How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth? —Sherlock Holmes

Welcome to the Hall of Mirrors, wherein I shall present my final argument concerning the recording date of Bird’s first “Cherokee.”

Here’s the recording in question:

Here’s the problem: The assumptions involved make this argument a house of cards. My guess about the recording date is based on the musical evidence presented in my previous Ben Webster posts. In order to believe this guess has any validity, you have to also believe that I’m correct about Webster’s influence on Bird and the timing thereof.

As we set sail once again across these fog-shrouded seas, we have four new compass points to guide us:

1. In December 1942, Bird switched to tenor and joined the Earl Hines Orchestra, rehearsing with them throughout the month.

2. The Hines Orchestra played a one-week engagement at the Apollo Theater, January 15—21, 1943, then departed NYC on tour.

3. On or about January 15, 1943, Ben Webster returned to NYC after months on the road with Ellington. On January 17, the Ellington Orchestra convened at Nola Studios for a full week of rehearsals.

4. Billy Eckstine reports that Webster first encountered Bird at a jam session at Minton’s, in which Bird was playing tenor.

The upshot of my Webster posts is this: I believe that when Bird switched to tenor, he turned his attention to Webster, beginning with Webster’s “Cotton Tail” solo and the “Cotton Tail” saxophone soli, which was very likely written by Webster (full track below).

Bird adopted a phrase from the solo I call Motive 1. Here it is, first Webster, then Bird:

Bird subsequently split Motive 1 in two. I call the first half, a five-note chromatic descent, Motive 1A. Here are examples from “Warming Up a Riff” (November 26, 1945, full track below):

Bird adopted a phrase from the soli I call Motive 2. Here’s the soli:

Webster extracted Motive 2 from the soli himself:

Here’s Bird (transposed into Webster’s key):

Bird was adept at mimicking Webster, including Webster’s growl. Examples of this can be found on the Redcross recordings (February 15, 1943), whereas there are no examples of Bird growling prior to the Redcross recordings. Here’s Bird on tenor:

Bird’s first version of “Cherokee” contains Motive 1A, Motive 2, and an abundance of growling.

Motive 1A, the chromatic descent, can be heard at 2:12:

Motive 2 can be heard at 2:16:

Bird fashioned a set piece designed to navigate the first half of the “Cherokee” bridge. He growls throughout these eight bars, beginning at 1:33:

I believe this set piece was inspired by Webster’s “Cotton Tail” solo, specifically the second bridge (1:18). These two bridges share no vocabulary, but they’re tied together by the underlying concept. If you think I’m grasping at vibes, fair enough. Here’s Webster:

The next argument concerns fluency. The “Cherokee” bridge begins in the key of B major, difficult at such a fast tempo, even for Bird. “Tea for Two” was another set piece used to navigate the first eight bars. He deploys it in the second bridge, starting at bar five (2:36) and continuing through bar twelve (2:43):

But Bird forgoes the set piece in the first four bars, which are the most difficult. Instead, he plays a very fluid line, sounding quite at ease in B major. It bears a strong resemblance to a line found in the AFRS transcription of “Cherokee” from April 1946:

Any fragment of mature vocabulary found in Bird’s apprenticeship period acts as a form of carbon dating, suggesting a later rather than earlier recording date.

Another subject covered in the Ben Webster posts is Bird’s use of scale runs. (I define scale runs as consecutive notes of a scale used in a melodic line.) Such runs, often spanning an octave or more, are a defining characteristic of Bird’s early style (1940—1943). I contend that Bird gradually replaced scale runs with Motive 1A. By the time he arrives at his mature style (1944), scale runs typically span a fifth.

