-- It had all started during the early tity, Charlie Parker was the one who and there was no stopping it now. Dizzy- morning hours of a December day in laid down the new set of rules. (Dizzy Gillespie had become the flamboyant 1939. Unwinding after a night of playing Gillespie had independently harbored "Clown Prince of Bop" —w itty and ex- bland fare in the Times Square taxi- certain related musical ideas, but b y his troverted. he was popular with the menu dance joint that earned him his living, own admission cannot recall playing hop and a non-iazz public. symbolizing the Parker was jamming at a Harlem chili changes prior to 1942.) new music with his beret, goatee. and house with a rhythm section led by an The early part of 1943 found Parker colorful be-hop terminology. obscure guitarist named Biddy Fleet. and. Gillespie working together in the Earl Parker. a quiet and self-effacing per- He frequently participated in after-hours Hines band and in the now legendary in- sonality, did not. partake Willingly in the sessions around Harlem, but although formal sessions at Milton's Playhouse; be-bop circus. While he always had the he enjoyed such informal get-togethers, the seed planted by Parker that De- highest regard for Dizzy, Whom he once he had grown weary of playing the usual cember morning in 1939 was about to referred to as - the other half of my chord changes and was convinced that reach fruition. By the mid-forties there heartbeat," he took a dim view Of Dizzy"; there had to be a different structure upon was officially something called be-bop; bopsploitat ion activities. "Some guys which improvisation could take place. the commercial exploitation had begun, said. 'Here's bop, " he told an inner- "I could hear it sometimes." he later re- sides had been chosen, and controversy viewer in 1949. "Wham! They said, called, "but I couldn't play it." However, raged. The age of modern jazz had be- 'here's something we can make money that night at Dan Wall's Chili House gun, but there was more money to be on.' 'Wham! Here's a comedian.' Wham. on Seventh Avenue and 139th Street, made from selling be-bop glasses. be-bop 'Here's a guy who talks funny he suddenly could play "it." Running ties and other faddish paraphernalia than Parker, who had led a day-to-day exist- through Ray Noble's "Cherokee"—a from playing the inside. itself. Parker ence during Gillespie's ise, must surely popular hit that year—Parker formed began recording as a leader, first for have been hurt to see the scales so im- the melody line using a chord's higher Savoy, then for Dial; he was later to say of properly balanced: but if the public was intervals, and when Fleet added the per- two of the Dial recordings, "Lover Man' unaware of his role in the scheme of tinent changes, what Parker had been and "Bird Lore" ("Ornithology"), that things, musicians and other insiders rec inwardly hearing was suddenly no.longer they "should be stomped into the ground ()prized Parker as the true genius of a figment of his mind. ... I had to drink a quart of whisky to modern jazz. Soon after his return to Net That unceremonious event, the sig- make the date," but even his worst re- he formed a quintet and opened at nificance of which is said to have eluded cordings came to be considered classics. the Three Deuces. After paying his the other musicians present, later came arker's personal life musicians—a group that included Miles to be regarded as the birth of bop; but ten at this point was, to Davis and Max Roach—he was cleari ng years later, when a down beat interviewer put it bluntly, a mess. $280 a week. more money than he had suggested this to Parker, he modestly re- Drugs, alcohol, and ever made before, but hardly a salary plied. "I am accused of having been one the physical neglect commensurate with his stature. of the pioneers." 'Though he was prob- that accompanies y the end of 1947. ably jesting, Parker's use of the term them had long posed Parker was back on "accused" was not entirely inappropriate, problems, but in 1946. heroin, resuming the for even then many people—so-called while Parker was re- hazardous life style "jazz authorities" included—continued cording on the West Coast, his difficulties that had felled him in, to regard bop as a bastardized music. came to a head. "I don't know how California. His be- Parker did not see bop even as an exten- made it through those years." he later re- havior became in- sion of jazz. "Bop is no love-child of jazz, called. "I became bitter, hard, cold. I was creasingly eccentric. op is no love- he said, "bop is something entirely always on a panic—couldn't buy clothes but it was tolerated child (.)