Charlie Parker

Charles Parker Jr , is a saxophonist American viola born the August 29th 1920 with Kansas City, dead the March 12th 1955 with New York. Initially called Yardbird (blue) at the beginning of its career, nickname whose origin is lost in tens of different explanations, its nickname will be then shortened in Bird (the bird), which will follow it throughout its life. Parker is regarded as one of the musicians of Jazz the most endowed and innovators with all times. It is often credited as being the inventor with the style Be-bop, which is probably only partially exact. Deceased young person at the end of an adventurous life, it is the object of a true legend, where it is often difficult to disentangle the truth of the forgery. Each year takes place in August Charlie Parker Festival, in an art gallery, Tribes Gallery in New York (285 third street NY, NY).

Biography

Kansas City: the hesitant youth of the Bird

Only sons of Charlie Parker Senior, Pianist and itinerant Dancer, then steward in the railroads, and Addie Parker, the Charlie young person sings in the choral society of his school, then is impassioned for the Jazz, whose Kansas City is at the time Mecque, at the same time as that of the play, of the Prostitution, the Drogue and the traffic of alcohol - we are under the Prohibition. As of 11 years, Parker starts to play of the saxophone, to integrate the orchestra of its school into the 14 years age. Many testimonys agree to affirm that it makes watch in its youths only of one poor talent for the music, that it compensates after a fashion by an overflowing enthusiasm. In Kansas City of this time, where the musicians of the large jazz bands as that of Count Basie fight for the recognition in Jam-session S which are as many confrontations without mercy, a young saxophonist without experiment nor knowledge as Charlie has only few chances to manage to bore. At the 17 years age, he arrives in spite of very integrating orchestras of Kansas City for some dates, and improves his technique incipient near Buster Smith. Large admiror To ballast Young, then the king of the city with Coleman Hawkins, Charlie tries to equalize them while asserting himself in the jam sessions, but only manages to undergo cruel humiliations.

In 1937, it integrates finally the group of the pianist Jay McShann, with whom it turns in all the area and until New York, and records its first pieces.

New York: the Bird falls from the nest

In 1939, Parker leaves Kansas City, of which the scene jazz blows itself, victim of the abolition of the Prohibition which ruins clandestine gambling dens, principal employers of musicians, to gain New York. It finds there an use of plunger in the kitchens of a restaurant where Art Tatum plays regularly, genius of the Piano which will have on him a considerable influence, in particular by its époustouflante control of the Harmonie.

In 1942, Parker leaves the group of McShann to play for 8 months at the sides of Earl Hines. One locates at that time the beginnings of the Be-bop, although little information and no recording - because of a strike of the trade union of the musicians - can testify some. It however seems that this style was invented, or all at least formalized by a group of young people jazzmen of which Parker, which made amazing musical progress during the previous months, fact part with the Trompettiste Dizzy Gillespie, the Pianiste Thelonious Monk, the Guitariste Charlie Christian and the Batteur S max Roach and Kenny Clarke. Worked out during the jam session according to concert in the clubs of the city, the purpose of this new extremely complex music is, as Monk summarized it later, to create something " that they cannot jouer" , " ils" appointing the musicians of the full orchestras, often white, which practiced a more commercial form of Jazz.

For that, the be-bop lengthens times of improvisation in the pieces and accelerates the Tempo. Harmonically it integrates the faded ranges in the play and leaves the traditional executives of improvisation while preserving the traditional pieces of the jazz. The topic fetish of Bird, Cherokee is the most perfect example as of 1947. It is with the be-bop which Charlie Parker becomes the legend that we know, and who tends sometimes to occult the reality of his life…

The Be-bop: the Bird takes its take-off

Emergence sudden and little or not documented be-bop gave place to very many stories, of which much was hawked by the musicians themselves. Thus Charlie Parker told with a journalist in the Fifties that the principles of this musical genre had come to him suddenly whereas he played Cherokee in a club, revealing to him in a kind of illumination a new manner of structuring its solos which would finally enable him to play the music that he had in the head since years.

Reality is undoubtedly more prosaic: the be-bop, art based on the improvisation, was already in gestation in the keen jam sessions of the Thirties of Kansas City, at the time of the youth of Charlie Parker. With the departure rejected by the sizes of the Jazz, this kind started to have a true major impact only fine 1945, with the first recording of the group of Dizzy Gillespie for the label Savoy. This session, pompeusement called since " the greatest session of Jazz of all temps" provided many mythical recordings, among which KB-KB (based on the agreements of Cherokee ), Now' S the Time , Billie' S Bounce , and Thriving one has Rif . With this session, the be-bop is essential finally like a kind of Jazz on whole share, which it remains still nowadays.

