Quote of the Day (Stanley Crouch, on How Charlie Parker ‘Defined His Generation’ of Jazz)

“[His] musical gifts made it possible for [Charlie] Parker to evolve from an inept alto saxophonist, a laughingstock in his middle teens, to a virtuoso of all-encompassing talent who, by the age of twenty-five, exhibited an unprecedented command of his instrument. His prodigious facility was used not only for exhibition or revenge, moreover, but primarily for the expression of melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic inventions, at velocities that extended the intimidating relationship of thought and action that forms the mastery of improvisation in jazz. In the process, Parker defined his generation: He provided the mortar for the bricks of fresh harmony that Thelonious Monk and Dizzy Gillespie were making, he supplied linear substance and an eighth note triplet approach to phrasing that was perfectly right for the looser style of drumming that Kenny Clarke had invented.”— African-American poet, novelist, musical and cultural commentator, and biographer Stanley Crouch, “Bird Land: Charlie Parker, Clint Eastwood, and America,” in Considering Genius: Writings on Jazz (2006)

Charlie Parker, the nonpareil saxophonist and composer who helped pioneer the postwar bebop movement in jazz, was born 100 years ago today in Kansas City, KS.

I have written before on “Bird,” including on his subordinate role in the first recording session of former group member Miles Davis and his early death. But I wanted to post again in a way that captures concisely what he meant to the evolution of jazz as an art form. Crouch’s passage above fulfills that nicely, I think.