Charlie’s horn first came alive in a chili house on Seventh avenue between 139th Street and 140th Street in December, 1939. He was jamming there with a guitarist named Biddy Fleet. At the time, Charlie says, he was bored with the stereotyped changes being used then.

“I kept thinking there’s bound to be something else,” he recalls. “I could hear it sometimes but I couldn’t play it.”

Working over “Cherokee” with Fleet, Charlie suddenly found that by using higher intervals of a chord as a melody line and backing them with appropriately related changes, he could play this thing he had been “hearing.” Fleet picked it up behind him and bop was born. –Michael Levin and John S. Wilson, “No Bop Roots In Jazz: Parker.”

This is the original text from the Levin-Wilson Down Beat article, published September 9, 1949. I suspect it was rewritten as a verbatim quote by Nat Shapiro, to fit the requirements of his 1955 book, “Hear Me Talkin’ to Ya.” It has appeared in the following form ever since:

I remember one night before Monroe’s I was jamming in a chili house on Seventh Avenue between 139th and 140th. It was December, 1939. Now I’d been getting bored with the stereotyped changes that were being used all the time at the time, and I kept thinking there’s bound to be something else. I could hear it sometimes but I couldn’t play it.

Well, that night, I was working over Cherokee, and, as I did, I found that by using the higher intervals of a chord as a melody line and backing them with appropriately related changes, I could play the thing I’d been hearing. I came alive.

Putting these words in Bird’s mouth has given them an authority they don’t deserve. Any attempt to understand what he might have been saying requires that we acknowledge Levin and Wilson’s paraphrasing and parse it in search of its underlying truth. Let us begin.

Fleet picked it up behind him and bop was born. 

The mere existence of such a sentence calls into question Levin and Wilson’s understanding of the subject at hand.

At the time, Charlie says, he was bored with the stereotyped changes being used then.

First of all, I doubt Bird used the word “bored.” Is there a single moment anywhere in Bird’s entire recorded output where he sounds bored? Urgency is a hallmark of his style. “Frustrated” would be more apt, given that he couldn’t catch hold of these fleeting internal sounds.   

I also doubt that Bird used the term “stereotyped changes.” What does that even mean? Bird wouldn’t have had any issues with chord changes per se. I imagine he was talking about the swing era vocabulary, which was becoming formulaic.

Working over “Cherokee” with Fleet… 

The fact that Bird was playing“Cherokee” when he had his chili house revelation is the biggest clue we have, so props to Levin-Wilson for including this detail. At the same time, why did they treat Bird’s awakening as little more than a droll anecdote? 

…Charlie suddenly found…

Bird, it would seem, described this revelation as almost instantaneous. 

…that by using higher intervals of a chord as a melody line and backing them with appropriately related changes, he could play this thing he had been “hearing.”

If only we had Bird’s exact words! The meaning of “appropriately related changes” is anyone’s guess. The “higher intervals of a chord” implies 9ths, 11ths, and 13ths, but what did Bird actually say? And what led Levin and Wilson to compress Bird’s revelation into a single paraphrased sentence?

In The Leven-Wilson Controversy Part 4, Youtuber Andy Shaw takes a valiant stab at interpreting the paraphrased sentence, bringing to light anecdotal testimony from Biddy Fleet himself.

As Biddy Fleet later explained to the writer Ira Gider “The voicing of my chords had a theme within themselves. You could call a tune, and I’d voice my chords in such a way that I’d play the original chords to the tune, and I’d invert ’em every one, two, three, or four beats so that the top notes of my inversions would be another tune. It would not be the melody to the tune I’m playing, yet the chords, foundation-wise, is the chords to the tune.”

This leads Shaw to argue that Bird’s revelation concerned voice leading. He makes his case with a very involved analysis of Bird’s solo on “Klaun Stance.” I’m not convinced, largely because of his argument’s complexity. Whatever Bird’s revelation, it happened in a flash of insight. That suggests to me something that united preexisting ideas to reveal a grand scheme. He could suddenly see that an array of separate harmonic concepts were in fact all connected.

More about that later. Meanwhile, we will turn to my favorite punching bag, Ross Russell, who novelized Bird Lives to the point of no return, dishonoring himself for all time. Here’s his version: 

One morning at Dan Wall’s Chili House, an all-night restaurant at Seventh Avenue and 139th Street, Charlie was jamming with a rhythm section led by guitarist Biddy Fleet. They were working Cherokee. Charlie had been over the changes countless times, and the tune was beginning to sound stale. Charlie got to thinking, “There’s got to be something more, some new way to go.” Then an idea struck him: if he played the top notes of the chords instead of the middle or lower notes, he would have a new line. It was worth trying. Asking Biddy Fleet to continue, Charlie played through another chorus. The notes sounded strange, but it worked. He was using the upper intervals, ninths, elevenths, thirteenths, skimming along on the very tops of the chords.

I will bite my tongue and limit my ridicule to one sentence: “Charlie had been over the changes countless times, and the tune was beginning to sound stale.”

The original version of “Cherokee,” by Ray Noble, was recorded for Brunswick on October 8, 1938, but didn’t get much airplay, and we don’t know if Bird was aware of it. But Charlie Barnet’s recording for Bluebird, released July 17, 1939, made it to #15 on the charts. This is very likely the version Bird was familiar with, although he may have also heard the Count Basie recording, released April 1939.

So when Bird and Biddy were jamming on “Cherokee,” in the latter half of 1939, it was essentially brand new. Bird couldn’t have been “over the changes countless times,” nor would the tune have sounded “stale.”

When all is said and done, the paraphrased sentence points in a general direction and has been widely understood to mean that Bird fashioned melodies from the upper structures of the chords, while anchoring them with lower chord tones. The problem is that Louis Armstrong, Lester Young, Art Tatum, and so on, did the same thing. Bird’s rhythmic innovations were what defined Bebop.

I don’t think I’m going out on a limb when I say that the “Cherokee” melody and its underlying harmony, especially in the bridge, was what led Bird to his revelation, and fortunately I’m not alone. I will let Henry Martin, an authority on all things Bird, make the final point:

Cherokee already uses chordal extensions! It is probably the case that Parker found a way to expand his improvisational style by making use of what was already present in the song’s melodic structure.

Truth.