Demons of the Bird

Shortly after this famous session, the group of Gillespie and Parker separates, remaining Charlie in California, where the group played some concerts which did not proceed ideally. One of the reasons of these two events is undoubtedly the increasingly unverifiable behavior of Parker.

Indeed, the saxophonist had developed, as of his years of Adolescence, a deep Addiction with the Opiacé S after a treatment the Morphine in a hospital. Morphine it passed quickly to the Héroïne, which was to poison its life and to finally cause its premature death. Worse still, this dependence, quickly become of public notoriety, pushed many jazzmen thereafter to take drugs themselves in the hope to collect a spark of the genius of Parker. Thereafter, the jazz remained associated with the Narcotique S during several decades, which largely contributed to destroy the movement be-bop as a whole, and cost the jazz of many musicians of talent, killed in full rise by the nightmare of heroin.

The consequences of this addiction were very serious for Parker, often more concerned to get its amounts than to arrive per hour - or to even arrive very short - at the concerts and sessions of recordings. End of the year 40 was for him punctuated by cancellations in concerts and a succession of tragi-comic adventures (fires of beds of hotel, escape in the street vêtu of its only socks…) who ended in a 6 weeks stay to the Psychiatric hospital of Camarillo.

Charlie Parker at the top

At its exit of hospital in January 1947, Parker in full form, is removed from its problems of drug and ready with replonger in the music. It will produce the following years some of the largest discs of jazz of all times for the labels Savoy and Dial, of which some with what one calls since his " quintet classique" , including/understanding Miles Davis with the Trumpet, Duke Jordan with the piano, Tommy Potter with low and max Roach with the battery.

Applying to American popular songs and Blues its extraordinary talent of improviser, Parker at that time produces pieces of an amazing complexity melody but which never lose sight of the fact the emotion. Thus, the listening of its masterpiece Parker' S Mood remains today still one of the musical experiments major and moving which an amateur of Jazz can make.

At the beginning of the Years 1950, Charlie Parker is the king of the jazz: its discs are sold very well and its impact on the world of the jazz is without precedent since Louis Armstrong, more than 20 years earlier. Armies of musicians (and not only saxophonists), professionals like amateurs, imitate his play, sometimes note with note, with more or less of happiness. Even among those which try to escape its influence, will reach very little that point, and that is undoubtedly true many musicians of jazz still today.

Since 1946, it takes part in the concerts of the Jazz At the Philharmonic organized by Norman Granz, it occurs then at the sides of the idol of its youth, the saxophonist Lester Young. Norman Granz the fact quickly of signing on its label Liveliness. In November 1949, it records accompanied by a string orchestra. These discussed recordings are especially the proof of the curiosity and the admiration of Parker for the Western classical music. The following year, it records with the orchestra Cuban Negro of Machito memorable the " Afro-Cuban Continuation ".

In 1951, following his contentions with owners and business managers, one withdraws to him his work card to New York for fifteen months, which prohibits to him to occur in the clubs. This same year, it finds its old accomplices Dizzy Gillespie and Thelonious Monk for the recording of the disc " Bird & Diz ". In 1953, in spite of a declining health, Charlie Parker shows that it is still capable of fulgurances at the time of the historical concert of Massey Hall of Toronto where it is accompanied by Dizzy Gillespie with the trumpet, Bud Powell with the piano, Charles Mingus with low and max Roach with the battery.

After years when its fame is with most, during which he always did not manage to be held far away from heroin or to calm his self-destroying impulses, Charlie Parker dies in New York in the baroness Pannonica de Koenigswarter, whereas he looked at television, at the age of only 34 years. Its death will be officially allotted to a Pneumonie and a Ulcère, it is undoubtedly the result of its excesses with alcohol and drug. The Medical examiner charged to examine the body will find it if damaged and exhausted that it estimates his age between 50 and 60 years - an error of almost 20 years!

Charlie Parker leaves a widow and two children: Kim Parker, musician it also, and Baird Parker, which will die during the Guerre of Vietnam. It also leaves million orphan fans. During several months following its death, the walls of New York will be covered with an enigmatic graffiti: Bird Lives! (literally “the bird saw”).

Compositions

Sound extracts

Summertime (format. Ogg)

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