Charlie Parker

Bebop and Bird

The Verve Years 1950-51

• Rocker

Rockland - September 26, 1952

 LINER NOTES

For Charlie Parker these were the worst of times. His struggling, yet heartfelt recording of the pop tune "The Gypsy" for Dial Records is a bittersweet reflection of tough times he endured. For one, the much-needed drugs Parker required were not only tough to find but were more expensive than they were in New York. The cops were mean and segregation was rampant, and playing opportunities were few. After the Billy Berg gig, Dizzy and friends shook the West Coast cold shoulder and split east, Parker stayed on alone, swallowed up by the immensity of Southern California.

Ross Russell ran the Tempo Record Shop on Hollywood Boulevard and the day a customer brought Charlie Parker by to meet him was the day Dial Records started. The contract was signed and one hundred dollars in advance money crossed Bird's palm. The first Parker/Dial date was an artistic triumph In March of 1946 he recorded his classic "Moose The Mooche," "Yardbird Suite," "Ornithology" and Gillespie's "Night in Tunisia" As it turned out, "Moose The Mooche" was Parker's dealer and for a fix or two Bird signed over half of all his Dial royalties to him. His name was Emery Byrd and his next address was San Quentin.

Parker, Miles Davis, Joe Albany and a host of other boppers worked nightly at an underground club in downtown L.A.'s Little Tokyo section, a part of the city that became open to blacks after the Japanese relocation during World War II. The Finale Club was run by dancer Foster Johnson, and Parker, along with his musicians, would rehearse for the Dial sessions there until the vice squad padlocked the joint. Drugs became invisible and Charlie Parker disappeared.

Trumpeter Howard McGhee eventually tracked Parker down and found him holed up in a drafty garage on McKinley Avenue in South Central L.A. Bird was trying shake his addiction with wine and whiskey--and lots of it. Charlie Parker was sick. His nervous system frayed, his mental stability unsteady, Bird wanted to play. All he had left was his music.

The C.P. MacGregor transcription studios on Western Avenue near Eighth Street were huge. This is where the Dial sessions took place and this is where Howard McGhee brought Bird on July 29, 1946 to record, with himself on trumpet, Jimmy Bunn on piano, Bob Kesterson on bass and Roy Porter on drums.

Howard McGhee was Charlie Parker's West Coast trumpet companion, his L.A. "Dizzy" when Gillespie flew east. "Maggie," as Howard was known, was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1918. He became known for his work in Andy Kirk's 12 Clouds of Joy, and better known for his work in Coleman Hawkins' small band that hit L.A. in 1945. McGhee's razor-toned trumpet and advanced harmonic ideas made a perfect mate to Parker's alto.

This July session produced "The Gypsy" a weak link in Bird's discography and a painful reminder of these tough times, yet it offers a spark of the Parker magic ... a faint glow of light at the end of the tunnel. Before the session could be completed, Bird collapsed and was taken back to his roost at the Civic Hotel in Little Tokyo, where appeared nude in the lobby, started a fire in his room and was arrested and charged with indecent exposure and arson. Charlie Parker was found mentally incompetent and sentenced to six months at State Mental Hospital. A little more than an hour's drive north of Los Angeles, Camarillo was called the country club of mental institutions. At the end of January 1947 Bird was released, glowing with health, playing new lines, sprouting up like a winter rose.

Bird's first post-incarceration session was held for Dial in February of '47. From this session we have two takes (C_ and D) of "Cool Blues." This is classic Parker, his tone all sunshine and cool breeze. Backing Bird is pianist Erroll Garner - with his rich chords and compact phrasing, bassist Red Callender's solid foundation and old friend from New York, drummer Harold "Doc" West, contributing perfect timekeeping. "Cool Blues" won the esteemed Grand PrixDu Disque award in France. Charlie Parker was back!

Bird's final L.A. session for Dial was held February 26, 1947 and was issued under the name of the "Charlie Parker All Stars:" This session produced the classic Bird line; "Relaxin' At Camarillo," (Takes C and E are represented here) a neatly dressed twelve-bar blues song. We also hear Take D of "Cheers" and Take B of "Carvin' The Bird," both supplied by trumpeter Howard McGhee, who also provides the spartan trumpet work. The tenor saxophonist is Wardell Gray, regarded as one of modern jazz's greatest players. Gray had the tone and spark of Lester Young, his own Bird-ish ideas and an undeniable sense of swing, honed in the big band of Earl Hines.

