Biography of Charlie Parker. Charlie Parker - the story of the jazz bird He became one of the founders of the bebop genre
Charlie "Bird" Parker (born August 29, 1920 Kansas, USA - died March 12, 1955 New York, USA) - a brilliant alto saxophonist who stood at the origins of the "bebop" genre, subsequently formed the basis of everything modern jazz.
Parker is one of the few artists who was called a genius during his lifetime, whose name was and remains legendary. He left an unusually vivid mark on the imagination of his contemporaries, which was reflected not only in jazz, but also in other arts, in particular in literature. Today it is difficult to imagine a truly jazz musician who, in one way or another, would not have experienced not only the captivating influence of Parker, but also his specific influence on his performing language.
Charles Parker was born in 1920 in the black neighborhood of Kansas City. His father was a vaudeville performer, his mother a nurse. Charlie went to school, where, of course, there was a large orchestra, and his first musical impressions were connected with playing the brass baritone and clarinet. Constantly listening to jazz, the boy dreamed of an alto saxophone. His mother bought him an instrument, and at fifteen he left school to become a professional musician.
It was possible to earn extra money only in dance establishments. The newcomer was paid a dollar and a quarter and taught everything in the world. Many people laughed mercilessly when Charlie didn't succeed, but he just bit his lip. Apparently, that’s when they gave him the nickname “Yardbird” - a yard bird, a young one. But, as if according to the storyteller’s prediction, the ugly “yardbird” turned into a beautiful bird. “Bird” - “Birdy” - this is how jazzmen began to call Parker, which acquired a completely different meaning and gave rise to a small but vibrant jazz idiom: here are the themes “Ornithology”, “Bird’s Nest” and “Fallen Leaves”, here is the famous new York club Birdland with its Shearing lullaby and Zawinul march.
“Music is your own experience, your wisdom, your thoughts. If you don't live it, then nothing will ever come out of your instrument. We are taught that music has its own limits. But art has no boundaries..." -
Charles Parker
After leaving home, Charlie became a nomadic jazzman from band to band and from city to city, until in 1940 he ended up in New York, having already known life “to the very black bottom.” At that time, the so-called “after hours” were popular among jazzmen - games after work, which later became known as jam sessions. Each jam had its own group of musicians. At such “sessions,” Parker looked for music that was already spinning in his head, but could not be put into his hands. He himself later recounted how once in the first months of his New York life, while improvising on the Cherokee theme to the accompaniment of a guitarist, he discovered that by emphasizing the upper tones (nones and undecims) of the accompanying chords in a special way, he got what he heard inside myself. This is the legend of the style, which began to be called bebop, then reebop, then bop. In fact, the new style of jazz, like any art of ensemble improvisation, could have been born in the practice of many musicians playing music together. The process of the birth of the style began at jams in Harlem clubs, primarily at the Henry Minton Club, where, in addition to Parker, trumpeters Dizzy Gillespie and Fats Navarro, guitarist Charlie Christian, pianists Thellonious Monk and Bud Powell, and drummers Max Roach and Kenny Clark regularly gathered. The term “bebop” itself is most likely onomatopoeic. Parker, who from the very beginning adopted the style of many Kansas City musicians, had the habit of “slamming” the sound at the end of a phrase, which gave it greater rhythmic saturation. In general, the creators of jazz never counted on theorists. Bebop did not bring with it radically new thematic material. On the contrary, musicians were especially willing to improvise on the usual twelve-bar blues or thirty-two-bar periods of the AABA type, which everyone heard. But on the harmonic grids of these themes they composed their own melodies, which became new themes. Unaccustomed to it, it was difficult for even a keen ear to recognize the source. At the same time, the new harmonic networks were saturated with sequential turns, chromatisms, and functional substitutions, and the new melodies were fragmented with intricately scattered punctuations, striking in their asymmetry, ceased to be songs and became purely instrumental.
In bebop, the classical form of strict variations reached its highest level. The innovation of the harmonic language lay in the very wide use of tonal deviations, but within each tonal shift the harmonic chains contained only the main functions and, as a rule, were not long. At this stage, the speech musical logic of thinking and language of improvisers - jazzmen - was fully formed - the result of a broad, literally mass process of practical ensemble music-making. Charlie Parker made the greatest contribution to this process. His fingers fluttered over the valves. His face became like a flying bird. In sound, rhythm, harmony, technique, in any key, he was free like a bird. His intuition, musical imagination and fantastic memory were amazing. I was also struck by the disorderliness of his life, the combination of high and low in him, his slow self-burning. And yet, whatever his condition, whatever instrument he played (and he often did not have his own), he easily managed to play what baffled others. Listen to his concert at Massey Hall for a good example, where he played on a cheap rental plastic instrument.
