Musicians of the 20th century: Charlie Parker (Charlie Parker). Charlie Parker - the story of the jazz bird Biography of Charlie Parker in English
Parker received the nickname "Yardbird" early in his career, and the shortened form "Bird" continued to be used throughout his life. Parker himself used this nickname in the titles of a number of compositions, such as “Yardbird Suite”, “Ornithology”, “Bird Gets the Worm” and “Bird of Paradise”. ).
Parker was a highly influential jazz soloist and a leading figure in the development of bebop, a form of jazz characterized by fast tempos, virtuosic technique and improvisation. Charlie developed revolutionary harmonic ideas, including fast chord changes, new variations of modified chords, and chord substitutions. His tone ranged from clear and penetrating to sweet and dark. Many of Parker's recordings demonstrate virtuosic technique and complex melodic lines, sometimes combining jazz with other musical genres, including blues, Latin and classical music.
Charlie Parker was an icon of the beatnik subculture and then transcended those generations, embodying the jazz musician as an uncompromising and intellectual artist rather than an entertainer.
Biography
Charles Parker Jr.(Charles Parker, Jr.) was born on August 29, 1920 in Kansas City, Kansas, and grew up in Kansas City, Missouri. He was the only child of Charles and Eddie Parker. Parker attended Lincoln High School. He enrolled there in September 1934 and graduated in December 1935, shortly before joining the local musicians' union.
Charlie Parker began playing the saxophone at age 11, and at age 14 he joined the school band, using an instrument he rented from the school. His father, Charles, was often absent, but still had some musical influence on his son, as he was a pianist, dancer and singer. Later he became a waiter or cook on trains. Parker's mother, Eddie, worked nights at the local Western Union office. His biggest influence at the time was a young trombonist who taught him the basics of improvisation.
Carier start
In the late 1930s, Parker began to practice quite 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 3-4 years practicing up to 15 hours a day.
In 1942, Parker left McShann's band and played with Earl Hines for one year. This group included Dizzy Gillespie, who later played a duet with Parker. Unfortunately, this period is largely undocumented due to the 1942-1943 American Federation of Musicians strike, during which recordings were suspended. Parker joined a group of young musicians who played after the closure of Harlem clubs such as Clark Monroe's Uptown House and Minton's Playhouse. These young rebels included Gillespie, pianist Thelonious Monk, guitarist Charlie Christian and drummer Kenny Clarke. Monk said of the group: "We wanted to make sure they couldn't play our music. They were white bandleaders who were usurping the profits from swing." Band on 52nd Street, including Three Deuces and The Onyx. While in New York, Charlie studied with his music teacher, Maury Deutsch.
Bop
According to an interview Parker gave in 1950, one night in 1939 he was playing at a Cherokee jam session with guitarist William "Biddy" Fleet, Charlie came up with new method development of the solo, which is considered one of his major musical innovations. He realized that the twelve tones of the chromatic scale could be translated melodically to any key, transcending some of the limits of a simple jazz solo.
Early in its development, this new type of jazz was rejected by many traditional jazz musicians, who despised their younger colleagues. Beboppers answered the call of these moldy fig traditionalists. However, some musicians, such as Coleman Hawkins and Benny Goodman, spoke positively of its development, and participated in jam sessions and recordings with its adherents.
Due to the Musicians Union's two-year ban on all commercial recordings from 1942 to 1944, much of the early development of bebop remained unknown to posterity. As a result, she received limited exposure to radio. Bebop musicians had a difficult time, but they gained widespread recognition. Until 1945, when the recording ban was lifted, Parker's collaborations with Dizzy Gillespie, Max Roach, Bud Powell and others had a significant impact on the jazz world. One of their first small group performances together was discovered and published in 2005: a concert at Town Hall in New York City on June 22, 1945. Bebop soon gained widespread recognition among musicians and fans.
On November 26, 1945, Parker completed a session for the Savoy label, which has since been marketed as "the greatest jazz session of all time." Tracks recorded during this session include "Ko-Ko" and "Now's the Time".
Shortly thereafter, the Parker/Gillespie group went to perform at Billy Berg's club in Los Angeles, which was unsuccessful. Most of the group returned to New York, but Parker remained in California, selling a return ticket and buying heroin. He experienced great difficulty in California and was eventually committed to the Camarillo State Mental Hospital for six months.
Addiction
Parker's chronic heroin addiction caused him to miss concerts and he soon lost his job. He often resorted to making money on the streets, receiving loans from fellow musicians and fans, leaving his saxophone as collateral, and spending the money on drugs. Heroin was common in the jazz scene and the drugs were easy to buy.
