Charles Parker is known to be one of the most influential and important saxophonists and jazz players of the 1940s. He was the only child of Charles and Addie Parker.
When Parker was seven, his family moved to Kansas City, Missouri, where jazz, blues and gospel music were quite popular. "When he was only a child, he wanted to be a music maker," said his mother. Parker's mother raised him alone; his father left early in Charlie's life. In school, he played the baritone horn with the school's band as his first encounter with music. When he was 15, he attended Lincoln High School and showed a great interest in music and a love for the alto saxophone. His mother scraped together enough money to purchase a used alto saxophone; and he taught himself to play. From an early age, he was drawn to the music he heard in the alleyways from jam sessions in the Kansas City "joints." Charlie Parker began playing with local bands until 1935, when he left school to pursue a music career.
From 1935 to1939, Parker worked in Kansas City with several local jazz and blues bands from which he developed his art. In 1937, he was playing in Kansas City with Jay McShann. That same year he and his first wife Rebecca had a son. Two years later he met the legendary Dizzy Gillespie. The year following, at age 20, Parker left Kansas City, and headed for the Big Apple.
In New York, he went from marriage to marriage, from alcohol to drugs. Meanwhile, he played alto sax with the greats, Earl "Fatha" Hines, Cootie Williams, Billy Eckstine and Dizzy Gillespie. Parker was versatile. He played tenor sax, doubled on clarinet and experimented on practically every brass and woodwind known. Parker is credited as an originator of bebop, the jazz style that followed the big band swing era.
New York audiences were far more receptive to the new Bebop jazz style than the ones in Los Angeles during 1945-46. While playing for hostile California crowds with Dizzy Gillespie's trio, Parker's dependence on drugs increased and this self-destructive course climaxed in his first suicide attempt. He stayed for seven months in Camarillo State Hospital. He recovered, and two years later was leading his own group on the West Coast. Parker was given the nicknames "Bird" and "Yardbird". The name "Bird" came from his tendencies to "live free as a bird." He was also quite fond of chicken (a yardbird), and because he liked it so much, he also got the title of "Yardbird."
In New York City, Birdland opened in 1949. That dance hall immortalized his name and his inimitable style. Another suicide attempt placed him in Bellevue Hospital in 1954. The following year he played again at Birdland. However, this would be his last engagement. The next week he died of heart failure, pneumonia, and cirrhosis of the liver.
During his short life span of 34 years, Charlie Parker's musical genius brought new innovation to jazz music. His funeral was held in Harlem, but he was brought back to Kansas City for burial in Lincoln Cemetery. A sculpture in his honor is located in the city's Historic 18th and Vine District.
Copyright © 2000 - Adrienne Brueggemeyer