The major milestones in Parker's life after his experiences with Minton in 1941 are few. It is worth mentioning his work in Noble Seasle's symphojazz on clarinet (1942), in Billy Eckstine's orchestra (1944), which brought together all the future bebop stars - Gillespie, Navarro, Stitt, Emmons, Gordon, Damron, Blakey. Young people returning from the war enthusiastically embraced bebop and Birdie. 52nd Street, the trendsetter in jazz, becomes the street of boppers, Bop Street. Parker reigns there, opening for 19-year-old trumpeter Miles Davis. In 1946, in Los Angeles, Parker “snapped” and ended up in the Camarillo hospital, after leaving which the musicians collected money for him to buy clothes and an instrument. In 1949, Parker performed at the first international jazz festival in Paris and returned to New York to open the Birdland club. Next year - Scandinavia, Paris, London and again the hospital. Then - a series of club performances, binges, recordings, scandals and suicide attempts. Against this backdrop, a concert at Massey Hall in Toronto, which accidentally ended up being recorded, shines as a bright pearl. Death overtook Charles Parker on March 12, 1955. He was the founder of modern jazz, one of the most important figures in twentieth-century jazz.
Additional Information:
Leonid Auskern. Charlie Parker. Slavery and freedom of a jazz saxophonist
29/08/2010
American jazz saxophonist and composer Charles Christopher Parker(Charles Christopher Jr. Charlie Parker) was born on August 29, 1920 in the black section of Kansas City. His father was a vaudeville performer, his mother a nurse. Charlie attended a school with a large orchestra, and his first musical experiences were playing the wind baritone and clarinet. Constantly listening to jazz, the boy dreamed of an alto saxophone. His mother bought him an instrument and since then his passion for music has not left him.
He studied music on his own. In the evenings I listened to the city musicians play, and during the days I studied myself. At the age of 14, Charlie dropped out of school and devoted all his time to mastering the saxophone. He played with local groups and tried to get into Count Basie's orchestra, but his intricate improvisations were not understood by the orchestra's musicians. He went through a number of trains, visited Chicago and New York.
At the end of 1938, back in Kansas City, Charlie Parker joined pianist Jay McShann's orchestra. He played with this composition for more than three years, and his first known recordings were also made with this orchestra.
Parker's early career nickname was "Yardbird", which was later shortened to Bird. This nickname was often used in the titles of his works (Yardbird Suite and Bird Feathers).
Later, the New York club Birdland was named in honor of Parker.
At the beginning of 1942, he left Jay McShann's orchestra and, leading a half-starved, miserable existence, continued to play his music in various New York clubs. Parker primarily worked at Clark Monroe's Uptown House club.
At that time, the so-called after hours were popular among jazzmen - games after work, which later became known as jam sessions. Each jam had its own group of musicians. Parker regularly appeared at jam sessions at Minton's Playhouse, gaining a reputation as one of the most powerful instrumentalists. At jams in Harlem clubs, primarily at Henry Minton's club, according to legend, Parker created his own style of new music, which began to be called bebop, reebop, or bop (the term "bebop" is most likely onomatopoeic).
In 1943, when a position as a tenor saxophonist became available, Parker moved to Earl Hines' orchestra. In 1944, he played alto saxophone in the quintet of former Hines vocalist Billy Eckstine, which brought together all the future bebop stars - Gillespie, Navarro, Stitt, Emmons, Gordon, Damron, Art Blakey.
In February-March 1945, Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillepsie recorded a series of records that presented the new style in all its brilliance. The next, no less significant recordings appeared in November in California from Ross Russell at the Dial company.
In 1945, Parker assembled his own quintet. By the end of the year, he began performing in one of the clubs on 52nd Street, which became the street of boppers, Bop Street. Young people returning from the war enthusiastically embraced bebop and Parker.