Bird’s solos from McShann’s Savoy broadcast (February 12, 1942) contain an abundance of scale runs, all of which span more than an octave (eight scale degrees). On “I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles,” he plays fourteen degrees of Eb major, eleven degrees of F major, and eleven degrees of G minor. On “St. Louis Mood,” he plays nine degrees of Eb major, and thirteen degrees of Bb major. On “Swingmatism” he plays eleven degrees of F minor. Here they are in order:

Scale runs in Bird’s first version of “Cherokee” are less frequent and span smaller distances. At 0:08, he plays seven degrees of C major; at 0:28, he plays nine degrees of A minor; at 0:37, he repeats the same seven degrees of C major; at 1:27, he plays nine degrees of D major; at 2:52, he plays eleven degrees of D major. Here they are in order:

“Cherokee” has a 64-bar form. Bird takes almost two full choruses, but the second chorus fades out at the end of the bridge, making his solo 112 bars. In the space of these 112 bars, though, he only plays five relatively short scale runs. By any measure, it’s a substantial decrease in both frequency and distance.

That’s it! That’s all the evidence I have to support my argument that Bird’s first version of “Cherokee” was recorded after Bird switched to tenor and began absorbing Webster’s influence. This argument is chockablock with assumptions built on assumptions, and I won’t be offended if anyone throws out the baby with all this half-baked bathwater.

What’s that you say? What about the goddamn date???

Here’s the Eckstine anecdote (compass point 4), first published in the August 14, 1954 issue of Melody Maker:

One night Ben Webster walks into Minton's and Charlie’s up on the stand and he’s wailing the tenor. Ben had never heard Bird, you know, and he says, “What the hell is that up there? Man, is that cat crazy?” And he goes up and snatches the horn out of Bird’s hands, saying, “That horn ain’t supposed to sound that fast.” But that night, Ben walked all over town telling everyone, “Man, I heard a guy—I swear he’s going to make everybody crazy on tenor.”

Compass point 3 tells us that this could only have happened between January 15th and 21st, 1943, after Webster was back in NYC and before Bird left on tour with Hines.

But did it really happen at Minton’s? Webster’s own words contradict this:

“I first heard Charlie at Monroe’s… There was this guy on the stand blowing weird stuff. It was Charlie. I said to Clark, ‘Is that cat playin’ what I think he’s playin’?’ Clark said yeah… I was feeling pretty fit but I wasn’t sure, I didn’t trust my ears.”

Webster can’t have heard Bird for the first time twice, in two different locations. (Talk about a taffy-pull!) It’s plausible, then, that this is the same encounter Eckstine describes, told from Webster’s own point of view, minus the detail that Bird was on tenor.

Did Eckstine, reminiscing in 1954, simply confuse Minton’s with Monroe’s? The context argues against it. In the previous paragraph, he says, “We had about three weeks off to shape this band up, and we were rehearsing every day at Nola’s Studios and going up to Minton’s at night to jam.” But Webster can’t be wrong. Eckstine misremembering the location twelve years later is the least far-fetched way to square both accounts.

Webster’s words suggest that Bird went up to Monroe’s at least once after his gig at the Apollo (compass point 2), and I wouldn’t be surprised if he did so every night. Webster could have gone to Monroe’s every night that week, as well, after his Ellington rehearsals (compass point 3). And, for what it’s worth, Morgenstern claims Webster was there two nights in a row.

What about the goddamn date? I believe that Bird’s first version of “Cherokee” was recorded no earlier than December 1942 and no later than January 21, 1943.

There you have it! No exact date, as promised, just a lot of hemming and hawing, as promised. I also promised a prime suspect, but the question of where is still up in the air.

According to received wisdom, the recording location is Monroe’s, but we can infer from Morgenstern’s words that Newman didn’t note the location on his tape box, and discographies are cautious on this score. “Possibly Clark Monroe’s Uptown House” is as far as they’re willing to go. As mentioned last time, the musicians backing Bird on this track sound nothing like the Monroe’s house band.

One plausible alternative is Smalls Paradise, another Harlem jazz club with a house band, floor shows, jam sessions, and even a regular 6 AM breakfast dance. Did Bird ever play there? Probably. Could this “Cherokee” have been recorded there? Possibly. If you prefer certainty, I can tell you this: We definitely don’t know where it was recorded.