The pianist was Michael "Dodo" Marmarosa from Pittsburgh. At twenty-two Dodo had remarkable facility, classically trained with a Bach-ish swing and a stinging all bop attack. Marmarosa had, at this tender age, been through the bands of Gene Krupa, Charlie Barnet, Tommy Dorsey, Boyd Raeburn, and Lester Young.

Rounding out the rhythm section is guitarist Barney Kessel, late of the bands of Barnet and Artie Shaw, bassist Red Callender, and Woody Herman's drummer, Don Lamond.

A few days after this session, Charlie Parker flew back to New York, to future musical conquests with Dial, to more gigs, trying to wash the sour taste of L.A. out of his mouth and mind.

The "on stage" portion of this volume brings us eight performances dating from September 26, 1952, via a live location recording at the Rockland Palace Dance Hall located at 155th Street and 8th Avenue in Harlem. the down days The occasion was a birthday celebration in honor imprisoned black leftist and Communist Party National Committee member Benjamin J. Davis. At the time, Davis was in his second year of a five-year prison sentence. Convicted in 1949 under the right wing, red scare umbrella "Smith Act,' Davis and ten other party officials were in jail for advocating the "forcible overthrow" of the United States.

This was not the first time Bird blew for the "Party" He worked another benefit in New York City with Red Rodney, Warne Marsh, and Kai Winding, but for this occasion the Parker quintet provided music for dancing, as well as listening.

The Communist Party organ, "The Daily Worker," reported that 3,000 people crowded the Rockland to hear not only Parker but Paul Robeson as well,who sang "Happy Birthday" and a collection of spirituals. One of these, "Water Boy." prompted Bird to bring a glass of water to the great singer at center stage. This light-hearted gesture on Parker's part mirrors the upbeat, driving complexion of the seven quintet tracks here. The hoofers hoofed and Bird played his feathers off! The program for the Rockland Palace performance includes Parker originals "Moose The Mooche"' "My Little Suede Shoes" and "Cool Blues." Bird pays tribute to his mentor Lester Young as he tears into "Lester Leaps In," the highlight of dance date. "Star Eyes" and "This Time The Dream's On Me" are reminders of Bird's fondness for pop tunes , and "Sly Mongoose" is a bent adventure that Parker has fun with.

The quintet includes Walter Bishop on piano, a constant in the Parker line-up at this time both on record and on stage. Bishop is a hard swinging Bud Powell devotee from the second wave of modern jazz. Guitarist Mundell Lowe makes a rare appearance with Parker and adds his Huckleberry-tinged perky intuition to the group. Lowe worked cafe society, the Village Vanguard and other Big Apple bistros in the late '40's/early '50's.

Rock solid bassist Teddy Kotick was another Charlie Parker regular in the early '50'5. The drummer is Max Roach, the greatest of all modern jazz percussionists, and a mind-reader when it came to inspiring Parker and the other players to new heights in improvisation. Bird was the flame, Max was the fire.

We close out this set with two Rockland Palace performances with strings and oboe, on Gerry Mulligan's "Rocker" and the haunting "Laura." As Bird soars against the strings we can't help but stand in awe of Charlie Parker, the precious manifestation of modern music

John Breckow

• Rocker

Carnegie Hall - September 16, 1950

 LINER NOTES

As Charlie Parker faced the fifties, he could look back on ten years of trials, tribulations, and triumphs. The Past decade had brought him the often venomous attacks of critics whose ears remained hopelessly tuned to the past, but as one faction ridiculed his music, another hailed it the product of genius. As World War II drew to a close, Charlie Parker innocently became the central figure in the battle of the styles, a ridiculous bit of commercial exploitation jointly staged by critics on both sides of the fence. The ensuing polemic, much of it shamelessly scripted, lent an air of novelty to the art of Charlie Parker and his collegues, and it well may be that he became better known at that time for the controversy - real and imagined - than for the music itself.

It had all started during the early morning hours of a December day in 1939. Unwinding after a night of playing bland fare in the Times Square taxi-dance joint that earned him hi sliving, Parker was jamming at a Harlem chili house with a rhythm seciton led by an obscure guitarist named Biddy Fleet. He frequently participated in after-hours sessions around Harlem, but although he anjoyed such informal get-togethers, he had grown weary of palying the usual chord changes and was convinced that there had to be a different structure upon which improvisation could take place. "I could hear it sometimes, "ha later recalled, "but I couldn't play it." However, that night at Dan Wall's Chili House he suddenly could play it. "Running through Ray Noble's 'Cherokee' - a popular hit that year - Parker formed the melody line using a chord's higher intervals, and when Fleet added the pertinent changes, what Parker had been inwardly hearing was suddenlt no longer a figment of his mind.