In 1946, he went to the West Coast with Norman Granz's Jazz At The Philharmonic and played in Howard McGee's ensemble. The quintet's recordings with Miles Davis, Duke Jordan, Tommy Potter and Max Roach (1947), recordings with a string group (1950) and original compositions (Billies Bounce, Nows The Time, K.C. Blues, Confirmation, Ornithology, Scrapple From The Apple) brought enormous success. , Donna Lee, Ko Ko).
Parker's career was uneven, he had a quarrelsome character, often let down his partners and spent a lot of time in clinics. Drug addiction grew stronger, and attempts to get rid of it threw Parker into the arms of alcohol. In 1946, in Los Angeles, Parker “snapped” and ended up in the Camarillo hospital, after leaving which the musicians collected money for him to buy clothes and an instrument.
He returned to active work only at the beginning of 1947. In September 1947, Parker made a triumphant appearance at Carnegie Hall. In 1948, Byrd was named Musician of the Year in Metronome magazine's questionnaire.
In 1949, Parker performed at the first international jazz festival in Paris and returned to New York to open the Birdland club.
The next year he toured Scandinavia, Paris, London, and had a concert at Massey Hall in Toronto. Then there was a series of club performances, binges, recordings, scandals and suicide attempts.
In 1954, Byrd suffered a severe blow when his two-year-old daughter Pri died. All of Parker's attempts to regain psychological balance were in vain. A series of his performances at the New York club, named Birdland in his honor, ended in scandal: in another fit of rage, Parker dispersed all the musicians and interrupted the performance. The club's owners refused to deal with him. Many other concert venues found themselves in similar relationships.
On March 12, 1955, Charlie Parker died. Death overtook him in New York in the house of his wealthy admirer, Baroness de Koenigswarter, while he was sitting at the TV watching a show by the Dorsey Brothers Orchestra. Doctors named the cause of death as cirrhosis of the liver and a stomach ulcer.
The musical world recognizes alto saxophonist Charlie Parker as one of the most important figures in 20th-century jazz. He was a virtuoso, the greatest jazz innovator, one of the founders of bebop.
Clint Eastwood made the film "Bird" (1988) about him, and Julio Cortazar made him the hero of the story "The Pursuer". In 2006, the publishing house Skifia published Robert George Reisner's book "Birdy. The Legend of Charlie Parker."
Charlie Parker, also known as "Bird", can rightfully be called the father of modern jazz. His bold improvisations, completely free from the melodic material of themes, were a kind of bridge between the sweet sound of popular jazz and new forms of improvisational art. His influence on subsequent generations of jazz musicians can only be compared to that of Louis Armstrong.
Charles Christopher Parker was born on August 29, 1920 in Kansas City. Parker spent his childhood in the black ghetto of Kansas City, where there were many bars, entertainment venues, and music was always playing. His father, a third-rate singer and dancer, soon abandoned the family, and his mother, Eddie Parker, who gave all the heat of her love to the boy, spoiled him greatly. The next, and as it turned out later, fateful gift was a battered alto saxophone, bought for 45 dollars. Charlie began to play and forgot about everything else. He studied on his own, alone through all the problems, alone discovering the laws of music. His passion for music has not left him since then. In the evenings he listened to city musicians play, and during the days he studied on his own.
There was no time left for textbooks. At the age of 15, Charlie left school and became a professional musician. However, there was still little professionalism in this selfish, reserved young man. He tries to copy Lester Young's solos, plays in jams, changes various local lineups. He recalled later: “We had to play non-stop from nine in the evening until five in the morning. We received one dollar twenty-five cents per night.”
Despite his rapid progress in playing technique, young Charlie did not really fit into the coherent, smooth sounds of the big bands. He always tried to play in his own way, constantly searching for his own unique music. Not everyone liked this. There is a textbook story about how, at one of the night jam sessions, drummer Joe Jones, enraged by Parker’s “stuff,” threw a cymbal into the audience. Charlie got ready and left.
At the age of 15, Charlie married 19-year-old Rebbeka Ruffing - this was his first marriage, but just as fleeting and unsuccessful as the subsequent ones. At age 17, "Bird" (short for his original nickname, Yardbird) became a father for the first time. At the same time or a little earlier, he first became acquainted with drugs.
