The `Bird' lives forever
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Charlie Parker was gone at 35. But he'd done enough for two lifetimes of even a talented jazz musician who might have lived to be 70 or more, writes JAZZEBEL
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WHEN AN alto saxophone was sold on February 20 for 261,750 dollars at an auction in New York, it had only just seen the light of day after hiding under a bed for nearly 50 years.
That's how long its owner, Charlie "Bird" Parker (August 20, 1920 to March 12, 1955), had been dead. His last wife, Chan, had kept it safe for 45 years till her death and passed it on to her daughter.
Chan didn't get the quarter of a million-plus. But in 1995, around Parker's 75th birth anniversary, she'd made the tidy sum of 85,000 dollars, probably still more money than she'd ever got out of her husband when he was alive. That was when a plastic alto sax presented to him was auctioned off.
In pawnshops
The sax sold in February had been in and out of pawnshops for years, supporting a heroin habit. The plastic sax, often the only instrument Parker had, was in contrast worthless to pawnbrokers but, in the hands of a genius, indistinguishable in tone from the real thing. When it was sold one story had it that Parker used it on May 15, 1953 in a concert at Massey Hall, Toronto.
His colleagues on stage were Dizzy Gillespie (trumpet), Bud Powell (piano), Charles Mingus (bass) and Max Roach (drums). Gillespie, long since fed up with the irresponsible behaviour of the buddy with whom he'd developed the jazz style called be-bop, hadn't spoken to him for years. On stage, Mingus quarrelled with Parker and stormed off. But the resulting LP, Jazz at Massey Hall, was without hype sub-titled The Greatest Jazz Concert of All Time.
Parker started his career in the Kansas City band of the blues pianist Jay McShann, who, judging from a track he recorded called "Sepian Bounce", was more indulgent towards his experiments than Cab Calloway, who fired Gillespie for trying out what he would later dismiss as something that "... ain't jazz! That's Chinese music." They met in New York in the big band of Earl Hines, who'd worked as pianist with Louis Armstrong.
They did most of their experimenting in small groups, playing after hours in nightclubs. There they developed be-bop, with its jagged, incredibly fast melody lines, the musical equivalent of a mountain path that only an Alpine goat can traverse.
Such melodic agility, together with improvisation of not just the melody, but also the underlying harmony or chord structure and subtle rhythmic patterns such as those developed by Roach, was a revolution in jazz, which at that time depended mostly on a light, swinging feel, the massed sound of big bands, and a few solos thrown in for variety. Be-bop in contrast emphasised long, intricate solos, highlighting in turn every member of the small groups that played it. Solo improvisation, a manifestation of freedom, became in fact the defining quality of jazz in the age of be-bop and later.
His equal
Gillespie alone was Parker's equal, in effortless agility with this kind of music and in never hitting a wrong note at whatever speed they played at. But Gillespie, never enslaved by heroin and so, unlike Parker, never irresponsible nor bereft of an instrument, had no "opportunity" to show the extent of his talent as Parker had. Parker would land up late at a performance with a borrowed instrument or the plastic one, hear the last two or three notes of the theme and immediately jump in on cue with his solo improvisation. And not one false note!
Heroin addiction and then alcoholism, which replaced the drug habit when he kicked it, got him before his 35th birthday. But he'd done enough for two lifetimes of even a talented jazz musician who might have lived to be 70 years or more.
Sadly, the age of LP recording was still young when he died, and most of his music has been re-mastered from scratchy 78 rpm discs. But, apart from Jazz at Massey Hall, I have Jam Session (1952, leading ten talented musicians taking turns at soloing in long, relaxed renditions), Diz 'n' Bird at Carnegie Hall (1947), Bird at the High Hat (1953-54) and Charlie Parker Plays It Cool (1946-47, compiled and cleaned up from 78 rpms) as evidence of one of the greatest jazz musicians of all time. "Bird Lives!" said the graffiti on the New York subway when he died.
And he still does.
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