That unceremonious event, the significance of which is said to have eluded the other musicians present, later came to be regarded as the birth of the bop; but ten years later, when a down beat interviewer usggested this to Parker, he modestly replied, "I am accused of having been one of the pioneers," Though he was probably jesting, Parker's use of the term "accused" was not entirely inappropriate, for even then many people - so-called "jazz authorities" included - continued to regard bop as a bastardized music. Parker did not see bop even as an extension of jazz. "Bop is no love-child of jazz," hesaid, "bop is something entirely separate and apart. It's just music. It's trying to play clean and looking for the pretty notes."

If Parker meant that bop should not be judged in comparison with the music from which it had obviously evolved, his point was well taken. We know, for example, that French marching music had a strong influence on New Orleans jazz, but who would not think it folly to regard the two musics as anything but separate idioms? The music of Parker and Gillespie, like that of John Coltrane and Ornette Coleman, undeniably shares ancestral roots with the music of King Oliver and Jelly Roll Morton, but the family tree has disparate branches. The walls of style are thin when it comes to jazz - to use the general term - and while crossings from New Orleans to Chicago to Kansas City to Swing were easily made, bop represented a veritable obstacle course to most musicians; it was a highly radical break with convention, and though it took a collective effort to givebe-bop its full form as a recognizable entity, Charlie Parker was the one who laid down the new set of rules. (Dizzy Gillespies had independedntly harbored certain musical ideas, but by his own admission cannot recall palying bop changes prior to 1942.)

The early part of 1943 found Parker and Gillespie working together in the earl Hines band and in the now legendary informal sessions at Minton's Playhouse; the seed planted by Parker that December morning in 1939 was about to reach fruition. By the mid-forties there was officially something called be-bop; the commercial exploitation had begun, sides had been chosen, and controversy raged. The age of modern jazz had begun, but there was more money to be made from selling be-bop glasses, be-bop ties and other faddish paraphenalia than from playing the music itself. Parker began recording as a leader, first for Savoy , then for Dial; he was later to say of two of the Dial recordings. "Lover Man" and "Bird Lore" ("Ornithology"), that they "shoudl be stomped into the ground. . . I had to drink a quart of whiskey to make the date," but even his worst recordings came to be considered classics.

Parker's personal life was at this point, to put it bluntly, a mess. Drugs, alcohol and the physical neglect that acocmpanies them had long posed problems, but in 1946, while Parker was recording on the West Coast, his difficulties came to a head. "I don't know ow I made it through those years," he later recalled. "I became bitter, hard, cold. I was always on a panic - couldn't buy clothes or a good place to live. Finally, on the coast, I didn't have any palce to stay, until somebody put me up in a converted garage. The mental strain was getting worse all the time. What made it worst of all was that nobody understood our kind of music out on the coast. I can't begin to tell you how I yearned for New York. Finally I broke down." When Parker arrived back in New York in the early part of 1947, he was fresh out of Camarillo State Hospital, a California mental institution that offered a rehabilitation program for drug and alcohol addicts.

During Parker's sixteen months in California, the scene had changed: be-bop had attracted new exponents as well as audiences, people were becoming "hipsters," their cult heroes "boppers," and they crowded the clubs to listen rather than dance. The dissenters were still there, fiercely clinging to the past, propping up half-dead New Orleans veterans and hoping that this new music would somehow go away, but be-bop had caught the imagination of the hucksters and there was no stopping it now. Dizzy Gillespie had become the flamboyant "Clown Prince of Bop" - witty and extroverted, he was popular with the media and a non-jazz public, symbolizing the new music with his beret, goatee, and colorful be-bop terminology.

Parker, a quiet and self-effacing personality, did not partake willingly in the be-bop circus. While he always had the highest regard for Dizzy, whom he once referred tp as "teh other half of my heartbeat," he tooka dim view of Dizzy's bopsploitation activites. "Some guys said 'Here's nop,'" he told an interviewer in 1949, "Wham! They said, 'Here's something we can make money on' Wham! 'Here's a comedian.' Wham! ' Here's a guy who talks funny talk.'" Parker, who had led a day-today existence during Gillespie's rise, must surely have been hurt to see the scales so improperly balanced; but if the public was unaware of his role in the scheme of things, musicians and other insiders recognized Parker as the true genius of modern jazz. Soon after his return to New York, he formed a quintet and opened at the Three Dueces. After paying his musicians - a groupd that included Miles Davis and Max Roach - he was clearing $280 a week, more money than he ahd ever made before, but hardly a salary commensurate with his stature.