After going through a number of lineups, visiting Chicago and New York, and returning to Kansas City at the end of 1938, Byrd joined the orchestra of pianist Jay McShann. He played with this lineup for more than three years, and Parker's first known recordings were also made with this orchestra. Here he became mature master. He was highly regarded by his colleagues as an alto saxophonist, but Charlie was still not satisfied with what he had to play. He continued to find his way: “I was fed up with the stereotypical harmonies that everyone was using. I kept thinking that there must be something different. I heard it, but I couldn’t play it.” And then he finally played: “I improvised for a long time on the Cherokee theme and suddenly noticed that by building a melody from the upper intervals of chords and inventing new harmonies on this basis, I suddenly managed to play what was always in me. It was as if I was born again.” .
After Byrd opened his way to freedom, he could no longer play with McShann. At the beginning of 1942, he left the orchestra and, leading a half-starved, miserable existence, continued to play his music in various New York clubs. Parker primarily worked at Clark Monroe's Uptown House club. It was there that like-minded people first heard him.
Since 1940, another club, “Minton's Playhouse,” gathered, as they would say today, fans of alternative music. The club’s lineup constantly included pianist Thelonious Monk, drummer Kenny Clark, bassist Nick Fenton and trumpeter Joe Guy. Evenings and nights regularly hosted jam sessions, where guitarist Charlie Christian, trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie, pianist Bud Powell and other musicians were frequent guests.One autumn evening, Clark and Monk went to Uptown to listen to an alto saxophonist there, rumors of whom had reached Minton's club.
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Kenny Clarke (drums): "Bird played something unheard of. He played phrases that I thought I had come up with myself for the drums. He played twice as fast as Lester Young and in harmonies that Young had never dreamed of. Bird walked on our own way, but was much ahead of us. It’s unlikely that he knew the value of his finds. It was just his way of playing jazz, it was part of himself."
Naturally, Parker soon found himself at Minton's club. Now he was among his own. The exchange of fresh musical ideas became even more intense. And the first among equals here was Byrd. His freedom burst out triumphantly in cascades of amazing, unheard-of sounds. Standing next to him in those years was Dizzy Gillespie, who was almost as good as Bird in creative imagination, but had a much more cheerful and sociable character.
The music that was born was called bebop.
The MIDI recording features a transcription of Parker's solo on his own theme, "Ornithology".
“It would have been better if bebop had been given a different name, one more in keeping with the seriousness of the purpose of its creation.” (Bud Powell)
Almost everyone considered Parker to be its king. The king behaved like an absolute and very capricious monarch. It seemed that the recognition that his music received only complicated the relationship between this man and the world around him. Byrd became even more intolerant, irritable, and peremptory in his relationships with colleagues and loved ones. Loneliness wrapped itself in an increasingly dense cocoon. Drug addiction grew stronger, and attempts to get rid of it threw Parker into the arms of alcohol.
However, Parker's career continued its upward movement at that time. In 1943, Parker played in the orchestra for pianist Earl Hines, and in 1944 for former Hines vocalist Billy Eckstine. By the end of the year, Bird began performing in one of the clubs on 52nd Street.
In February-March 1945, Bird and Dizzy recorded a series of records that presented the new style in all its brilliance. The next, no less significant recordings appeared in November in California from Ross Russell at the Dial company. Here Parker suffered his first serious nervous crisis.
The jazz world saw Byrd return to active activity again only in early 1947. This time the Charlie Parker Quintet included young Miles Davis (trumpet) and Max Roach (drums). Communication with Byrd turned out to be an invaluable school for these later major musicians. But they could not withstand such communication for very long. Already in 1948, both refused further cooperation. But even before that, in September 1947, Parker made a triumphant appearance at Carnegie Hall. In 1948, Byrd was named Musician of the Year in Metronome magazine's questionnaire.
Europeans for the first time, but not in last time saw Parker in 1949, when he and his quintet arrived at jazz festival in Paris. But now, after parting with Gillespie, and then with Davis and Roach, there were other people next to him - strong professionals, but not so bright, who meekly endured the escapades of their leader.
The recordings with a string orchestra that soon followed gave Byrd additional reason for stress. Although they brought in good money, these recordings alienated some of their formerly ardent ideological fans. There were accusations of commercialism. Tours began to be increasingly interspersed with visits to psychiatric clinics. In 1954, Byrd suffered a severe blow when his two-year-old daughter Pri died.
