One prominent critic wrote, “Parker’s version of bebop varies from Dizzy’s in so much as he plays chromatic scales up and down all the keys.” Charlie was to quote this gem for years, often admonishing his sidemen to “watch out for those chromatics.” –Ross Russell, Bird Lives One of the clearest distinctions between Bird’s early style (1940-43) and his mature style (1944 onward) can be found in his use of scale runs. (I define scale runs as consecutive notes of a scale used in a melodic line.) In Bird’s apprenticeship period, scale runs often spanned an octave or more. By … Continue reading Parkeology 035: Brute Force Part Three

Still, one is brought up short by the realization that a “typical” Parker phase turns out to be much the same phrase one had heard years before from, say, Ben Webster. The secret is, of course, that Parker inflects, accents, and pronounces that phrase so differently that one simply may not recognize it. – Martin Williams Williams seems to have picked Ben Webster’s name out of a hat, but the connection might be deeper than he realized. Webster’s chromatic motives may have added a missing component to Bird’s conception in the early 1940s. When I say chromatic motives, I’m talking about … Continue reading Parkeology 033: Brute Force Part One

“I put quite a bit of study into the horn, that’s true. In fact, the neighbors threatened to ask my mother to move once, when I was living out west. They said I was driving them crazy with the horn. I used to put in at least eleven, from eleven to fifteen hours a day.” –Charlie Parker, Paul Desmond Interview, January 1954 When Bird returned to Kansas City for his father’s funeral (late 1939 or early 1940) he moved back in with his mother. His wife, Rebecca, and his son, Leon, were living nearby, but Bird didn’t reunite with them, … Continue reading Parkeology 032: Every Honeybee Part Two

Charlie Parker’s chronology from late 1938 to early 1940 is rather sketchy. It is known that his mentor, Buster Smith, left Kansas City for New York in 1938, and that Parker eventually followed suit. By early 1940, Parker was definitely back in Kansas City working with McShann. –Carl Woideck We know this because Bird’s estranged father died, stabbed to death by the woman he was living with, and nineteen-year-old Bird was called home to Kansas City for the funeral, moving back in with his mother. Always eager to go out on a limb, I will argue that Bird spent this … Continue reading Parkeology 031: Every Honeybee

Unfortunately, the surviving editor, Nat Hentoff, cannot reconstruct how the second version came to be written in such a way. Hentoff believed that Nat Shapiro edited the Parker section in question, but he felt it was unlikely that Shapiro would have simply altered the Down Beat text to make it read better. Hentoff could not recall if perhaps Shapiro worked from notes supplied by Levin or Wilson. Attempts to pursue this point with John S. Wilson, co-author of the original article, have thus far failed. — Carl Woideck And that’s the last word on the Levin-Wilson article and its one-sentence … Continue reading Parkeology 030: Child of the Prairie

M.1A is an ascending arpeggio, usually played as a triplet, but also common in other rhythmic configurations. Preceded by an upper or lower neighbor, it fre­quently begins a phrase. About forty percent of these arpeggios are of minor-seventh chords; E minor-seventh is the most common. – Thomas Owens, 1974 Dissertation Forty percent is quite a statistic, and the fact that Em7 is the most common certainly suggests that D major was Bird’s primal key. More broadly, it confirms that four-note ascending arpeggios were central to Bird’s vocabulary. This is so self-evident that no examples are required. What’s needed, though, is … Continue reading Parkeology 029: Marmaduke Part Two

I’d learned the scale and I learned how to play two tunes in a certain key, in the key of D for your saxophone, F concert? I learned to play the first eight bars of “Lazy River” and I knew the complete tune to “Honeysuckle Rose.” I didn’t never stop to think about there was other keys or nothing like that! –Charlie Parker It’s hard to overstate the importance of “Honeysuckle Rose” in Bird’s development. It was the first song he recorded on his own, and among his first with Jay McShann. Furthermore, “Scrapple From The Apple,” based on the … Continue reading Parkeology 028: Marmaduke Part One

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.” –Michael Levin and John S. Wilson, “No Bop Roots In Jazz: Parker.” This single-sentence paraphrase of Bird’s “Cherokee” revelation has been chewed over for generations, with little to show for it. Had Levin and Wilson simply given us Bird’s exact words, it would’ve saved everyone a lot of trouble. Instead, another poor schmo, namely me, is about to tilt once again at this weary … Continue reading Parkeology 027: Ladder of Thirds

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 … Continue reading Parkeology 026: Quoth the Yardbird Part Two

“Bop is no love child of jazz,” says Charlie Parker. The creator of bop, in a series of interviews that took more than two weeks, told us he felt that “bop is entirely separate and apart” from the older tradition; that it drew little from jazz, has no roots in it. The chubby little alto man, who has made himself an international music name in the last five years, added that bop, for the most part, had to be played by small bands. –Michael Levin and John S. Wilson, “No Bop Roots In Jazz: Parker.” Thus begins the questionable Levin-Wilson … Continue reading Parkeology 025: Quoth the Yardbird