Parker, who had met and jammed with Dizzy Gillespie for the first time in 1940, had a short stint with Noble Sissle's band in 1942, played tenor with Earl Hines' sadly unrecorded bop band of 1943, and spent a few months in 1944 with Billy Eckstine's orchestra, leaving before that group made their first records. He made his recording debut with Jay McShann in 1940, creating remarkable solos with a small group from McShann's orchestra on 'Oh, Lady Be Good' and 'Honeysuckle Rose.' When the McShann big band arrived in New York in 1941, Parker had short solos on a few of their studio blues records, and his broadcasts with the orchestra greatly impressed (and sometimes scared) other musicians who had never heard his ideas before. By 1937, when he first joined Jay McShann's Orchestra, he was already a long way toward becoming a major player.Ĭharlie Parker, who was early on influenced by Lester Young and the sound of Buster Smith, visited New York for the first time in 1939, working as a dishwasher at one point so he could hear Art Tatum play on a nightly basis.
After a few humiliations at jam sessions, Bird worked hard woodshedding over one summer, building up his technique and mastery of the fundamentals. Parker was so enamored of the rich Kansas City music scene that he dropped out of school when he was 14, even though his musicianship at that point was questionable (with his ideas coming out faster than his fingers could play them). He first played baritone horn before switching to alto. By 1950, it was impossible to play 'modern jazz' with credibility without closely studying Charlie Parker.īorn in Kansas City, KS, Charlie Parker grew up in Kansas City, MO. Parker's remarkable technique, fairly original sound, and ability to come up with harmonically advanced phrases that could be both logical and whimsical were highly influential. In fact, Bird wrote several future standards (such as 'Anthropology,' 'Ornithology,' 'Scrapple from the Apple,' and 'Ko Ko,' along with such blues numbers as 'Now's the Time' and 'Parker's Mood') that 'borrowed' and modernized the chord structures of older tunes. Rather than basing his improvisations closely on the melody as was done in swing, he was a master of chordal improvising, creating new melodies that were based on the structure of a song. 'Bird,' along with his contemporaries Dizzy Gillespie and Bud Powell, is considered a founder of bebop in reality he was an intuitive player who simply was expressing himself. He could play remarkably fast lines that, if slowed down to half speed, would reveal that every note made sense.
One of a handful of musicians who can be said to have permanently changed jazz, Charlie Parker was arguably the greatest saxophonist of all time.
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