All of Byrd's attempts to regain psychological balance were in vain. It was not possible to hide from himself in the idyllic rural wilderness - he was drawn to New York, the world center of jazz. A series of his performances at the New York club, named "Birdland" in his honor, ended in a scandal: in another fit of rage, Parker dispersed all the musicians and interrupted the performance. The club's owners refused to deal with him. Many other concert venues found themselves in similar relationships. The bird was banished from its country.
Parker's last refuge was the house of his wealthy admirer, Baroness de Koenigswarter. On March 12, 1955, he sat in front of the television and watched a show by the Dorsey Brothers Orchestra. Death overtook him at that moment. Doctors named the cause of death as cirrhosis of the liver and a stomach ulcer. Byrd did not live to see 35 years of age.
American jazz saxophonist, composer (1920-1955)
There is an opinion that in the history of jazz there were two true geniuses: Louis Armstrong, a favorite and lover of the public, and Charlie Parker, who hated the public with all his soul.
The contrast between musicians who came from roughly the same environment is striking.
Charles Christopher Parker was born on August 29, 1920 in a suburb of Kansas City. His father, Charles Parker Sr., was a provincial singer and dancer. His touring fate brought him to Kansas City, where he got married and stayed for a long time. When little Charlie was eight years old, the family moved to the black ghetto: there Parker Sr. expected to find work on the stage of one of the clubs. This made some sense, since saxophonists Lester Young and Ben Webster lived in the area, and other jazz musicians performed in concert. However, like many others at that time, the Parkers were unlucky: The Great Depression, people no longer cared about music. The crisis also undermined family relationships: Parker Sr. soon left his wife. Charlie's mother gave all her unrealized love to her son.
Charlie soon became interested in music. At this time he attended a school that had an amateur orchestra. Many famous musicians subsequently emerged from it. One day, a mother, having saved money, bought her son an old alto saxophone, which Charlie immediately and irrevocably became interested in. He had no idea about the laws of music, was self-taught and sought to simply repeat what he heard from others. Many more experienced craftsmen During these years, the saxophone players tried to become his mentor, but he did not get closer to anyone. For him it was a matter of principle to master the secrets of the instrument on his own, so he progressed slowly but surely in his studies. When Charlie was 14 years old, his mother went to work as a cleaner, and in the evenings he was left alone, leaving home to listen to the game at a local cabaret. famous musicians. Of all the performers, he soon singled out Lester Young.
Charlie soon became a member of the school dance orchestra, and then dropped out and left school. At 15, Parker considered himself a seasoned musician, despite the fact that he could only really play two or three tunes. He behaved unusually arrogantly, he was driven off the stage more than once with ridicule, but he did not pay attention to it. Because of his early drug addiction, Parker even ended up in jail, where he earned the famous nickname “Bird.” While still practically a boy, he married a girl 4 years older than him, but the marriage was unsuccessful.
And all this time, Parker did not leave the instrument for a day. In the summer of 1936, having received insurance after a car accident, he bought a new saxophone and joined the orchestra of Tommy Douglas, who had a conservatory education. The orchestra played every evening, and Charlie Parker began to rapidly gain shape.
A certain Buster Smith, saxophonist of the Blue Devils orchestra, volunteered to be Parker's mentor at that time. In 1938, Smith formed an orchestra and took Parker to join him. And a miracle happened: Parker liked Smith so much that Charlie began to reverently call him father and took over from Smith everything that related to the interpretation of musical works.
In 1938, Charlie Parker moved to Chicago, worked there for a while and moved to New York, where he was forced to wash dishes in a restaurant for three months. However, in the same restaurant he heard many famous jazzmen and continued to study. Since the end of 1939, he had already been performing in jazz orchestras in New York, but was soon forced to return to Kansas City and became a musician in the orchestra of pianist Jay McShann. In 1941, the orchestra recorded several plays on the radio. The recordings that have survived to this day are the first with the participation of Charlie Parker. From them, by the way, we can conclude that in those days it was still difficult to grasp in Charlie Parker’s performance those features that would later make him an outstanding figure in the world of jazz.
In January 1942, McShann's orchestra, featuring Charlie Parker, performed in New York. Pianist John Lewis later claimed that Parker had "already found a new system of sound and rhythm" around this time. However, a certain Jerry Newman, who then went to clubs with a portable tape recorder, a rather rare thing at that time, and recorded everything he heard, recorded on tape how Parker played in 1942. The record suggests that John Lewis's enthusiastic assessment was somewhat premature.
