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Parker, Charlie (1920-1955)

American musician, generally acknowledged as the foremost jazz alto saxophonist and as one of the greatest jazz pioneers. Born Charles Christopher Parker, Jr., in Kansas City, Kansas, he was also called “Bird” or “Yardbird”. He played with various bands in Kansas City, Missouri, and in 1939 travelled to New York, where he joined the big band of Earl “Fatha” Hines, playing with them from 1942 to 1943. Parker's early style owed much to Lester Young, although Parker distinguished himself by his extraordinary ability to modulate between keys.

Meeting Dizzy Gillespie, Parker formed a short-lived combo (1944-1945), and established himself in the forefront of the new jazz style, bebop-a fast-paced, virtuosic, harmonically complex music-collaborating at different times with all the major bebop stars (including Miles Davis, Bud Powell, and Max Roach) and producing some of jazz's classic recordings (such as The Charlie Parker Story, 1945). He suffered a breakdown in 1946 and spent six months recovering in Camarillo State Hospital (subsequently calling one of his compositions “Relaxin’ at the Camarillo”), before making some of his best recordings, with small combos and Machito’s Afro-Cuban big band, or accompanied by orchestral string- and woodwind-arrangements. Because of persistent physical and emotional problems in his last years (he was heavily dependent on drugs and alcohol for most of his career), Parker played irregularly and mostly in small groups, including one famous concert recorded as Jazz at the Massey Hall (1953) which featured Parker with Gillespie, Powell, Roach, and Charles Mingus (a line-up so illustrious the sessions became known as “The Quintet of the Year”).

Parker’s playing was characterized by its speed and unprecedented improvisational genius, which put him far ahead of his contemporaries. His purity of tone, and harmonic, melodic, and rhythmic innovations made Parker the touchstone for almost every jazz improviser that followed him; only Louis Armstrong has had a comparable influence as a soloist. Through his playing and such compositions as “Yardbird Suite” and “Ornithology”, Parker's sheer virtuosity altered the future of jazz, making bebop the dominant style for decades after his premature death.