By the end of 1947, Parker was back on heroin,resuming the Hazardous lifestyle that had felled him in California. His behavior became increasingly eccentric, but it was tolerated because he was what e was - the most extraordinarily gifted soloist on the jazz scene since Louis Armstrong. During the last two years of the forties, Parker finally begane to achieve a more proportinate measure of recognition as an artist, he won first place in Metronome magazine poll, he was invited to participate in the 1949 Paris Jazz Festival, and he was signed by Norman Granz, whose record company (Clef, in those days) was not the low-budget shoestring affairs Dial and Savoy had been. Parker was of the opinion that big bands and bop did not mix, but palying with strings was another matter. "You can pull away some of the harshness with the strings and get a variety of coloration," he told an interviewer in 1949. A few months later his horn was singing bop's song against a lush background of strings (the pioneering session is included on the previous Parker set in this series).

On December 15, 1949, ten years after "it" had finally emerged from Charlie Parker's horn in that Harlem chili house, the biggest, most luxuriously furnished jazz club the world had ever seen opened at Broadway and 53rd Street - and it was named after Parker. Some writers have called "Birdland" the ultimate tribute to Parker; but his nickname "Bird" (originally "Yardbird") had become well known by then, and the awe of his fellow musicians (combined with his own eccentricities and no-doubt-magnified stories of his exploits) had made Bird a cult figure - so more accurately the "tribute" was yet another example of exploitation.

As Parker entered the fifties and made the recordings contained in this album, the music of Edgar Varese and Paul Hindemith had begun to intrigue him, and he was hearing new ideas again. "They teach you there's a boundary line to music, but, man, there's no boundary line to art," he said, but time ran out for Charlie Parker before he was able to take his music another step.

During the thirteen-month period covered by this album, Parker continued living high and, for the most part, staying high while somehow managing to keep up with a fairly hectic schedule of musical activity. The commercial success of his first string date prompted an encore (heard on side one of this set) and live performances with strings at such places as Birdland, Harlem's famous Apollo Theatre and - as heard on side two - Carnegie Hall. He also took a new quintet on a Jazz at the Philharmonica tour followed by a trip through the South. Towards the end of 1950, Parker made a short film for Norman Granz, flew to Scandinavia for a week's tour, and topped it off with a wild, non-musical weekend in Paris. He had agreed to perform at a Paris concert on the following wekend, but severe stomach pains made him cut short his stay; the diagnosis was acute peptic ulcers, and Parker had to finish the year in the hospital. Other than thta, 1950 - in terms of recognition and financial remuneration - had proven to be his best year so far.

Parker's 1951 recording activities were limited to the three sessions appearing on sides three and four of this reissue. Though some purists feel Parker used up his genius on the Savoy and Dial dates of the forties, it is clear that he had by no means expended his ability to develop new musical ideas. Always a superb exponent of the blues - a specialty of the old Jay McShann band - his "K.C. Blues" finds him preachin as skillfully as ever, and his torrential solo toward the end of "She Rote" (a Parker tune based on the changes of "Out of Nowhere, " a 1931 Tin Pan Alley hit) is Parker the virtuoso at his best. Both selections are from the date with Miles Davis, their first together since 1948 and - as it turned out - their last.

The year 1952 saw Charlie Parker trying to leand his life some respectability, but as his commercial success reached a high, his health hit an all-time low; he ahd trouble with his heart, and his ulcer continued to act up. When doctors seemed to be failing him, he cast himself deeper and deeper into drugs; th New York State Liquor Authority revoked his cabaret card (that ludicrous, now extinct license without which a performer could not work in a place that served liquor), thereby prohibiting Bird from working even at Birdland. The August date which ends side four included - with certain irony - "Lover Man," the very tune he had been recording in 1946 just before his California breakdown. His overall health was worse now than it had been in those days, and though most critics view the 1951 "Lover Man' as vastly inferior to the earlier one (because it "lacks emotional intensity"), Charlie Parker never stopped insisting that the celebrated Dial recording ought to be destroyed.

Bad as his health was in 1951, there was no repeat at that time of his 1946 breakdown. A second collapse occurred in 1955, and this time it was final.