And yet Parker moved forward by leaps and bounds, and this is not in the best possible way reflected in his character. The saxophonist had little regard for those around him and was known as intolerant and arrogant. He lived by the principle: There is only one Bird, there are many others... But his friends still helped him as best they could. Dizzy Gillespie, for example, persuaded him to join Billy Eckstine's orchestra. It was 1944 - the heyday creative forces Parker. Apparently, that’s why he turned his nose up especially high and after a while he left the orchestra with a scandal.
Parker and Gillespie found work in clubs on New York's 52nd Street, most notably at Minton's Playhouse, where they played with great success. The Second World War had already ended by this time, and luck was with Charlie Parker: he played with such masters as drummers Kenya Clark and Max Roach, pianist Thelonious Monk, guitarist Charlie Christian, made his first solo recordings, but otherwise his life was all worsened. Nevertheless, Parker and Gillespie participated in two very prestigious Jazz at the Philharmonic concerts, which had a huge impact on the development of all jazz.
But what was born during Parker’s club performances upended all previously existing concepts in jazz. Parker, Gillespie and the musicians who played with them created a fundamentally new style - bebop, or simply bop, from which all modern jazz begins. The essence of bop was this: this music, sounding very loud and kept at an incredibly fast tempo, was performed not by orchestras, but by small groups, most often quartets and quintets. The musicians began to improvise without the usual introduction, using unusual chords and harmonies, which turned the previously euphonious, pleasant-to-hear jazz music into something completely unimaginable. Many older musicians simply spat as soon as the bop started playing. Young people followed Parker to clubs in droves, realizing that they were witnessing the birth of new, revolutionary music that was breaking all previously existing ideas about jazz.
However, Parker was already a complete alcoholic and drug addict. Such people, as a rule, have an unbalanced psyche. In 1947, Parker returned from Los Angeles to New York and revived his quintet, with which he began performing in clubs around the city. But by this time he had quarreled even with Dizzy Gillespie, so he invited drummer Max Roach and young trumpeter Miles Davis to join the quintet. This year in creative attitude became successful: a lot of music was recorded, but Parker's character deteriorated more and more. It seemed as if he had deliberately set himself the goal of cutting off all the threads that connected him with his former friends. One evening in 1948, Max Roach and Miles Davis also left Parker, unable to stand his arrogance and irresponsibility.
With all this, the stranger fact is that in 1948, according to polls from Metronom magazine, Parker was named the most popular musician... In those years, a jazz club was opened, which was called “Birdland”, of course, in honor of Charlie Parker. He managed to update the quintet, and this ensemble flourished, and the musicians received good fees. In the early 50s, Parker toured several times in Europe and recorded with a string group, after which bop fans began to accuse him of betraying the new music.
Parker went into a steep dive. Once, during a performance at Birdland, he lost his temper and dispersed the ensemble. Then the manager said that he could not count on further performances at the club. In fact, this meant another psychological crisis for the musician: Parker started drinking again.
On March 9, 1955, he found himself in the room of Baroness Pannonica de Koenigswarter, an enthusiastic fan of bop. Parker was ill, the Baroness called a doctor, but Charlie did not allow himself to be hospitalized.
He died on March 12, 1955 while watching a show on television. The cause of death was an acute attack of peptic ulcer. When the doctors came to examine him, Parker looked so bad that in the “age” column the doctor entered the numbers 53. In fact, Parker was not even thirty-five...
This is how a phenomenally gifted musician passed away. By all accounts, Charlie Parker was a victim of an anomaly that doctors call a “mental disorder.” This is a kind of egoism when for a person there is only his own “I”, and others are considered by him as applications. He bullied everyone, behaved arrogantly with club owners, fans and, worst of all, with employers. As a result, only those who agreed to endure all his whims communicated with him.
Characteristic his performing skill is the desire to saturate the melody with accents, as a rule, in the most unexpected places. Musical themes, created by Parker (“Ornithology”, “Now Is The Time”, “Moose The Mooche”, “Scrapple From The Apple” and others) were not entirely finished melodies, but rather sketches, sort of melodic impulses that the musician sent to the desire to find like-minded people. As practice has shown, he found an amazingly large number of like-minded people.
