This week’s theme is…Yet More Syndication! I’m hard at work on more great content for the weeks ahead. Until then, enjoy just a few more of my favorite episodes in rerun 🙂
Yet More Syndication, Day 2 – Bebop by Charlie Parker
Listen to this:
Does anything strike you about it, or does it just sound like jazz to you? I have to admit that jazz is not exactly my cup of tea, not as much as other things (just being honest! To each their own), but I certainly have respect for it, those who appreciate it, and those who perform it well.
There is an interesting and, many would agree, sad story around this recording. First, let’s point out some details. You can hear that it features a small combo playing a very rapid and intricate chart. The rhythm section of drums, bass and piano supports two highly virtuosic soloists playing trumpet and alto saxophone. They are both blazing in their technique, weaving convoluted and intricate melodic lines around the rapid chord changes laid out by the rhythm section. All of these elements – the small combo, the fast and complicated harmonic rhythm, and the emphasis on a fiercely intelligent and intensely refined virtuosity – are marks of a style of jazz music called bebop, and these musicians were among the most important innovators and early champions of the style which has demonstrated remarkable staying power, essentially transforming jazz music into an artform appreciated by sophisticated aficionados, in contrast to the big band swing of the 1930s and 1940s, a genre of very entertaining music that has such popular appeal. Today the solos of bebop are the subject of intense analysis and academic scrutiny, and its major figures are heroes to jazz musicians in all ranks of the study and profession.
The trumpeter’s name is Howard McGhee, and the alto saxophonist’s is Charlie Parker. Howard McGhee was an influential trumpeter during the early days of bebop and inspired the next generation of trumpeters, but has not become the household that Parker has (well, more so anyway). Charlie Parker was really a visionary, an unbelievable talent of the highest order, a melder of technique and artistry, practically an idol to students and fans of jazz music, and was, it seems, all of this in spite of his best efforts to destroy himself.
Listen to the first minute of Bebop (the track) once again. You may be struck by the density of musical events which fills that brief amount time – again, the bebop style is incredibly virtuosic, requiring its performers to control countless notes over short spans of time, and all bebop performed by competent practitioners of the style will exhibit this feature. But, did a certain event stand out to you? An event that didn’t quite fit into the expected orchestration? Go to 0:38. Do you hear it now? A one-syllable vocalization that pops out of the instrumental texture? That is the trumpeter, Howard McGhee, exhorting Charlie Parker to “blow!” because he is not confident that Parker will continue his solo, or at least not with any coherence. What does this mean? Here’s the story…
During the late 1930s, a very driven and focused, teenage Charlie Parker was mastering the art of jazz improvisation as it then existed and beginning to work out his innovative technique of effortlessly modulating between distantly related keys using chromatic transitions and altered chords. During this time Parker reported practicing 15 hours per day for a stretch of several years; no wonder he developed such facility. And around this time, the 17 year old Parker was also in an automobile accident, which left him with painful injuries. During his recovery in the hospital he was treated with morphine to manage his pain and he became addicted. From there, it was a short jump to an all-consuming heroin habit, which he sustained, for better or worse (mostly for worse, probably), for the rest of his tragically short but very creative life. Parker died, largely due to the stress of his lifestyle, at the age of 35, just as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart had a century and a half earlier (for more about Mozart’s colorful and unconventional life and upbringing see this post). Because of the toll taken by Parker’s abuse of narcotics, alcohol, and food, the coroner who tended to his body at the time of death estimated that he was between 50 and 60 years old. By his time of death he had suffered cirrhosis of the liver, bleeding ulcers, and a heart attack, all at age 35.