Although he produced many brilliant records during this period, Charlie Parker's behavior became increasingly erratic. Heroin was hard to come by in California, where he moved, and Parker began drinking heavily to compensate. Entries for the Dial label dated July 29, 1946 testify to his fortune. Before this session, Parker drank a liter of whiskey. When recording Charlie Parker on Dial Volume 1, Parker skipped most of the first two bars of his first chorus on the track "Max Making Wax". When he finally came to his senses, he swayed and turned around reverse side from the microphone. On the next tune, "Lover Man", producer Ross Russell actually backed Parker. When recording "Bebop" (Parker recorded the last track in the evening), he begins the solo improvisation with a solid first eight bars. By the second eight bars, however, Parker begins to struggle, and trumpeter Howard McGhee shouts in frustration, "Bang!" on Parker. Charles Mingus considers this version of "Lover Man" to be one of Parker's greatest recordings, despite its shortcomings. However, Parker hated the recordings and never forgave Ross Russell for releasing them. Charlie recorded the tune again in 1951 for Verve.
When Parker was released from the hospital, he was clean and healthy, and went on to make some of the performances and recordings of his career. He converted to Islam. Before leaving California, Charlie recorded "Relaxin" at Camarillo", in reference to his hospital stay. He returned to New York, began using heroin again and made dozens of recordings for the Savoy and Dial labels, which remain some of his most highlights. Many of them were with his so-called "classic quintet", including trumpeter Miles Davis and drummer Max Roach.
Charlie Parker and strings
Parker's long-time desire was to perform with strings. He was a passionate student classical music, and contemporaries said that Charlie was most interested in the music and innovations of Igor Stravinsky and wanted to participate in a project akin to what later became known as Third Stream, a new type of music that combined jazz and classical elements as opposed to simply inclusion of strings in the performance of jazz standards.
On November 30, 1949, Norman arranged for Parker to record an album of ballads with a mixed group of jazz and chamber orchestra players. The six masters at this session produced an album of Charlie Parker with strings: "Just Friends", "Everything Happens to Me", "April in Paris", "Summertime", "I Didn't Know What Time It Was" and "If I Should Lose" You".
The sound of these recordings is rare in the Charlie Parker catalogue. Parker's improvisations, compared to his regular work, are more refined and economical. His tone is darker and softer than on small group recordings, and most of his solos are pretty embellishments to original tunes rather than the harmonious basis of improvisations. This is one of the few recordings Parker made during a brief period when he was able to control his heroin addiction, and his sobriety and mental clarity are evident in this game. Parker stated that the recording Bird With Strings, was his favorite. Although when using classical instruments in jazz music was not entirely original, it was the first major work where the composer combined bebop with a string orchestra.
Jazz at Massey Hall
In 1953, Charlie Parker performed at Massey Hall in Toronto, Canada, where he was joined by Gillespie, Mingus, Bud Powell and Max Roach. Unfortunately, the concert coincided with a television broadcast of a heavyweight boxing match between Rocky Marciano and Jersey Joe Walcott, so there were almost no spectators. Mingus recorded the concert, resulting in the album Jazz at Massey Hall. At this concert, Parker played a Grafton plastic saxophone. At this point in his career he was experimenting with new sounds and materials.
Parker is known to have played several saxophones, including the Conn 6M, The Martin Handicraft, and the Selmer Model 22. Parker also performed with a King "Super 20" saxophone, which was made especially for him in 1947.
Death of a Bird
Parker died on March 12, 1955, while visiting his friend and patron Baroness de Pannonica Koenigswarter at the Stanhope Hotel in New York City while watching the Dorsey Brothers show on television. The official cause of death was lobar pneumonia and a bleeding ulcer, but Parker also had cirrhosis of the liver and suffered a heart attack. The investigator who performed his autopsy mistakenly estimated Parker's 34-year-old body to be approximately 50 to 60 years old.
Parker lived since 1950 with Chan Richardson, the mother of his son Byrd and daughter Pree (who died in infancy from cystic fibrosis). He considers Chan his wife, but he never formally married her, nor did he divorce his previous wife, Doris (whom he married in 1948). This led to a complicated settlement of Parker's inheritance and ultimately resulted in the failure to fulfill his wishes to be buried quietly in New York.
It was well known that Parker never wanted to return to Kansas City, even in death. Parker told Chan that he did not want to be buried in his hometown, that New York was his home. Dizzy Gillespie paid for the funeral and organized a state farewell ceremony. The procession in Harlem was led by Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., and there was also a memorial concert before Parker's body was flown back to Missouri, in accordance with his mother's wishes. Parker's widow criticized Parker's family for having a Christian funeral, even though they knew Charlie was a committed atheist. Parker was buried in Lincoln Cemetery, Missouri, in the hamlet known as Blue Summit.
Charlie Parker's properties are managed by CMG Worldwide.