A consummate performer, Charlie Parker is more than just a cult musician. He was one of the founders of a completely new musical direction- bebop. As he himself said: “Bebop has nothing to do with jazz, it’s anything but jazz. There's no swing in it." Nevertheless, Parker’s jazz musical merits cannot be underestimated, because his teachers were the most famous jazzmen, from whom he adopted the style of playing, some performing techniques and a sense of style. Parker is the greatest improviser, going far beyond the classical conventional jazz traditions. No wonder bebop was called “progressive jazz.” A brilliant innovator, Parker was one of those young performers who was looking for his own path to fame - and eventually found it.
short biography
Charles Christopher Parker, as his parents named him, was born on August 29, 1920 in Kansas City, Kansas. The boy's father, Charles Parker, was quite a musical person. He worked part-time in several roles: played the piano, danced and sang. But her mother, Eddie Parker, had no musical talent and worked as a cleaner. Despite the fact that Charles was the only child in the family, his father did not spoil him with attention, and his mother took all the care of his upbringing.
7 years after Parker’s birth, the family moved to Missouri, to a city with the same name - Kansas City. Little Charlie spent his entire childhood and youth there, and in the same city he went to secondary school.
In the early 1930s, Parker's father abandoned his family, which greatly affected the boy's mental balance. To distract himself, he begins to play a type of brass in the school ensemble. wind instrument- euphonium, and his mother buys him alto saxophone to cheer up my son.
When Parker turned 14 years old, Eddie Parker enrolls his son in High school Lincoln. But learning was absolutely impossible for Charles, as music began to completely absorb all his thoughts. Taking advantage of the fact that his mother was away in the evenings working as a cleaner, Parker ran away from home and went to nightclubs. In one of them he heard alto saxophonist Lester Young, who became an idol for the boy. A year later, when he turned 15, Charlie dropped out of school and joined the city's performing musicians. At the same age, a teenager begins to use drugs.
Soon Parker begins performing in nightclubs without any music education. Partly, his arrogance saved him, because as a performer he was still very weak. His fingers could not keep up with the rapid ideas that were born in his head, so he could lose his rhythm or even stop in the middle of the work. For this he was often ridiculed, which hurt him very much. For example, in 1937, in the middle of a jam session at the Reno club, Parker lost his sense of harmony and stopped playing, frozen in confusion, for which he was ridiculed by the public and kicked out of the hall in disgrace.
To prove his superiority to everyone, Charlie began to study 15 hours a day, absolutely not sparing himself. He joins the Buster Smith group and adopts many of their playing techniques.
The turning point for Parker came in 1938, when he joined Jay McShann's big band. In 1939, he goes on tour with them to New York and decides to stay in this city. To earn money for food, he washes dishes while participating in jam sessions in nightclubs. On one of them, Parker suddenly realizes that if you use the top notes of complex chords as a melody line, you can modulate to any key, without limiting yourself to anything. This discovery allowed him to finally express what he could not convey with conventional music.
In 1941, together with the Jay McShann Orchestra, Parker recorded the song “Honeysuckle Rose” and fame came to him. It was during this time that he earned his nickname "Yardbird". In 1942, Charles, along with a group of like-minded people, including Dizzy Gillespie, began experimenting with jazz in Harlem nightclubs. Within 3 years, Charlie creates his own group playing bebop. Having brought the new style to perfection, the Parker team revolutionizes jazz music. Dozens of orchestras are beginning to try to play in the same manner as Parker's band. In 1947, Charlie created a quintet, with which he recorded his most famous works. From this moment on, he begins to conduct active touring and creative activities.
In 1949, Charlie Parker recorded six works with a string orchestra. His sound in these recordings is much cleaner and softer, and his improvisations are more thoughtful and harmonious. Parker was drug-free at this time, and this is clearly audible in the more graceful and natural solo fills.
In 1954, due to the death of his child, Parker finally loses the will to live. His last concert was given at the club " Birdland", named after the musician. The performance ended in a scandal and all the club owners turned their backs on Parker. Not a single establishment wanted to let in a person who flew into a rage over every little thing.
Parker left everyone and began to live with his admirer, Baroness de Koenigswarter. One day, while watching TV, Charlie Parker died. This happened on March 12, 1955.
Interesting Facts
- There are several different opinions about the appearance of the nickname “Bird”. The most common one is that the name came from his friends, due to Parker's excessive passion for fried chicken. Another says that while traveling with his group, Parker accidentally drove into a chicken coop. Therefore, it was jokingly nicknamed "Yardbird" and then shortened to simply "Bird". Well, the latter says that he was nicknamed that way because of his incredibly light, “fluttering” fingers.
