Charles Parker, Jr (August 29, 1920 – March 12, 1955) was an American saxophonist and composer, renowned for his instrumental virtuosity, harmonically complex and lightning-fast improvisation and his intellectual approach to his music. Nicknamed Bird (or Yardbird), Parker was one of the most influential artists in the 1940s jazz scene. By extension, he was one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century, as he was one of the major forces behind Bebop, and therefore all subsequent Jazz.
Born in 1920 in Kansas City, Missouri, Parker began playing the alto saxophone in his teens. When he was 17, he attended a notoriously tough and competitive jam session at the Reno Club in Kansas City, during which he lost track of the chord changes in the tune he was playing. Drummer Jo Jones, a seasoned performer who was playing in Count Basie's band, became so disgusted that he threw a cymbal at Parker's feet to run him off the stage. This incident has become enshrined as part of Parker's legend, because the humiliated Parker went away and committed himself to a ruthless practising schedule in which he taught himself to play every tune he knew in every key possible. A year later (or so the legend goes), Parker returned to the same session and, this time, nobody threw a cymbal at his feet.note
Parker moved to New York City and secured a place in the Earl Hines Band. He frequented Minton's Playhouse in Harlem, where musicians like Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk and Max Roach met to play a new, hard-edged style of jazz which would become known as bebop. Gillespie in particular became a friend and collaborator, and the two regularly played as sidemen on each other's recordings.
Parker became known for his exceptional musical skill. With his knowledge of music theory, he developed complicated harmonies based on sevenths, ninths and thirteenths and improvised incredibly fast solo choruses. He admired the music of contemporary classical composers like Igor Stravinsky. He made many recordings in his short career, and while fans often prize the later recordings he made with strings for the Verve label, musicians generally regard the sessions he did between 1945 and 1948 for Savoy and Dial as being his most essential work.
Unfortunately, Bird struggled with substance abuse for much of his adult life (some stories even describe how he would pawn his horn to pay for drugs). Parker was unusual in that drugs and alcohol didn't usually impair his playing, although one 1946 recording of "Lover Man" features an extremely drunk and strung-out Parker barely able to shape a phrase with his usual confidence.note Parker's substance abuse contributed to his early death at the age of thirty-four.
Parker was a friend and mentor to many younger musicians, the most notable of which was Miles Davis, whose tune "Donna Lee" was first recorded by Parker. Parker himself composed several bebop tunes, nearly all of which have become standards in the jazz repertoire: "Ah-Leu-Cha", "Anthropology", "Confirmation", "Ko-Ko", "Now's the Time", "Scrapple from the Apple", "Relaxin' at Camarillo", and many others.
Albums by Charlie Parker with their own page:
Tropes
- The Ace: He became this through hours of practice. Friends remembered him not only as a towering musician but as a really smart guy and a voracious reader who loved talking about intellectual topics.
- Appropriated Appellation: "Yardbird" is slang for "Chicken", and he acquired the nickname after cooking and eating a chicken that he had run over. His bandmates mocked him, and the name stuck, although people often shortened it to just "Bird". Eventually the name took on a different meaning as he mastered his instrument, and people lined up to hear his horn sing.
- Crazy-Prepared: Parker's style was derived in part from his early humiliation as a young musician, when he'd learned a few tunes but could only play them in one key. This meant that when he was thrown a tune he knew, in a key he was unfamiliar with, but which was a common one for other musicians, he couldn't play it.note To get around this, he went off and taught himself to play every tune he knew in every key, not just the ones that other jazz musicians usually used. The result was that it was almost impossible for him to get lost in the harmony of any tune, and he knew his instrument better than any of his contemporaries knew theirs.
- Determinator: As noted below, Bird was originally a pretty crappy saxophonist who got laughed off the bandstand. However, he just kept going, practicing like crazy and ending up one of the biggest names in jazz ever.
- Friendly Rivalry: With Dizzy Gillespie.
- Iconic Item: Averted. Like Ornette Coleman, Parker is sometimes associated with the Grafton plastic sax, but he only ever used one a few times on what turned out to be very high-profile occasions, resulting in a disproportionate number of photos of him playing one. He used many different saxes over his career because he was constantly either losing them, or pawning them to get cash to feed his heroin habit. Basically, he'd play whatever sax was available and still make it sound good.
- Insufferable Genius: Nobody doubted his abilities, but a few bandleaders were irritated by his tendency to show up late for gigs without an instrument - see Iconic Item. He was also notoriously unreliable as a bandleader, causing Miles Davis to eventually quit his band in frustration.
- Patron Saint: The Saint John Will-I-Am Coltrane African Orthodox Church in San Francisco was originally named The Yardbird Temple in Parker's honor.
- Sex, Drugs, and Rock & Roll: As mentioned, the Bird used a lot of drugs. He actually didn't use them for inspiration; he got addicted, as so many did, after being given opiates as painkillers following a car accident. Unfortunately, the level of hero worship from other musicians was such that they would imitate every aspect of his life, including the drug use; this pained him very much and he urged younger musicians not to use drugs.
It didn't work; even Eric Clapton took up heroin partly in imitation of Parker. - Training from Hell: Bird wasn't a natural savant for music like, say, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. When he was young, he was a mediocre saxophonist who got laughed off the bandstand. He achieved his greatness partly by practising for fourteen hours a day for years, and partly because all sources agree that he was a highly intelligent musician who, as soon he was ready to process new information, processed it unusually quickly. Later in life, he would often emphasise that whatever one's natural ability may be, practice was the key to any musician's success:"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 brings out the polish of any talent that 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, you know."
- Wham Episode: 1945's "Ko-Ko
". Recorded with fellow jazz giants Dizzy Gillespie and Max Roach just after a long musician's union recording strike, this piece was the first time Bird's experiments with extended harmony were shared with the general public. Jazz would never be the same. - Younger Than They Look: He died at 34, but decades of drug and alcohol abuse had taken such a toll on his body that the coroner who autopsied him estimated him to be somewhere between 50 and 60.
Appearances in popular culture
- In the movie Diner, Beth inadvertently pushes Shrevie's Berserk Button by not knowing who Parker is.
- In one episode of The Muppet Show, saxman Zoot is
forced to play the song "Sax and Violence". Before beginning he says "Forgive me, Charlie Parker, wherever you are.." - Mentioned in passing in The Commitments as one of artists that soul man Joey The Lips strongly dislikes.
- The Clint Eastwood-directed movie Bird is a reverential Biopic of Parker, in which Forest Whitaker plays him as a glum, tortured depressive, which most sources agree he wasn't.
- In Stilyagi, he appears to Mel and teaches him to be a Sexy Sax Man.
- One strip for The Far Side shows that Parker's personal Hell is being forced to listen to New Age music for eternity.
- Parker is mentioned in an episode of Highlander: The Series when Duncan confronts a fellow immortal, Byron, (yes, THAT Byron) about hooking a young musician on drugs and risky behavior. Parker's name is one of several dropped about great musicians whose lives and careers were cut short by drug addiction.
- The children's picture book Charlie Parker Played BeBop about him was featured in installments of both Reading Rainbow and Between the Lions.
- Parker is mentioned in Farscape, when Crichton lists Charlie Parker albums among his possessions back home on earth that he misses on Moya.
- Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode The Projected Man features a riff identifying the shadow of some laboratory equipment resembling someone playing a saxophone as belonging to Parker.
- In a 2017 tournament episode of Chopped, guest judge Alton Brown was so disgusted with the losing chef's dish in the final round that he threw the serving dish cover on the floor in front of them. He went on to mention the cymbal-throwing incident specifically.
