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.

This Day in Jazz History (‘Bird’ Parker Loses Velocity)

March 12, 1955—The drug-related death of alto saxophonist Charlie Parker at age 34 did more than just highlight how many in the postwar jazz community were victimized by substance abuse. It also cut short the life of an extraordinary figure who, by rights, should have gone on influencing musicians of all kinds for at least another generation.

Parker’s friend and patron, Nica de Koenigswarter, discovered his body slumped over in an easy chair in front of the TV set in her New York City home. What stunned me when I first heard about it—and, I bet, anyone else with no firsthand knowledge of drugs—was that the coroner had originally believed the deceased to be at least two decades older than his real age.

One not surprised was biographer Stanley Crouch, who, in profiling Parker decades after his death in Considering Genius: Writings on Jazz (2006), noted that his musical gifts were “laid low by his inability to stop fatally polluting and tampering with the flesh and blood source of his energy, with his own body.”

It was an all-too-common phenomenon in the jazz world of the Forties and Fifties. In a blog post for the British Psychological Society, Christian Jarrett cites a 1957 survey by critic Nat Hentoff which found that, among more than 400 New York City jazz musicians, more than half had tried heroin, with 16 percent admitting to regular use. The list here of those whose lives would be terribly disrupted by drugs, such as Parker, is long and, I would have to say, incomplete: not just Parker but also his protégé, Miles Davis (whom I wrote about in a prior post), Billie Holliday, Stan Getz, Lester Young, John Coltrane, Chet Baker, and Anita O’Day.

Crouch used another word, “velocity,” to describe the life-altering events crammed into Parker’s life between ages 16 and 20. But that term applies equally well to the creativity of the musician. “Bird” was a most appropriate nickname for him, because of the manner in which his imagination took flight.

I just spoke of my surprise over how rapidly his body aged, but I am perhaps even more astounded by how quickly he matured in mastering his instrument—from a teenager who was often laughed at or pitied as he first fumbled around, to a musician who, a mere decade later, set the standard in helping to pioneer the bebop movement. Cootie Williams of Duke Ellington's band once said, "Every instrument in the band tried to copy Charlie Parker, and in the history of jazz there had never been one man who influenced all the instruments."

Critic Gary Giddins may have summed up the towering achievement of Parker’s life better than anyone in his anthology, Visions of Jazz: The First Century (1998): “Parker altered the rhythmic and harmonic currents of music, and he produced a body of melodies—or more to the point, a way of melodic thinking—that became closely identified with the idea of jazz as a per­sonal and intellectual modern music.”

This Day in Jazz History (Bird-Backed Miles Leads First Recording Session)

August 14, 1947—Miles Davis, a 21-year-old Julliard School dropout who had achieved a steady reputation as a trumpeter in the trendy bebop scene, gave signs of his future greatness as bandleader by helming his first recording session, with mentor Charlie Parker taking a subordinate role on tenor sax.

On that groundbreaking session, Davis played with, besides Parker, John Lewis on piano and Max Roach on drums. Two Davis compositions were recorded: “Half Nelson” and “Milestones.”  

(The latter, according to critic Gary Giddens’ account in Visions of Jazz: The First Century, contained “so many harmonic bottlenecks that Parker insisted he’d play just the bridge because the tune was too hard for a country boy like him.”)

In the clubs dotting New York’s 52^nd Street the last couple of years, shifts in jazz were occurring with unusual rapidity, overwhelmingly centered around Parker. Musicians were in awe of “Bird,” but his drug addiction was also causing fissures in the community. 

Friend Dizzy Gillespie, despairing over Bird’s substance abuse, left the band.  Gillespie’s replacement, Davis, learned what he could from Diz while the latter was still around, but, realizing he could never match the older musician’s power, strove for his own, more personal, more lyrical tone.  

In all of this, Davis was encouraged by Parker, who, when the shy young man from St. Louis first came to New York, urged him to get up and play: “Go ahead. Don’t be afraid.”

Davis had tried imitating Parker’s sound at first, but, finding it impossible, determined to “play under him, and let him lead the note, swing the note.” 

A series of gigs followed, including an especially crucial one with the group Parker formed in April 1947, featuring Davis; Duke Jordan, piano; Tommy Porter, bass; and Max Roach, drums.

Just how much influence Parker exerted on Davis’ life is a matter of some debate still. There is no doubt that, as Davis’ idol when he came to New York—and first significant boss—he played a big part. 

But critic Dan Morgenstern, in a 1980 retrospective on Davis included in his anthology, Living With Jazz, suggested that Parker might have paid the rent for his young musician and roommate.

This seems unlikely. Davis’ autobiography, Miles, is filled with admiration for Parker as a creative force, but an almost scatological disgust for his antics when in the grip of drugs:

“He wanted everything. And when he was desperate for a fix of heroin, man, Bird would do anything to get it. He would con me and as soon as he left me, he would run around the corner to somebody else with the same sad story about how he needed money to get his horn out of the pawnshop, and hit them up for some more. He never paid anyone back, so in that way Bird was a [expletive] drag to be around.” 

That account would seem to lay to rest any notion that Parker could help others monetarily at a point when he could hardly help himself. 

In another sense, though, Davis didn’t recognize the exquisite irony that he could be just as much high-maintenance—perhaps even more so—than Parker. His interactions with his sidemen were more than a little similar to Bird’s.

His band members, like Parker’s, depended more than a little on his health. He had a heroin addiction of his own so harrowing that he needed to leave New York for his father’s farm in Illinois to break it cold turkey. 

In the 1960s, he discovered he suffered from sickle-cell anemia; in the mid-1970s, continuing health problems (including an addiction to cocaine this time) led him to withdraw from music.

If Parker’s personality could be bizarre at times, Davis’ was extraordinarily complex. His irascibility and general willingness to irk people at times just for the hell of it inspired the nickname “Prince of Darkness.”

Yet, like Bird again, his skill as a musician was such that band members were willing to tolerate the sullenness—if they could get past points of enforced inactivity because of his health. (Not everyone could do this.) 

Those who did stay the course with Miles testified to his willingness to give them creative freedom—and, surprisingly, for those who only knew that low voice growling expletives at every turn, he could be sensitive and kind, inviting them to his house, where he would cook dinner and discuss music.

Those sidemen included many, if not most, of the nonpareil jazzmen of the last half century, including Bill Evans, Wayne Shorter, John Coltrane, Red Garland, Herbie Hancock, and Ron Carter, to name just a few.