- The titles of many of the works he recorded have references to birds.
- Parker simply adored the music of violinist Jascha Heifetz and could listen to his records for hours.
- His beloved string orchestra recordings alienated many of his fans. They claimed that Parker sold himself for money, which seriously injured the musician.
- The greatest jazzman - Louis Armstrong , compared the sound of bebop to learning exercises.
- According to his friends, Parker was well versed in music: from classical European to Latin American and country.
- All his life he tried to get rid of his heroin addiction, replacing it with an addiction to alcohol.
- His composition "Night and Day" sounds in computer game Grand Theft Auto IV.
- In 1948, he earned the title of “Musician of the Year” according to the authoritative magazine Metronome.
- He was very interested in music Igor Stravinsky , finding in him a like-minded person in some moments of the use of musical texture.
- Parker's classic quintet included the later famous trumpeter Miles Davis.
- In 1953, Parker used a Grafton plastic saxophone at one of his concerts.
- He played for 5 saxophones , including one custom-made for him by King.
- Towards the end of his life, Parker converted to Islam, becoming a member of the Ahmadiyya movement in the United States.
- The doctor who performed the post-mortem estimated Parker's age to be between 50 and 60 years old, although he was only 34 years old.
- Parker's funeral was paid for by Dizzy Gillespie.
Personal life
Charlie Parker was very popular with women, so much so that some fans followed him from state to state. It is not surprising that with such an attitude towards himself, he was married several times, and marriage did not at all interfere with his wild adventures. His first wife, Rebecca Ruffin, married him in 1936, when Parker was only 15 years old. From this marriage, Charles had two children - Leon and Francis. The marriage was short-lived and broke up after 3 years.
In 1943, he married dancer Geraldine Scott, but they did not live together for long. Due to constant quarrels, the couple quickly separated. Parker's nature did not tolerate loneliness and he soon married again, this time to Doris Snydor. Due to Parker's drug addiction, the marriage lasted only 2 years, although they never officially divorced. In 1950, he began living with model Chan Richardson and her daughter Kim. They could not officially sign, since Parker did not want to divorce his former wife, Doris. Chan gave birth to two children, but in 1954 Pri’s little daughter dies, which finally plunges the great jazzman into the abyss of drug addiction.
Best compositions
"Ornithology"- almost the most famous work bebop style, first recorded by Parker's ensemble in 1946. The title alludes to Parker's nickname, Bird.
"Parker's Mood" is a beautiful blues recorded and performed by Parker in 1948 with John Lewis, Curly Russell and Max Roach.
"Yardbird Suite"- another reference to Charlie's nickname, a jazz standard recorded in 1946. This composition became a kind of bebop anthem.
"Confirmation"- an extremely complex composition with a jagged rhythm and very complex harmony, recorded in 1946. Like almost every piece by Parker, it has become a jazz standard.
"Lover man" - this piece is considered one of the best recorded by Parker. During the recording, the musician was high on heroin, so his producer Ross Russell had to hold him in front of the microphone until the piece was recorded.
"Moose the Mooch"– recorded by Charlie shortly after leaving his ensemble Dizzy Gillespie. There is speculation that the item is named after the nickname of the dealer who supplied Parker with drugs for several years.
"Billie's Bounce"- excellent blues recorded by Parker in 1945. In 2002, he was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.
Films featuring Charlie Parker and his music
- "Jivin" in Be-Bop" (1946)
- "The Cool of the Evening" (1967)
- "Sven Klangs kvintett" (1976)
- "Bird" (1988)
- "The Last Days of Chez Nous" (1992)
- "Wherever the Wind Blows" (2003)
- "Professor Norman Cornett" (2009)
- "Very Low" (2014)
Unfortunately, the life of a talented musician was cut short too early. It is unknown how much more he could have said to the world, and how many unrealized ideas he had left in stock. Recognized as a genius during his lifetime, who did not tolerate anyone's advice and lived by his own rules, Charlie Parker forever went down in history as a rebel, whose style of play cannot be repeated by almost any person. Boldly and decisively rejecting classical rules and traditions, he created new music, so voluminous in content that it is almost impossible to measure.
Video: listen to Charlie Parker
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