for Dial from 1946-'47 ("Ornithology," "A Night In Tunsia," "Lover Man," "Scrapple From The Apple"). They sold poorly but were as profoundly influential to young post war players as Armstrong's Hot Sevens and early big band sides had been to musicians of the '30s. Even during his most innovating period Parker remained something of a mystery figure to the general public. His picture never even appeared on Down Beat's cover during his lifetime.

The third major chapter of Parker's work began in 1948, when Norman Granz began recording him in different contexts with a view toward taking his music to a wider audience. By now his major innovations were over and his repertoire had narrowed to small number of staples. But an album with string accompaniment produced a mother lode of brilliant new Parker solos that would be his last major work. He died in 1955 at the age of 35 of a combination of drug related medical problems.

The music is "Billie Bounce" in midi format.