Music
The style of Charlie Parker's compositions includes interpolations of the original melody over pre-existing jazz forms and standards. This practice is still widespread in jazz today. For example, "Ornithology" ("How High The Moon") and "Yardbird Suite", the vocal version of which is called "What Price Love", with lyrics by Parker. This practice was not uncommon before bebop, but became a signature of the movement as artists began to move away from arrangements of popular standards and wrote their own compositions.
While tunes such as "Now's The Time", "Billie's Bounce" and "Cool Blues" were based on the usual twelve-bar blues variations, Parker also created a unique 12-bar horn version of "Blues for Alice" ". These unique chords are popularly known as "Bird Changes". Like his solos, some of his work is characterized by long, complex melodic lines and minimal repetition, although he did use repetition in some tunes, notably "Now's The Time".
Parker made major contributions to modern solo jazz, in which triplets and pickups were used in an unorthodox way of introducing tones into the chord, allowing the soloist more freedom to use passing tones that soloists had previously avoided. Parker is admired for his unique phrasing style and innovative use of rhythm. His popularity was further enhanced by his recordings, posthumously published as the Charlie Parker Omnibook, which clearly identified Parker's style, which would dominate jazz for many years to come.
Charlie Parker - Summertime
Charlie Parker - All the things you are
Charlie Parker - Lover man
Discography
Savoy Records
1944
The Immortal Charlie Parker
Bird: Master Takes
Encores
1945
Dizzy Gillespie - Groovin" High
The Genius Of Charlie Parker
Charlie Parker Story
Charlie Parker Memorial, Vol. 2
1947
Charlie Parker Memorial, Vol. 1
1948
Bird At The Roost, Vol. 1
Newly Discovered Sides By Charlie Parker
The "Bird" Returns
1949
Bird At The Roost, Vol. 2
Bird At The Roost
1950
An Evening At Home With Charlie Parker Sextet
Dial Records
1945
Red Norvo's Fabulous Jam Session
1946
Alternate Masters, Vol. 2
1947
The Bird Blows The Blues
Cool Blues c/w Bird's Nest
Alternate Masters, Vol. 1
Crazeology c/w Crazeology, II: 3 Ways Of Playing A Chorus
Charlie Parker, Vol. 4
Verve Records
1946
Jazz At The Philharmonic, Vol. 2
Jazz At The Philharmonic, Vol. 4
1948
Various Artists - Potpourri Of Jazz
The Charlie Parker Story, #1
1949
The Genius Of Charlie Parker, #7 - Jazz Perennial
Jazz At The Philharmonic, Vol. 7
Jazz At The Philharmonic - The Ella Fitzgerald Set
The Complete Charlie Parker On Verve - Bird
1950
The Genius Of Charlie Parker, #4 - Bird And Diz
The Charlie Parker Story, #3
1951
The Genius Of Charlie Parker, #8 - Swedish Schnapps
The Genius Of Charlie Parker, #6 - Fiesta
1952
The Genius Of Charlie Parker, #3 - Now's The Time
1953
The Quartet Of Charlie Parker
1954
The Genius Of Charlie Parker, #5 - Charlie Parker Plays Cole Porter
Compilations
1940
Bird's Eyes, Vol. 1 (Philology)
Charlie Parker With Jay McShann And His Orchestra - Early Bird (Stash)
Jay McShann Orchestra Featuring Charlie Parker - Early Bird (Spotlight)
1941
Jay McShann - The Early Bird Charlie Parker, 1941-1943: Jazz Heritage Series (MCA)
The Complete Birth Of The Bebop (Stash)
1943
Birth Of The Bebop: Bird On Tenor 1943 (Stash)
1945
Every Bit Of It 1945 (Spotlight)
Charlie Parker, Vol. 3 Young Bird 1945 (Masters of Jazz)
Dizzy Gillespie - In The Beginning (Prestige)
Bird's Eyes, Vol. 17 (Philology)
Charlie Parker On Dial, Vol. 5 (Spotlight)
Red Norvo's Fabulous Jam Session (Spotlight)
Dizzy Gillespie/Charlie Parker - Town Hall, New York City, June 22, 1945 (Uptown)
Bird's Eyes, Vol. 4 (Philology)
Yardbird In Lotus Land (Spotlight)
1946
Rappin' With Bird (Meexa)
Jazz At The Philharmonic - How High The Moon (Mercury)
Charlie Parker On Dial, Vol. 1 (Spotlight)
1947
The Legendary Dial Masters, Vol. 2 (Stash)
Various Artists - Lullaby In Rhythm (Spotlight)
Charlie Parker On Dial, Vol. 2 (Spotlight)
Charlie Parker On Dial, Vol. 3 (Spotlight)
Charlie Parker On Dial, Vol. 4 (Spotlight)
Various Artists - Anthropology (Spotlight)
Allen Eager - In The Land Of Oo-Bla-Dee 1947-1953 (Uptown)
Charlie Parker On Dial, Vol. 6 (Spotlight)
Various Artists - The Jazz Scene (Clef)
1948
Gene Roland Band Featuring Charlie Parker - The Band That Never Was (Spotlight)
Bird's Eyes, Vol. 6 (Philology)
Bird on 52nd St. (Jazz Workshop)
Charlie Parker (Prestige)
Charlie Parker - Live Performances (ESP)
Charlie Parker On The Air, Vol. 1 (Everest)
1949
Charlie Parker - Broadcast Performances, Vol. 2 (ESP)
The Metronome All Stars - From Swing To Be-Bop (RCA Camden)
Jazz At The Philharmonic - J.A.T.P. At Carnegie Hall 1949 (Pablo)
Rara Avis Avis, Rare Bird (Stash)
Various Artists - Alto Saxes (Norgran)
Bird On The Road (Jazz Showcase)
Charlie Parker/Dizzy Gillespie - Bird And Diz (Universal (Japan))
Charlie Parker - Bird In Paris (Bird in Paris)
Charlie Parker In France 1949 (Jazz O.P. (France))
Charlie Parker - Bird Box, Vol. 2 (Jazz Up (Italy))
Bird's Eyes, Vol. 5 (Philology)
Charlie Parker with Strings (Clef)
Bird's Eyes, Vol. 2 (Philology)
Bird's Eyes, Vol. 3 (Philology)
Dance Of The Infidels (S.C.A.M.)