As for the prime suspect, meet Seymour Wyse, a Brit who was a childhood friend of Jack Kerouac, and also a friend of Jerry Newman. In the course of a long interview about Kerouac, Wyse touches on his friendship with Newman:

I attended NYU, studying accountancy. Jack was at Columbia University and I don’t think I saw a lot of him at this time. It was during this period that I used to visit a lot of jazz clubs. Jerry would have been a little bit older than Jack and me. I got a recording machine–a disc recording machine–because I wanted to record some jazz. This would have been about ’41 and there was no such thing as a tape recorder in those days, but you could get a portable disc recording machine, and cut an acetate with a cutting head. When Jerry was doing those recordings at Minton’s, I used to go up there and see him. I was at several of those. Jerry went into the army in ’42. and he was here in England for the D-day landings in 1944. In early ’43 I joined the Canadian Air Force, stationed at Lachine, near Montreal. Then, when I went back to the States I met up with him again, and in ’49 I worked for his record shop which was in Greenwich Village–the Greenwich Music Shop. Then later Jerry formed a record company and I became a partner with him.

As is typical of this whole affair, nothing can be proven. But here we have a man who lived in NYC, owned a disc cutter, wanted to record jazz, and had a high opinion of Bird, saying in the same interview, “With Charlie Parker it was different because he was quite a new thing and had brought about a tremendous change in the music.” He also became Newman’s partner in the record business. It seems entirely plausible to me that a paper-backed disc of Bird playing “Cherokee,” recorded by Wyse in December 1942 or January 1943, would have interested Newman enough for him to dub it onto tape, write little or nothing about its origins on the tape box, and then forget about it, all in keeping with his longstanding indifference to Bird’s playing.

It’s a taffy-free argument.

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Here’s “Cotton Tail” (May 4, 1940):

Here’s “Warming Up a Riff” (November 26, 1945):

Up next in mid-November: Parkeology 039 Buster’s Mood. Was Bird really influenced by Buster Smith?

Webster said he’d come back the next night to make sure he heard what he thought he heard, and Monroe dared him, “Well, if you come back tomorrow I’ll put him in the show, and he’ll be playing CHEROKEE.” If the story is to be believed, and Webster said he did return and heard Parker “stop the place,” then it makes sense that Parker should be playing over a specialty arrangement with the Monroe House Orchestra. –Dan Morgenstern, liner notes Early Bird, Stash Records (1991).

The mysteries surrounding Bird’s earliest version of “Cherokee” are no closer to being solved than they were last time. That’s because Jerry Newman’s involvement was a red herring of blue whale proportions. Unless you’re willing to stretch the facts like taffy, he wasn’t involved at all in the recording of it.

But the fact remains that this “Cherokee” was found in the Jerry Newman Collection after his death, with no accompanying information to speak of. So the question of who recorded it is central to the mystery here, but–spoiler alert!–no solution is forthcoming. We will, however, end up with a lot of circumstantial evidence and a prime suspect.

In the liner notes for Charlie Parker First Recordings, Onyx Records (1974), Morgenstern writes, “According to notations on Newman’s tape boxes it was recorded on a paper disc.” The implication here is that Newman himself didn’t possess the original paper-backed disc. All he had, it seems, was a dub of it on tape. So, in the strictest sense, the “Cherokee” disc doesn’t belong in the Newman Collection at all. He didn’t record it, nor did he possess it, nor did he like Bird’s playing in the first place. Exit Jerry Newman, pursued by a bear.

It was Morgenstern who, unbidden, brought Webster into the story, inviting in more red herrings. While there’s no reason to doubt the veracity of this anecdote, there’s also no reason to believe that the performance that Webster attended was recorded, nor that it took place within the time frame that Webster’s presence suggests.