/liazz,". Parker said, separate and apart. It's just music. It's or a good place to live. Finally, on the because he was w hat he was—the most bop is something entirely trying to play dean and looking for the coast, I didn't have any place to stay. until extraordinarily gifted soloist on the jazz, pretty notes." somebody put me up in a converted ga- scene since Louis Armstrong. During di separate and apart. It's just If Parker meant that bop should not rage. The mental strain was getting last two years of the forties. Parker (Mall music, It's trying to play clean be judged in comparison with the music worse all the time. What made it worst of began to achieve a more proportionate and looking for the from which it had obviously evolved, all was that nobody understood our kind measure of recognition as an artist: he his point was well taken. We know, for of music out on the coast. I can't begin to won first place in a Metronome magazine pretty notes." example, that French marching music tell you how I yearned for New York. Fi- poll, he was invited to participate in the had a strong influence on New Orleans nally I broke down." When. Parker ar- 1949 International Paris Jazz Festival, jazz, but who would not think it folly to rived back in New Bark in the early part and he was signed by Norman Granz, regard the two musics as anything but of 1947, he was fresh out of Camarillo Whose record company (Clef in those separate idioms? The music of Parker State Hospital, a California mental in- days) was not the low-budget shoestring and Gillespie, like that of John Coltrane stitution that offered a rehabilitation affairs Dial and Savoy had been. Parker and Ornette Coleman, undeniably shares program for drug and alcohol addicts. was of the opinion that big bands and hi)] ancestral roots with the music of King During Parker's sixteen months in did not mix. but playing with strings wan Oliver and Jelly Roll Morton. but the fam- California, the scene had changed: another matter. -You can pull away some ily tree has dispai ate branches. The walls be-bop had attracted new exponents as of the harshness with the strings and go of style are thin when it comes to jazz—to well as audiences. people were becoming a variety of coloration, - he told an inter; use the general term—and while cross- "hipsters," their cult heroes "hoppers. - viewer in 1949. A few months later Ins ings from New Orleans to Chicago to listen and they crowded the clubs to horn was singing bop's song against Kansas City to Swing were easily made, rather than dance. The dissenters were lush background of strings Ulm pioneer- bop represented a veritable obstacle still there, fiercely clinging to the past, ing session is included oil the previous course to most musicians; it was a highly propping up half-dead New Orleans Parker set in this series). radical break with convention, and veterans and hoping that this new music On December 15, 1949, ten years after though it took a collective effort to give would somehow go away, but be-bop had "it" had finally emerged from Charlie be-bop its full form as a recognizable en- caught the imagination of the hucksters Parker 's horn in that Harlem chili house the biggest, most luxuriously furnished The year 1951 also saw Charlie Parker jazz club the world had ever seen opened trying to lend his life some respectability, SID H; 1 SIDE 3 at Broadway and 53rd Street—and it was but as his commercial success reached a named after Parker. Some writers have high, his health hit an all-time low; he had called "Birdland" the ultimate tribute to trouble with his heart, and his ulcer con- DANCING IN THE DARK AU PRIVAVE Parker; but his nickname "Bird" (origi- tinued to act up. When doctors seemed to (Schuartz, Dietz) (0142-5) 3:10 ASCAP (Parker) (489-2) 2:42 BAH nally "Yardbird") had become well known be failing him, he cast himself deeper and LAURA SHE ROTE • by then, and the awe of his fellow musi- deeper into drugs; the New York State (Raksin, Mercer) (C443 -2) 2:56 ASCAP (Parker) (490-3) 3:10 BAH cians (combined with his own eccen- Liquor Authority revoked his cabaret tricities and no-doubt-magnified stories card (that ludicrous, now extinct license THEY CAN'T TAKE THAT AWAY K.C.