1950
Charlie Parker Live Birdland 1950 (EPM Music (F) FDC 5710)
Charlie Parker - Bird At St. Nick's (Jazz Workshop JWS 500)
Charlie Parker At The Apollo Theater And St. Nick's Arena (Zim ZM 1007)
Charlie Parker - Bird's Eyes, Vol. 15 (Philology (It) W 845-2)
Charlie Parker - Fats Navarro - Bud Powell (Ozone 4)
Charlie Parker - One Night In Birdland (Columbia JG 34808)
Charlie Parker - Bud Powell - Fats Navarro (Ozone 9)
Charlie Parker - Just Friends (S.C.A.M. JPG 4)
Charlie Parker - Apartment Jam Sessions (Zim ZM 1006)
V.A. - Our Best (Clef MGC 639)
The Genius Of Charlie Parker, #4 - Bird And Diz (Verve MGV 8006)
The Persuasively Coherent Miles Davis (Alto AL 701)
Charlie Parker - Ultimate Bird 1949-50 (Grotto 495)
Charlie Parker - Ballads And Birdland (Klacto (E) MG 101)
Charlie Parker Big Band(Mercury MGC 609)
Charlie Parker - Parker Plus Strings (Charlie Parker PLP 513)
Charlie Parker - Bird With Strings Live At The Apollo, Carnegie Hall And Birdland (Columbia JC 34832)
Charlie Parker - The Bird You Never Heard (Stash STCD 10)
Norman Granz Jazz Concert (Norgran MGN 3501-2)
Charlie Parker At The Pershing Ballroom Chicago 1950 (Zim ZM 1003)
The Charlie Parker Story, #3 (Verve MGV 8002)
Charlie Parker - Bird In Sweden (Spotlite (E) SPJ 124/25)
Charlie Parker - More Unissued, Vol. 2 (Royal Jazz (D) RJD 506)
Machito - Afro-Cuban Jazz (Clef MGC 689)
An Evening At Home With Charlie Parker Sextet (Savoy MG 12152)
1951
The Genius Of Charlie Parker, #8 - Swedish Schnapps (Verve MGV 8010)
The Magnificent Charlie Parker (Clef MGC 646)
The Genius Of Charlie Parker, #6 - Fiesta (Verve MGV 8008)
Charlie Parker - Summit Meeting At Birdland (Columbia JC 34831)
Charlie Parker - Bird Meets Birks (Klacto (E) MG 102)
Charlie Parker - The Happy "Bird" (Charlie Parker PLP 404)
Charlie Parker Live Boston, Philadelphia, Brooklyn 1951 (EPM Music (F) FDC 5711)
Charlie Parker - Bird With The Herd 1951 (Alamac QSR 2442)
Charlie Parker - More Unissued, Vol. 1 (Royal Jazz (D) RJD 505)
1952
Charlie Parker - New Bird, Vol. 2 (Phoenix LP 12)
Charlie Parker/Sonny Criss/Chet Baker - Inglewood Jam 6-16-"52 (Jazz Chronicles JCS 102)
Norman Granz" Jam Session, #1 (Mercury MGC 601)
Norman Granz" Jam Session, #2 (Mercury MGC 602)
Charlie Parker Live At Rockland Palace (Charlie Parker PLP 502)
Charlie Parker - Cheers (S.C.A.M. JPG 2)
The Genius Of Charlie Parker, #3 - Now's The Time (Verve MGV 8005)
1953
Miles Davis - Collector's Items (Prestige PRLP 7044)
Charlie Parker - Montreal 1953 (Uptown UP 27.36)
Charlie Parker/Miles Davis/Dizzy Gillespie - Bird With Miles And Dizzy (Queen Disc (It) Q-002)
Charlie Parker - One Night In Washington (Elektra/Musician E1 60019)
Charlie Parker - Yardbird-DC-53 (VGM 0009)
Charlie Parker At Storyville (Blue Note BT 85108)
Charlie Parker - Star Eyes (Klacto (E) MG 100)
Charles Mingus - The Complete Debut Recordings (Debut 12DCD 4402-2)
The Quintet - Jazz At Massey Hall, Vol. 1 (Debut DLP 2)
The Quintet - Jazz At Massey Hall (Debut DEB 124)
Charlie Parker - Bird Meets Birks (Mark Gardner (E) MG 102)
Bud Powell - Summer Broadcasts 1953 (ESP-Disk" ESP 3023)
Charlie Parker - New Bird: Hi Hat Broadcasts 1953 (Phoenix LP 10)
The Quartet Of Charlie Parker (Verve 825 671-2)
1954
Hi-Hat All Stars, Guest Artists, Charlie Parker (Fresh Sound (Sp) FSR 303)
Charlie Parker - Kenton And Bird (Jazz Supreme JS 703)
The Genius Of Charlie Parker, #5 - Charlie Parker Plays Cole Porter (Verve MGV 8007)
