Charlie Parker Essay Research Paper

Charlie Parker Essay, Research Paper

“They teach you that there is a boundary line to music, but, man, there’s no boundary line to art”.

–Charlie Parker

One of many great quotes that came from one of the most important figures in jazz and also an important figure in American history. Being that jazz is American history.

Charlie Parker was born in Kansas City, Kansas on August 29, 1920. He was born under the name Charles Parker Jr. Charles Parker Sr didn’t play a huge role in Charlie’s life. He soon left Charlie and his mother after Charlie was born. Charlie’s mother, Adelaide “Addie” Bailey, was a strong independent woman who was half African American and half Choctaw. She soon moved the family across state lines into Kansas City, Missouri.

Charles then began going to school. He wasn’t the best student and it was said that if he put as much effort into his schoolwork as he did his music he would be a professor. In 1931 Charlie went to Lincoln High School in K. C. There he played in the school band, which was directed by Alonzo Lewis.

In 1934 Rebecca Ruffin moved into the house with Charlie and his mother. It was Rebecca, her siblings, and her divorced mother that became one with the Parker family. Rebecca and Charlie started getting very close and became “good” friends. Since they both went to the same high school and lived together. Around this time Charlie started experimenting with Kansas City’s up and coming jazz scene. In 1933 Charlie asked his mother to by him an alto saxophone and she bought him a used one for 45 dollars. This was the fuel to the endless fire.

Charlie had no formal music experience he took what he could to play music. The only experience he really did have was he short span of playing in the school band. He would learn everything he could be sneaking into clubs, standing in the doorway, and trying to memorize everything that came out from those grungy K. C. nightclubs. He would go to the movies and try to memorize theme songs and play them when he got home. It was a process of trial and tribulation and it seems in the end that it paid off.

When Charlie turned 15 (1935) he decided he was going to try his luck as a professional jazz musician. Well if he wanted to do it, he sure did pick a good place. Kansas City was a hopping city at the time and soon became “the center of jazz for the Southwest,” as Carl Woideck would put it. Drugs and Prostitution were everywhere and the city wasn’t so touched by the Prohibition laws as some cities in the east. Drugs, Sex and Alcohol it sounds like a good place to have a party and that is what it became. Charlie soon learned about a drug he would never forget. He was first introduced to heroin at 15 in 1935. An actor friend introduced him to the drug, and he never forgot that “gift”. As he put it “It all came from being introduced too early to night life.. When you’re not mature enough to know what is happening -well you goof,” (Carl Woideck, Charlie Parker, page 7).

In 1936 Rebecca saw just how close her daughter and Charlie we getting and she moved them out of the Parker’s house. They still found ways to see each other. Young love just can’t be held back so on July 25th 1936 the marriage became official and Rebecca moved back into the house. In November of 1936 Charlie was on his was to a job in the Ozark Mountains when the car he was in slide on some ice and crashed. One of the band members died and another was seriously injured. Charlie broke a couple ribs and fractured his spine. These injuries are what seemed to set Charlie into a full-fledged junkie. He started using heroin more and more as a way of dealing with the pain from the accident. Then it just got worse and worse.

In 1937 Charlie met Jay McShann and Henry “Buster” Smith. Jay McShann became a friend and Henry “Buster” Smith became sort of a mentor. Henry formed a band in the fall of 1937 and asked Parker to join. Parker’s drug addiction was getting worse and worse he didn’t hold a steady job and was jumping from gig to gig. On January 10th 1938, Francis Leon Parker was born. Named after Leon “Chu” Berry a tenor saxophonist that Charlie admired.

In early 1939 Charlie decided that he had to leave and get to New York. He called Rebecca up to their room and said “Rebecca set me free” and so she did. He called his mother in the room and said “Rebecca has set me free and as long as they live I want her and my son to have a roof over their head and food in their mouth.” Then he pawned his horn and hopped a freight train to Chicago and made his was to New York.

It wasn’t the easiest for Charlie when he was in New York and he had to do whatever he could do to get by. For a while he washed dishes at a place called Jimmy’s Chicken Shack, there he first got some influence by some great stars such as Thelonis Monk. As time went on around 1941 things started picking up for Charlie in the music scene. He started jamming at some Harlem nightclubs and he was starting to get introduced to some real cool cats. Charlie became involved with Jay McShann and his Orchestra again and soon Dizzy Gillespie and Cab Calloway became involved. Dizzy and Charlie soon started to develop a relationship.

Many things happened from this point on Parker got involved in another band in April of 1943 the band included Dizzy Gillespie, “Little” Benny Harris, Bennie Green, Wardell Gary, Billy Ecksti