I've just been listening to the first of a series of programmes having the thread title which were presented by Charles Fox in 1988. I only managed to tape the first one, for some reason. Charles undoubtedly seemed to have the essence of Parker, as he seemed to have so much of the time with jazz musicians, and there are interesting contributions from Jay McShann and Gil Evans. Amazing to realise that Jay was still living at that date. That first programme gave a general overview of Bird - blues performances, Parker with strings, alongside Dizzy, and Monk. Parker was so in charge of his playing, and the contexts he chose or was expected to play in, that one almost took him for granted. He seemed voracious for exhausting the possibilities opened up by his methodology, and some have argued that this is what led him to think in terms of studying more contemporary classical music from one of its makers for ideas on how to take the music further. I for one have no impression that Parker was "played out" by the time of his death - in all ways the method of improvising based on chromatic elaboration opened up the choices and possibilities for improvisers within the terms of chorus structures to degrees that would have been unforseeable before his advent on the scene. But it had a certain inexhorability about it that would lead his successors into thinking along his pre-established patterns. That said, where Charlie Parker seemed the least prone to resting on his laurels, he succeeded in outdoing the expectations planted in our accustomed ways of hearing the music - that solo on "Confirmation" from the late 1947 concert recording remains an astonishing achievement, from any vantage point.
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Thanks for the long, insightful posts, Ian & S_A.
Parker was actually 34 when he died - though his life had already become somewhat tragic, since in 54 he attempted suicide and ended up in a mental hospital again, following the death of his young daughter IIRC.Comment
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Reading what Ian said in #15 had me thinking: were Parker's (and his colleagues') innovations inevitable from ways in which the music had been going from the start of the 1930s? What we see happening, around the years 1938/9, are a number of highly gifted musicians willing to develop a vocabulary for improvising already in the process of elaboration, who, by dint of circumstances as much outside of as inside the music which were peculiar to the time, were able to work their ideas into coherence in the form that became bebop. To do this they not only had to work in contradiction with the orthodox gestures but above all practices in vogue up to that point. Jazz, all of a sudden, was seen as more than adjusting to norms that seemed preordained to guarantee a jazz musician some sort of living, but it took a brave new generation to press this possibility.Comment
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"Jazz at Lincoln Center
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TOMORROW (8/29): From our friends
@92Y celebrate #CharlieParker with conversations & performances by sax greats
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I think it’s all too easy for us to forget how much serious unavoidable illness curtailed life in past eras.Comment
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...and how discrimination against certain sections of the population did likewise.Originally posted by muzzer View PostComment
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Here's a biographical sketch from the Independent -
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This from, Richard Williams's blog as of yesterday, offers us further ideas on where Parker "was" musically right at the end of his life. Richard supports the point that if only Parker had enjoyed an equivalence of Gil Evans's muse for Miles Davis, then things might have been different, with evidence - I knew nothing at all about that tour with Kenton.
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Wonderful to hear Paul Desmond talking with Charlie Parker in 1954 on J to Z.
Here's more of that interview:
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Richard Williams..."Imagine a Blue Note date in 1964 under Andrew Hill’s leadership, with Lee Morgan, Richard Davis, Bobby Hutcherson, Grachan Moncur III, Sam Rivers, Tony Williams and Bird tackling Hill’s tunes"
I've got a lot of time for Richard Williams but that's an appalling thought, and totally misplaces Parker into a difference generation, attitude and a genre that came AFTER Parker's own closure. The fact is ...he died doing what he did, what he had created. This (as with Coltrane) "what would they have done"? is fantasy BS and ...for the birds. Forget the might of been, appreciate the reality.Comment
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Originally posted by BLUESNIK'S REVOX View Post
I concur with SA's comments about Charlie Parker in that he needed a mentor. However, I think people like Evans and George Russell knew Parker and there were plenty of other composers and arrangers in his orbit who could have fulfilled a similar role as Evans enjoyed with Miles.
I agree somewhat with the suggestion that extrapolating where Bird would have ended up in pure conjecture. The suggestion that he could have found a "home" in an Andrew Hill group is much too fanciful. As I said previously, I strongly believe that he was looking for a context to put him music in to as opposed to pursuing an esoteric goal. My understanding is that Parker struggled to understand why his music did not have a broader appeal. The suggestion that he could have been mentored by someone like Edgar Varese is also too far fetched yet it does a lot to reveal Parker's frustrations with the way in which working within a more formal context would have ultimately helped. I don't feel that a lot of background work went on behind the records Parker made with his small groups and get the feeling that some of the lines based on standard tunes were probably worked out on the spot. It is fascinating to listen to those lines like "Donna Lee," "Cheryl" or "Segment" which still resonate as modern whereas as some such as "Buzzy" were pretty disposable.
I am not sure about Parker being musically burned out by 1955 but I think Be-bop had become a parody of itself by then and you can comprehend why so much of the "progressive" jazz musicians were fascinated by composition. I have been listening to quite a bit of Art Pepper over the last few weeks and when you listen to an early album like "Surf Ride" you can appreciate that the likes of Pepper were catching up with Parker from a technical point if view yet the repeated use of contra-facts based on old tunes such as "After you've gone" is no longer quite so interesting once you understand what is going on. Pepper's contra-facts are not as interesting as Parker and I don't think that it is a coincidence that jazz composers found a voice after Parker's passing.Comment
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This is a pretty good latish live Parker set from 1953 that I hadn't heard in full before, in OK sound, at the Storyville in Boston, with Red Garland on the first tracks, Sir Charles Thompson on the others. "Cool Blues" apparantly has Bird quoting Wagner.
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Charlie Parker with Fats Navarro, Bud Powell, Curly Russell & Art Blakey live at Birdland, June, 1950:
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I included this video in the original post.Originally posted by BLUESNIK'S REVOX View Post
I agree - it's a fantastic, inspired Moose the Mooche...
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