Charlie Parker - Miles Davis - Lee Konitz (Ozone 2)
V.A. - Echoes Of An Era: The Birdland All Stars Live At Carnegie Hall (Roulette RE 127)
Live recordings
Live at Townhall w. Dizzy (1945)
Yardbird in Lotus Land (1945)
Bird and Pres (1946) (Verve)
Jazz at the Philharmonic (1946) (Polygram)
Rapping with Bird (1946-1951)
Bird and Diz at Carnegie Hall (1947) (Blue Note)
The Complete Savoy Live Performances (1947–1950)
Bird on 52nd Street (1948)
The Complete Dean Benedetti Recordings (1948–1951) (7 cds)
Jazz at the Philharmonic (1949) (Verve)
Charlie Parker and the Stars of Modern Jazz at Carnegie Hall (1949) (Jass)
Bird in Paris (1949)
Bird in France (1949)
Charlie Parker All Stars Live at the Royal Roost (1949)
One Night in Birdland (1950) (Columbia)
Bird at St. Nick's (1950)
Bird at the Apollo Theater and St. Nicklas Arena (1950)
Apartment Jam Sessions (1950)
Charlie Parker at the Pershing Ballroom Chicago 1950 (1950)
Bird in Sweden (1950) (Storyville)
Happy Bird (1951)
Summit Meeting at Birdland (1951) (Columbia)
Live at Rockland Palace (1952)
Jam Session (1952) (Polygram)
At Jirayr Zorthian's Ranch, July 14, 1952 (1952) (Rare Live Recordings)
The Complete Legendary Rockland Palace Concert (1952)
Charlie Parker: Montreal 1953 (1953)
One Night in Washington (1953) (VGM)
Bird at the High Hat (1953) (Blue Note)
Charlie Parker at Storyville (1953)
Jazz at Massey Hall aka.The Greatest Jazz Concert Ever (1953).
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 instrument, the euphonium, in the school ensemble, 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, Parker's team is revolutionizing 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” can be heard in a 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
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 others performed in concerts jazz musicians. 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 famous musicians play at a local cabaret. 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. Second World War by this time it had already ended, and Charlie Parker's luck was with him: 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 getting worse. 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 everything begins. modern jazz. 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.
Great innovator, alto saxophonist, composer. This name has long been included in all music encyclopedias. His recordings are constantly being reissued. Dozens of books, hundreds of articles, thousands of pages have been written about him.
Before I put pen to paper, I tried to honestly answer myself the question: why? Why add a couple more pages to these mont Blancs of printed matter? After all, everything has already been thoroughly researched. And yet there were arguments in favor. Firstly, out of these thousands of pages, it’s good if a dozen or two were published in the vastness of the former “indestructible union of free republics.” And if we take Belarus separately? Official publishers have never spoiled us with jazz literature, just a teaspoon a year. More and more foreign sources and samizdat translations had to be used. Fortunately, there were ardent enthusiasts of this cause - in Voronezh, in Moscow, in St. Petersburg, and here, in Minsk. And then there were some risky people who decided to start publishing a jazz magazine. Where else to start then, if not with the most legendary?