His habit made him professionally unreliable and must have caused his personal finances to be incredibly volatile. But other musicians still looked up to him and regarded him highly for his unrivaled contributions to the advancement of jazz artistry. Toward the end of 1945 he and Dizzy Gillespie, a famous jazz trumpeter and fellow bebop innovator, traveled from New York to Southern California to give performances showcasing their new style. They received a lukewarm reception (due to its dense and intellectual nature, bebop was slow to catch on with audiences – some might say it still hasn’t entirely; Glenn Miller is always an easier sell) and while everyone else hopped planes back East, Parker, in a characteristically short-sighted stroke, sold his return ticket for cash to procure heroin, forcing him to remain in California for a while.
But heroin was generally more difficult to come by there, and so Parker ended up using copious amounts of liquor for his highs when he couldn’t find his drug of choice. Just before the 1946 recording session in which Parker and Howard McGee laid down Bebop and a few other tracks, he had consumed an entire quart of whiskey. He was so drunk that he had to be physically supported during certain tracks, and his disjointed solos bordered on unintelligibility at times. McGhee, apparently concerned that Parker would simply stop playing during Bebop, urged him on, and that is the reason for his exclamation.
But, amazingly, even hampered his alcoholic incapacitation, the tracks recorded during that session do exhibit Charlie Parker’s musical brilliance, in spite of their inconsistency. Some fans consider them to be among his greatest recordings, and they are fascinating to listen to.
Charlie Parker was incredibly influential to his contemporary boppers, with regard to both music and lifestyle. Many jazz musicians thought that his intoxication must be inextricably fused with his musical inspiration and so, largely because of his prominence, heroin addiction afflicted a disproportionately high number of jazz musicians during the 1940s and 1950s. Just look at this list:
http://rateyourmusic.com/list/headphonian/jazz_artists_who_were_heroin_addicts/3/
There was a sense that Parker’s incredible spontaneity was a result of the narcotics sweeping away his inhibitions, and helping him to find his zone of comfort and inspiration on stage, helping him to overcome the intimidation and discomfort he would have experienced travelling so much and playing for different people every night, and so many of his fellow musicians figured it could help them to do the same.
But not everyone was taken in. The aforementioned Dizzy Gillespie managed to contribute as brilliantly as Parker and stay clean. He took a no-nonsense approach, firing any musicians in his employment if he caught them using heroin. He also became quite practiced at dealing with the police, who tended to pick on his black musicians whether they deserved it or not. Instinctively he must have known that succumbing to the ravages of addiction himself would have shattered his credibility with structures of authority, depriving the musicians in his care of an important protector and advocate. Gillespie, who lived twice as long as Charlie Parker, used his full, rich life to promote jazz music and musicians, producing in numerous styles, and becoming what is often described as an “elder statesman” for the cause. It is difficult to imagine a musician of Parker’s personality and appetites fillings such a role with the dignity that Gillespie did.
Other musicians, most notably Miles Davis and John Coltrane, went through episodes of addiction only to clean up after they realized it was not at all helpful to their artistry. Indeed, musicians reacted all sorts of different ways to intoxication; some could perform that way, and some could not. If you are interested to read a detailed account of heroin and the bebop jazz scene, see this very interesting panel discussion between jazz musicians, a lawyer, and a doctor, and a moderator from Playboy magazine conducted in 1960. It is an article that corroborates Playboy’s literary quality, beyond the pictures, and touches upon many themes that are still most topical including racial inequality in the treatment by police, the ineffective nature of the American penal system, and the counterproductivity of what is today known as the “war on drugs”, among others:
http://www.cannonball-adderley.com/article/lapin01.htm
The heroin epidemic which swept through jazz culture in the middle of the 20th century is a testament to Charlie Parker’s role as an artistic reformer. Everything about him was imitated, however much it related to the music he made. Parker would probably have told you that the heroin was one thing, just something that happened after that car accident that he could never shake, and that his music was another. And we’ll probably never know how inextricable they were. People are complex, after all. But, we shouldn’t forget how much he practiced, how driven and focused he was even before his fateful car accident, and just how keen his intellect and artistic vision were, whether or not narcotics were flowing through his brain.
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