Charlie Parker was the most influential improvising soloists in jazz, and a central figure in the development of bop in the 1940s. A legendary figure in his own lifetime, he was idolized by those who worked with him, and he inspired a generation of jazz performers and composers.
Parker was born Aug. 20, 1920, in Kansas City, Mo., and came to music while in junior high school. In the late '30s he jobbed around the city, honing his technique and tone. He first recorded with the Jay McShann orchestra in between 1940 and 1942. The early 1940 radio transcriptions and the later commercial sessions for Decca show Parker pushing at the edges of the swing parameters with an explosive gift for unexpected phrasing and twists.
His progress over the next two years was striking but largely undocumented, due to a recording ban imposed by the musicians union. By the time he resumed recording in 1944-'45, his dazzling improvisations at breakneck tempos ("Ko Ko," "Donna Lee," "Shaw Nuff") astonished young jazz players as profoundly as they threatened veteran ones, thus setting the new against the old and triggering the first major internecine musical controversy in jazz history.
But the battle deepened into a cultural as well as a musical war as Parker's penchant for hard drugs and hard living further defined bebop as an outlaw music with an implied lifestyle that many chose to follow.
The definitive recordings of Parker's career were made for Savoy between 1945 and '48 (" "Billie's Bounce"), and for Dial from 1946-'47 ("Ornithology," "A Night In Tunsia," "Lover Man," "Scrapple From The Apple"). They sold poorly but were as profoundly influential to young post war players as Armstrong's Hot Sevens and early big band sides had been to musicians of the '30s. Even during his most innovating period Parker remained something of a mystery figure to the general public. His picture never even appeared on Down Beat's cover during his lifetime.
The third major chapter of Parker's work began in 1948, when Norman Granz began recording him in different contexts with a view toward taking his music to a wider audience. By now his major innovations were over and his repertoire had narrowed to small number of staples. But an album with string accompaniment produced a mother lode of brilliant new Parker solos that would be his last major work. He died in 1955 at the age of 35 of a combination of drug related medical problems.
In 1955, Parker was elected by the Readers to the Down Beat Hall of Fame, just following his death.
CONDITION: NEW
TRACK LISTING:
PLEASE VIEW IMAGE #2