If, once again turning to mountaineering analogies, we imagine the world of jazz music in the form of a certain mountain system, then for me the five peaks will stand out noticeably in their power and height, I would name five names among the greatest giants - Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker, John Coltrane and Miles Davis. I readily admit that from another point of observation of this “mountain system” some other “peaks” will seem higher than some of those named, but Parker will certainly be noted under any circumstances. Each of the musicians mentioned above is an era in jazz, but Parker is not just the creator of a new jazz style. Bebop, to the birth of which he was most directly related, marked a gigantic “tectonic fault” that forever separated traditional jazz from all later movements, collectively called modern jazz. For a young neophyte who has only recently become interested in jazz music, both Parker and, for example, Kid Ory are “legends from ancient times.” It is all the more important to try to understand who Charlie Parker was and remains for the world of jazz.
"Then Charlie Parker, the kid from his mother's woodshed in Kansas City, came in. He was blowing his braided viola among the logs, practicing his rainy days, and got out of the barn only to see with my own eyes how old Basie was swinging, and to hear the Benny Moten ensemble, where Hot Lips Page played, and everyone else... Charlie Parker left home and came to Harlem, where he met a madman Thelonious Monk and the even crazier Gillespie... "Charlie Parker in his younger days, when he got his teeth kicked in and walked around with his hat in a circle while playing." (Jack Kerouac, American writer).
Charles Christopher Parker was born on August 29, 1920. This happened in the very heart of America, its Midwest, in Kansas City. Actually, today there are two such cities on the map of the United States - one in Kansas, the other in Missouri. A deep river divides the former state of the rebel Confederacy, the state where slavery reigned, and the state that remained free. Slavery and freedom. Parker is a representative of the third generation of black Americans who did not know slavery, but it seems to me that both of these concepts passed through his entire life. Slavish dependence on one's self-centered character, alcohol, drugs and - enormous inner freedom in creativity, in daring bold ideas, in the music that overwhelmed him.
Charlie spent his childhood in the black ghetto of Kansas City, where there were many bars, entertainment venues, and music was always playing. The father, a third-rate singer and dancer, soon abandoned the family, and the mother, Eddie Parker, gave all the heat of her love to the boy, exhausted herself, trying to ensure that he would not be denied anything, and spoiled him greatly. The next, as it turned out later, fateful gift was a battered alto saxophone, bought for 45 dollars. Charlie began to play. He 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 spent days learning to play himself. There was no time left for textbooks.
At the age of 15, Charlie left school and took the road that led him until the very end of his life - becoming a professional musician. There was, of course, still little professionalism in this selfish, reserved half-boy - half-youth. He tries to copy the famous Lester Young's solo, plays in jams, and 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.” What did Charlie play? Since childhood, he had heard the blues, and blues intonations gradually permeated his musical thinking. He mostly had to play pop music. The pop music of that era was swing. This was the era of the great big bands, collective improvisations, smooth, coherent sounds. Despite the rapid progress in playing technique, young Charlie did not really fit into this style. 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. He left the hall, but not the music. He was doomed to this sweet torment for the rest of his life.
And life took its toll and took it very quickly. At age 15, Charlie married 19-year-old Rebecca Ruffing. This was his first marriage, but just as fleeting and unsuccessful as the subsequent ones. At 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. And this acquaintance is also marked by the sign of fate.
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 just over three years, and Parker's first known recordings were also made with this orchestra. Here he became mature master. His colleagues highly regarded him as an alto saxophonist, but what he had to play still did not satisfy Charlie. 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 played: “Yes, that evening I improvised for a long time on the theme of “Cherokee” and suddenly I noticed that by building a melody from the upper intervals of the chords and inventing new harmonies on this basis, I suddenly managed to play what was always in me. It's like I was born again."
After Byrd opened his way to freedom, he could no longer play with McShann. At the beginning of 1942 in New York, he left the orchestra and, leading a half-starved, miserable existence, continued to play his music in various New York clubs. Parker worked primarily at Clark Monroe's Uptown House. 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. Pianistelonius Monk, drummer Kenny Clarke, bassist Nick Fenton and trumpeter Joe Guy constantly worked in the club's lineup. Evenings and nights regularly jam sessions were held, where guitarist Charlie Christian, trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie, pianist Bud Powell and other musicians were frequent guests. Together with Parker, they would become the fathers of a new jazz style. One autumn evening, Clark and Monk went to Uptown to listen to the alto saxophonist there , rumors about which reached Minton's. It’s simply impossible to resist quoting Clark’s impressions: “Byrd played something unheard of. He played phrases that, as it seemed to me, I had invented myself for the drums. He played twice as fast as Lester Young and in harmonies that Lester had never dreamed of. Byrd "he walked along our same road, but was much ahead of us. It is 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. 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 triumphantly burst out in cascades of amazing, unheard of sounds. Standing next to him was those years Dizzy Gillespie, who was practically not inferior to Byrd in creative imagination, but had a much more cheerful and sociable character.Byrd and Dizzy were Romulus and Remus, St. Paul and St. Peter, Marx and Engels new music. Almost by 1942, the main stylistic features of this music had finally taken shape, and a circle of its listeners and fans had formed.
