Reviewing Kansas City Lightning: The Rise and Times of Charlie Parker by Stanley Crouch, Adam Shatz applauds the surprisingly dark first volume of the biography, writing that “each page is haunted by the demons that brought down the man known as Bird”:
The myth of Charlie Parker is that he was self-taught. In fact, as Crouch writes, he studied with a man named Alonzo Davis, an heir to a tradition of conservatory-trained black teachers who had “tattooed their knowledge on the brain cells of many young musicians who went on to shape the evolution of vernacular Negro American music.” Parker seems to have acquired a rapid—and highly exaggerated—sense of confidence on his horn. He was hardly married when he began to stay out all night in clubs, asking to sit in with local musicians when he only knew how to play “Lazy River” and “Honeysuckle Rose.” …
Parker began to find his voice on the alto, and to learn how to listen and respond “in digital time” to other musicians: the art that, as Crouch emphasizes, lies at the heart of his genius as an improviser. But he also discovered the pleasures that would kill him.
According to Crouch, Parker was first prescribed morphine around 1937, after a car accident in which he broke his ribs. A few months after [his wife] Rebecca became pregnant with their son Leon, he invited her to watch as he inserted a needle in his arm, then left for the night. That scene, chillingly described by Crouch, left Rebecca in little doubt about where his loyalties stood. Soon afterward she found a letter from another woman under his pillow; he asked her to return it at gunpoint. He gave her crabs and stole from her. When she miscarried their second child, he flushed it down the toilet. The family doctor told her that if he continued to use heroin, he would live no more than eighteen to twenty years: an accurate prediction.
Back in March, Mike Springer dug up the above video, “the only [known sound film] of him playing live, rather than synching to a prerecorded track”:
The performance is from a February 24, 1952 broadcast on the pioneering DuMont Television Network. The full segment begins with a brief ceremony in which Parker and [Dizzie] Gillespie receive awards from Down Beat magazine, but the clip above cuts straight to the music: a performance of the bebop standard “Hot House,” composed by Tad Dameron around the harmonic structure of Cole Porter’s “What Is This Thing Called Love?”
Update from a reader:
The quote you ran about Charlie Parker’s heroin use made it sound (eventually) recreational. But that’s not my understanding. As per this link, his drug use wasn’t merely subsequent to breaking some ribs, but following a spine injury. I have a spine disease which can, at times, be quite painful. I can easily sympathize with some one who tries to manage his pain with whatever drug, and find condemnation of that management to stem from a lack of comprehension of the challenges that real chronic pain can present.
Imagine having teeth continually pulled without anesthetic. Now try to play an instrument or do math or do anything that requires concentration while enduring that pain. If Parker required heroin to do what he did, hats off to him. He changed the world.
The Dish 