Mickey Z
Cool Observer
Tuesday, November 29, 2005
Charlie Parker finds the pretty notes
Before I begin, I want to first say thanks to those who sent money to Michele for her “kause.” You guys rock.
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An excerpt from 50 American Revolutions You’re Not Supposed to Know:
Revolutionaries come in many varieties...
The Kansas city-born Charlie “Bird” Parker (1920-1955) ushered in a music revolution in mid-1940s New York City. Labeled “bebop,” Bird’s style built on earlier innovations by players like Coleman Hawkins and Lester Young. Armed with revolutionary musical vocabulary and style, Parker teamed with jazz legends like Dizzy Gillespie, Bud Powell, Thelonious Monk, Charlie Christian, Kenny Clarke, and Miles Davis…making Harlem the jazz capital of the world and changing music forever.
One could describe Parker’s sound as fast…for certain. One could explain that bebop introduced rhythmically asymmetrical improvisations and a new tonal vocabulary. One could also talk, as online encyclopedias do, about the use of “9ths, 11ths and 13ths of chords” or “rapidly implied passing chords” or perhaps “new variants of altered chords and chord substitutions.” For the intuitive Bird, however, it was “just music.” He said all was doing was “playing clean and looking for the pretty notes.”
“First and foremost, he was a brilliant musician who revolutionized jazz,” wrote Marilyn Marshall in Ebony Magazine. “A master of improvisation, Parker played the alto sax as it had never been played before. Jay McShann, the Kansas City bandleader and pianist who hired Parker for his group in 1938, says Parker was so good that, ‘He not only influenced saxophone players, but influenced trumpet players, bass players, piano players—everybody.’”
Legendary bassist Charles Mingus put it like this: “Bird sometimes could make the whole room feel as he did.”
To order 50AR, please click here: http://tinyurl.com/dxk4y
The latest 50AR review: http://tinyurl.com/bs3l6
Recent book-related interview: http://tinyurl.com/b25f4
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In other news...
Prime Sinister Blair...meet Greenpeace:
http://tinyurl.com/bhysc
On this day in 1942, coffee joins the list of items rationed in the U.S. Despite record coffee production in Latin American countries, the growing demand for the bean from both military and civilian sources, and the demands placed on shipping, which was needed for other purposes, required the limiting of its availability.
Which reminds me…
Time for a coffee break...
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