“The sounds of the saxophone were no longer musical phrases, now only screams were heard - from “Aaaaaaaaaaaaaah” down to “Beep!”, up to “Eee-ee!”, down again, to notes that came out of nowhere, and then - to the sound of a trumpet, echoed on all sides." (Jack Kerouac, American writer).
It’s probably impossible to talk about Parker without saying at least a few words about what, in fact, bebop was (aka reebop, aka just bop - all these are onomatopoeias characteristic of the style, primarily saxophone voices), it’s probably impossible. Boppers began to widely use intervals that were previously completely atypical for jazz; sharp, nervous musical phrases seemed to fit together in a completely chaotic manner. The listener received as if a kind of musical dotted line, the gaps between the lines of which he was left to fill in himself. As a result, well-known jazz themes were changed beyond recognition in bop. All this happened against the background of a noticeably accelerated tempo compared to swing, and with a constant change in rhythmic accents. The importance of solo improvisation has sharply increased, and small groups - combos - have become the favorite compositions of boppers. It was completely new music for that time. 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 this man's relationship with the outside world. Slavery took revenge on freedom. 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 another demon - alcohol. This diabolical duo - alcohol and drugs - played their black theme more and more confidently.
But the bright theme continued to unfold in unison - the theme of creative freedom. In 1943, Parker played with pianist Earl Hines' orchestra, and in 1944 with Hines' former vocalist Billy Eckstine. By the end of the year, Bird began performing with Gillespie at a club on 52nd Street in New York. The change of addresses of jazz clubs seems to reflect Parker's evolution: 138th Street (Uptown) - 118th Street (Minton's) - and finally 52nd, which became the recognized center of bop. In February-March 1945 Byrd and Dizzy recorded a series of records that presented the new jazz style to the world in all its brilliance.The next, no less significant recordings appeared in November.
Bop split the jazz world. To a certain extent, as a reaction to bop on the one hand and the commercialization of swing on the other, a revival of interest in Dixieland began. Many musicians and critics were hostile to bop. Guitarist Eddie Condon said that to him, bop is as musical as a cough. The great Louis Armstrong was no less decisive: “Everything they do is exhibitionism, and here every technique is suitable, as long as it is different from what you have played before.” Venerable jazz specialists such as Rudy Blesh in the States and South Panassier in Europe denied bop its belonging to jazz music. But there were also many adherents of the new style. Jazz aficionado and successful impresario Norman Granz recruited Parker and Gillespie to participate in his famous Jazz at the Philharmonic concert series. Ross Russell in Los Angeles recorded the boppers, who moved to California at the end of 1945, on his small company "Dial". It was in California that Parker suffered his first serious nervous crisis. The jazz world saw Byrd return to active activity again only in early 1947. This time, the young Miles Davis (trumpet) and Max Roach (drums) entered the Charlie Parker Quintet in New York. 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. The famous jazz critic Leonard Feather helped organize this concert. In 1948, Byrd was named musician of the year in Metronome magazine's questionnaire. That same year, a new jazz club in New York was named BIRDLAND in his honor. The struggle between freedom and slavery continued in this tattered, exhausted and brilliant man.
"I will tell you where the word" BOP "came from; when a policeman beats a Negro with a club on the head, the club says: Bop-Bop-Ribop." (Langston Hughes, American poet).
As a social phenomenon, bop reflected changes in the consciousness of black musicians and the black community in America as a whole. By the end of the 40s, black intellectuals and black World War II veterans had already emerged and began to feel increasingly dissatisfied with their situation. It was during those years that a strange movement of “black Muslims” was born, and some jazzmen changed their names to Islamic ones. Many of them are no longer satisfied with the role of entertainer. Boppers are emphatically strict, sometimes emphatically indifferent to the public; on stage they do not entertain white gentlemen, they play for themselves and play serious music. And it was Parker who “worked” especially hard on this image. By the way, as Joachim-Ernst Behrendt writes, Parker’s five favorite composers looked like this: Brahms, Schoenberg, Ellington, Hindemith, Stravinsky. Only one jazzman! The image of Byrd, who was closed and constantly in conflict with the outside world, was imitated.
And not just blacks. Bop was equally enthusiastically received not only by a narrow group of jazzmen and critics, but also by a number of marginal white intellectuals, mostly people of intellectual professions, who even then realized that they were not on the same path with official America. It was then that hipsters and beatniks began to appear, the older brothers of the hippies of the 60s. It is no coincidence that the music of Byrd and his colleagues was perceived as their own by such people as Kerouac, Ginsberg, Ferlinghetti, and the beatnik bible, Jack Kerouac's On the Road, seemed to be permeated with the sounds of the rebellious and beautiful alto saxophone of Charlie Parker.
