Charlie Parker Jazz Biography

Very few jazz musicians affected the history of their musical style as much as Charlie “Bird” Parker. And certainly no saxophonist was more important than Charlie Parker. His innovations in creating the style of “bebop” forever changed the jazz idiom and the minds of jazz musicians. Unfortunately, his career was cut short in 1955 when he died in Baroness Nica’s apartment. Had Bird lived longer, the impact he would have further had on jazz music would have been incredible. 

Charlie Parker was born on August 20th, 1920 in Kansas City, Kansas. His father, Charles, was a pianist and provided young Charlie with his first exposure to music. Charlie began to pick up the alto saxophone around age 11 and he began playing with his school band by age 14, although he was reportedly kick out because he was so bad. This incident was probably one of the reasons why, later in life, Bird would often spend the majority of his days practicing. Bird’s earliest exposure to professional jazz music was around the age of 15 when he began playing with jazz groups semi-professionally. His family had moved to Kansas City, Missouri which ad experienced growth in the jazz music field. Bird played with local jazz groups from 1935 until 1938 when he joined Jay McShann’s territory band.

Bird made his first record debuts with McShann’s group and he toured with the group between 1939 and 1940. In 1939 he had moved to New York City and began working odd jobs to make money during the day. He would attend jazz shows at night and start focusing more on his improvisational skills and form. In 1942 Bird left McShann’s group and joined Earl Hines’ group where he began working with trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie. It was Bird’s relationship with Dizzy along with pianist Thelonious Monk that would allow him to help create the style known as bebop.

After staying with Earl Hines’ group for roughly a year, Bird left and worked on developing bebop. The style of bebop was created by taking the basic form of jazz improvisation to the next level. Bird and Dizzy no longer focused on taking melodies already present in the music and developing them. Instead, they took the chord structure and used it, along with extended tones from each chord (such as 9ths, 11ths, and 13ths) to move from chord to chord, key to key, creating new melodic lines. Bird’s mastery of the alto saxophone allowed him to play very fast with little to no flaws, moving seamlessly from chord to chord, and key to key. 

Unfortunately, due to the 1942-1944 strike of the American Federation of Musicians, no commercial recordings of Charlie Parker in his early stages of bebop were released. Once the ban was listed however, Bird began heading his own records and he also began working on records with Dizzy. In November 1945 Bird led a recording that featured tracks such as “Koko” and “Now’s The Time”. This record would later become a jazz classic; it would solidify Bird’s status as a jazz legend and as a leading innovator. Later in 1945 Bird traveled with Dizzy to Los Angeles to play a string of gigs, which weren’t as successful as their east coast counterparts, and the group returned to New York with the exception of Bird. The group could not find Bird when it was time to leave California and eventually decided that Bird would find his was home. Unfortunately at this point in his life Bird was fighting an addiction to heroin, and his missing the flight was partly because he had cashed in his return plane ticket in order to buy heroin.

Charlie Parker had suffered from an addiction to heroin after being in a car accident while he was a teenager. He was actually addicted to morphine, but turned to heroin, which was more accessible. After several incidents involving Bird’s heroin addiction, he was sent to Camarillo State Hospital to be treated for his heroin addiction. After spending six months at Camarillo Bird was declared clean and was able to move back to New York, but not before recording “Relaxin’ at Camarillo”, a song describing his stay at the State Hospital. When Bird returned to New York he quickly got back into his music and recorded a series of records with his “classic quintet” (which included Miles Davis, and Max Roach), which are universally thought to be his absolute best recordings.

In November 1949 Bird finally achieved one of his dreams: recording with strings. Recording with strings in the jazz world meant that the musician had really become famous because the recordings were expensive, and for a record company to spend so much money on a jazz musician meant a lot. Bird had been interested in “classical” music for some time now, most notably his interest in the music of Igor Stravinsky. The chance to record with strings was something Bird had always wanted, and the recordings are classic. His improvisations are more subdued than in other Bird recordings, but they are no less expressive.

Bird had reached a level of stardom by 1950, and jazz did not escape his realm of influence. A jazz club in New York City, called “Birdland”, had opened up and named itself after Charlie Parker. Bird was touring nightclubs in New York City, as well as touring in Europe. However, this return to New York also meant a return to Bird’s heroin addiction. While this had left him completely debilitated before, it was not wreaking such havoc on his life this time. He was able to perform coherently, and this period is considered to be a period of his best playing. Unfortunately his addiction to heroin cost him his cabaret license, which in turn kept him from performing in many of the major New York City nightclubs. Unfortunately it kept going downhill from there. In 1954 Charlie Parker’s two and a half year old daughter, Pree, had died of pneumonia. The news of his daughter’s death sent Bird into a depression and he attempted suicide, twice. He also admitted himself to a mental institution, but later released himself. On March 12th 1995, Bird died in Baroness Nica’s apartment, reportedly while watching Tommy Dorsey on television. The death certificate listed “pneumonia” as the cause of death, but it was obvious that several factors, such as drug abuse, alcohol abuse, and depression had played a bigger role in his death.

Charlie Parker influenced generations of jazz musicians, and will continue to influence generations of jazz musicians to come. His playing on the alto saxophone was unique in its tone, speed, ferocity, and expressivity. His innovations in bebop affected the outcome of jazz history forever. Bird’s work with musicians such as Miles Davis, Max Roach, and occasionally John Coltrane had an impact on the direction jazz history would take.

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