Bird
The Life and Music of Charlie Parker
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
Saxophone virtuoso Charlie “Bird” Parker began playing professionally in his early teens, became a heroin addict at 16, changed the course of music, and then died when only 34 years old. His friend Robert Reisner observed, “Parker, in the brief span of his life, crowded more living into it than any other human being.” Like Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Miles Davis, and John Coltrane, he was a transitional composer and improviser who ushered in a new era of jazz by pioneering bebop and influenced subsequent generations of musicians. Meticulously researched and written, Bird: The Life and Music of Charlie Parker tells the story of his life, music, and career. This new biography artfully weaves together firsthand accounts from those who knew him with new information about his life and career to create a compelling narrative portrait of a tragic genius. While other books about Parker have focused primarily on his music and recordings, this portrait reveals the troubled man behind the music, illustrating how his addictions and struggles with mental health affected his life and career. He was alternatively generous and miserly; a loving husband and father at home but an incorrigible philanderer on the road; and a chronic addict who lectured younger musicians about the dangers of drugs. Above all he was a musician, who overcame humiliation, disappointment, and a life-threatening car wreck to take wing as Bird, a brilliant improviser and composer. With in-depth research into previously overlooked sources and illustrated with several never-before-seen images, Bird: The Life and Music of Charlie Parker corrects much of the misinformation and myth about one of the most influential musicians of the twentieth century.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Director of the Marr Sound Archives Haddix (co-author of Kansas City Jazz: From Ragtime to Bebop) methodically follows Charlie Parker from his start playing with "more enthusiasm than talent" in Kansas City clubs, to his peak as one of the preeminent forces in bebop, and then his early death at age 34. In his short career Parker played with and rivaled many of the mid-century jazz greats: He mentored by Count Basie, absorbed Art Tatum's technique while busing tables at Jimmy's Chicken Shack where Tatum would perform. Parker and played with and eventually competed against Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis, among and others. Music was Parker's compulsion, but he also developed an addiction to heroin at an early age, and he needed the needle as badly as the tunes, between these loves, the ladies in his life rarely fared well. Haddix provides a valuable sense of the cross-pollination that occurred in jazz during the 40s and 50s, as players brought new musical ideas from coast to coast, or even just block to block. He also manages to keep straight who played what with who and when, a remarkable feat in itself. The book's meticulous approach is also it's weakness, as it sometimes fails to capture the spontaneity of Parker's music, something thrilling enough that people would sometimes forget the transgressions of the addict in the hope of hearing more of the musician. 12 b&w photos.