Europeans for the first time, but not in last time We saw Byrd with our own eyes in 1949, when he and his quintet arrived at the 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 people, to put it mildly, not so bright, who more or less resignedly 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 who had recently been ardent fans. There were accusations of commercialism. Slavery began to overcome freedom. Tours increasingly began to be interspersed with visits to psychiatric clinics. In 1954, Byrd received a severe and very painful blow - his two-year-old daughter Pri died.
All of Byrd's attempts to regain psychological balance and find ground under his feet were in vain. It was impossible to hide from myself in the idyllic rural wilderness. He was imperiously drawn to New York - the city of his glory and his Golgotha. A series of performances at Birdland ended in scandal. In another fit of rage, Parker dispersed his musicians and interrupted the performance. The club's owners refused to deal with him. The bird was banished from its country.
Parker's last refuge was the house of his wealthy admirer, Baroness de Koenigswarter. The agony lasted from March 9 to March 12, 1955. The stomach pains intensified, Parker did not want to see the doctor. On March 12, he sat in front of the TV and watched the Dorsey Brothers Show. Death overtook him at that moment. Slavery stifled freedom. The doctors who were finally called named the cause of death as cirrhosis of the liver and a stomach ulcer. Byrd did not live to see 35 years of age.
However, only the mortal body passed away. What remains are "KOKO", "ANTHROPOLOGY", "YARDBIRD SUITE", "BACK HOME BLUES", "JUST FRIENDS" and dozens of other evidence of his brilliant talent. Almost immediately after his death, Charlie became a cult figure. Obviously, there are fewer people worshiping his memory today than those mourning Kurt Cobain, but they exist. The masters of the most are not indifferent to Parker and his fate. different types arts The outstanding Argentinean Julio Cortazar dedicated one of his most powerful books to the memory of Parker - the story “The Pursuer” (1959). A notable phenomenon at the Cannes Film Festival in 1988 was the film "The Bird". Forrest Whittaker, who played Parker, was awarded the Grand Prix for Best Actor. And the name itself is especially symbolic best biography Byrd, written by Ross Russell - "And the Bird Lives!" (1973).
And so it is. The bird lives and the bird sings. The bird will always sing as long as people want to listen to it.
LEONID AUSKERN
"Jazz Square" No. 1/97
In his 34 years on Earth, Charlie “Bird” Parker contributed so much to 20th-century music, from his writing to his brilliant performance, that we still feel his presence with us to this day. In honor of this great jazz saxophonist's 96th birthday, here are 6 facts about the musician who, according to the Los Angeles Times, "played as if he had been touched by the hand of the music god himself... and who, without a doubt, was a source of endless inspiration to hundreds of musicians "
1 As a child, he played the saxophone 15 hours a day.
A big part of Parker's success is hard work.
Along with receiving secondary education, Parker was a member of the school band. The boy first picked up a saxophone at the age of 10, borrowing it from a school group. The mother saw how much the boy fell in love with his new hobby, so when he was 11 years old, she used the $45 she saved to buy her son his first instrument - it was very old, and it was extremely difficult to blow air out of it. However, this did not detract from the boy’s desire to continue playing beautiful music. In a radio interview in 1954, Parker said that “one day the neighbors even threatened to move my mother if I didn’t stop playing. She replied that she was crazy about my playing, and then, as you know, I began to practice even more - from 11 to 15 hours a day.”
2 Parker worked at the same restaurant as Redd Foxx
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The story of Parker's rise is unusually complex.
By the late 1930s, Charlie Parker was seeking a musical environment closer to jazz than his hometown of Kansas City could offer him. In 1939, after being thrown out of his home, he sold his saxophone and moved to New York. He got a job as a dishwasher at the famous Harlem spot Jimmy's Chicken Shack. Parker had a chance to see several performances by pianist Art Tatum, and a couple of years later he was already watching Redd Foxx's concerts.
3 He became one of the founders of the bebop genre.
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Charlie Parker, together with Dizzy Gillespie, invented a new style of jazz - bebop
The term “bebop” first appeared in print in the late 30s, although it was popularized by Charlie Parker and other musicians at the dawn of the 40s. This genre was completely new uniform music, which at that time violated the canons of the sound of jazz in a big band and went against jazz hits, allowing melodic and rhythmic deviations. Bebop symbolized the renewal of the jazz age and charted new directions for improvisation.
Critic and researcher Eric Lott explained this phenomenon this way:
“Bebop was something of a measure of the living imagination and provided answers to external changes in the society of its time.”
4 Parker was a true jazz icon
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When you listen to music, it is impossible not to think about its artist. The bird enjoyed recognition among fans and friends. Trombonist Clyde Bernhardt recalled in his autobiography that Parker once told him that “he got his nickname because he could not live a day without chicken on his table: fried, stewed, smoked, whatever! He adored her. But here in the south, all the chickens were called yardbirds.”
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