Today would have been the 100th birthday of jazz great Charlie Parker.
If you’re unfamiliar with Charlie Parker, he was one of the founders of bebop, a musical style that followed (and supplanted) the big bands and swing that had been popular before World War II. Bird, as he was nicknamed, played the alto sax. He his playing was fast[fn1] and it was rhythmically and harmonically complicated; it, more than almost any other musical style (except, perhaps, mid-century classical music) encapsulated the same modernism that developed in art and literature during the first half of the 20th century.
And why commemorate Bird on a Mormon blog? There is absolutely no reason to think that he had any connection to Mormonism, nor Mormonism any particular connection to Bird. In fact, according to Michael Hicks’s Mormonism and Music, church leaders in the early 20th century “defined jazz as ‘departure from the correct'” and condemned improvisation. As late as 1948, BYU faculty “scuttled” a proposed concert by Dizzy Gillespie, a contemporary of Bird and another of the founders of bebop, possibly fearing repercussions by church leaders.
But if Charlie Parker—and bebop generally—isn’t part of Mormon culture, he should be. After all, art is a critical part of our mortal experience, and we’ve had church programs focusing on enculturating our youth and our members.
And while there’s no objective connection between Mormonism and Charlie Parker, I have at least some personal connection. The first is that I’m almost entirely sure that I first heard (and heard about) Bird from Ray Smith, who was over the saxophones and jazz program at BYU. One year when I was in high school I went to a music camp at BYU. My jazz familiarity (because of personal taste and teachers in San Diego) ran toward 70s and 80s fusion, people like Michael Brecker and David Sanborn. At that camp, Ray introduced me to Bird and Coltrane. They didn’t immediately stick, but slowly their music began to infiltrate my ears and my brain.
At some point in high school I read a biography about Bird. And I used tidbits in that biography in a talk. I can’t remember if it was as I left for BYU or as I left on my mission. But I do remember that in talking about hard work, I used Bird’s report that he practiced between 11 and 15 hours a day for several years.
Which is to say, my connection to Charlie Parker, while not principally filtered through my Mormon experience, has nonetheless had at least a tangential relationship to it.
All that to introduce the music. Here are 4 songs performed by Charlie Parker. I’m not going to say these are his best recordings or his most important recordings. They’re entirely subjectively the handful of recordings that are most salient to me right now:
My Little Suede Shoes
I’ve been learning to play this on soprano. It’s laid-back and just a happy, funky song. It’s a great and accessible introduction to a genius of modern music.
Now’s the Time
Parker wrote a lot of songs over the 12-bar blues. This is one of my favorites. You can hear his speed and his thoughtfulness on this, and some licks that are just mind-blowing.
Anthropology
He also wrote a lot of songs over rhythm changes. “Anthropology” is one of my favorites. (I really love Lucky Thompson’s version too.)
Moose the Mooche
The song was allegedly named after Parker’s heroin dealer. True or not, it’s a wonderful song.
Finally, it seemed appropriate on what would have been Charlie Parker’s 100th birthday to bike over to my local record store (Dusty Groove in this case) and see if I could get my hands on the Record Store Day release of Charlie Parker’s Jazz at Midnite. On its website, I saw that the store opens at 9:00 so I shot to get there at 8:00. When I arrived., though,. I didn’t see any line. It turns out that on RSD it opened at 7 am.
But I was in luck: it hadn’t sold out and I am now the proud owner of a live set of Bird tunes on vinyl.
[fn1] Most of the songs in my copy of the Charlie Parker Omnibook have tempos in the mid-200 bpm. Some were recorded at up to 300 bpm. In fact, Parker could be the subject of the first verse of Chuck Berry’s “Rock and Roll Music”:
I have no kick against modern jazz
Unless they try to play it too darn fast
And change the beauty of the melody
Until they sound just like a symphony
(Note that, as much as I like Chuck Berry, he’s entirely wrong about modern jazz.)