Based on the existing evidence, the only plausible time Webster could have seen Bird perform at Monroe’s on two consecutive nights would have been between Friday, January 15 and Thursday, January 21, 1943. The Ellington Orchestra was off the road and back in NYC, and Bird was performing with the Earl Hines Orchestra at the Apollo. By January 22, the Hines band was in Baltimore, and they spent the next three months on tour. By January 24, the Ellington band was back on the road, and wouldn’t return to NYC until March 6.

All of this leaves the “Cherokee” recording date still solidly up in the air. What’s more, there doesn’t appear to be any solid proof that it was even recorded at Monroe’s!

Morgenstern says, “If Bird played ‘Cherokee’ in the show at Monroe’s, which had a small house band led by George Treadwell, this meant there had to be a small-group arrangement.”

I didn’t stop to think about it until recently, but that “if” throws everything that follows into doubt. It appears that Morgenstern was simply speculating. Again, just because Webster heard Bird at Monroe’s doesn’t mean this “Cherokee” disc was recorded there. And in a sense, the sound of Morgenstern’s presumed “Monroe’s House Orchestra” is the strongest evidence that it wasn’t recorded at Monroe’s.

In 1949, Bird described the Monroe’s scene to Leonard Feather:

When I came to New York [January 1942] and went to Monroe’s, I began to listen to that real advanced New York style. I think the music of today is a sort of combination of the midwestern beat and the fast New York tempos. At Monroe’s I heard sessions with a pianist named Allen Tinney; I’d listen to trumpet men like Lips Page, Roy, Dizzy and Charlie Shavers outblowing each other all night long. And Don Byas was there, playing everything there was to be played. I heard a trumpet man named Vic Coulsen playing things I’d never heard. Vic had the regular band at Monroe’s, with George Treadwell also on trumpet, and a tenor man named Pritchett. That was the kind of music that caused me to quit McShann and stay in New York.”

The notion that these innovative, forward-looking musicians are the players heard backing up Bird on the “Cherokee” disc defies belief.

It’s plain to see that we’re learning less and less as this investigation goes on.

• This “Cherokee” wasn’t recorded by Jerry Newman

• The Webster anecdote doesn’t have a direct connection

• Morgenstern’s speculation about the house band doesn’t ring true

• Proof that the disc was recorded at Monroe’s doesn’t exist

And that leaves us marooned. All we have now is “Cherokee” on a paper disc and a pistol with one shot. Our best chance of escape lies with the musical evidence. Here’s the recording in question:

This recording’s most striking feature is its primitive recording quality. In short, it just sounds old fashioned, and the lackluster, unswinging arrangement of the melody chorus only adds to the effect.

To defend the unknown pianist, he handles the melody chorus in a minimalist style not unlike Count Basie’s, and he plays some inventive fills. In that sense, he’s somewhat of a modernist, but his oom-pah comping behind Bird’s solo puts Bird in chains. I’m willing to believe that the arrangement called for it, and that the unknown bass player is another victim. During the melody chorus, he provides some walking bass lines in the modernist style, but as soon as Bird’s solo begins, he starts playing doubled notes, regressing to an earlier style. This forms a weird negative synergy with the pianist that further boxes Bird in.

It’s worth noting, however, that Bird is always responsive to his surroundings. He may have been trying to get into some kind of groove with this rhythm section by adapting to these limitations. Fortunately, the horns riff behind Bird’s second chorus, which helps counteract the polka feel. Against this backdrop, his lines regain their characteristic momentum and swing, making them sound more advanced overall.

What I’m driving at is that this “Cherokee,” despite its antiquated vibe, could have been recorded later than is generally assumed, and that’s the case I intend to make here. I’m aware, though, that my argument will be trapped in a hall of mirrors, where assumption is built on assumption.

Comparing Bird’s first version of “Cherokee” with his second version of “Cherokee” (full track below) is a necessary step in the dating process, but it doesn’t provide much direct evidence, in part because this second “Cherokee” has dating problems of its own.

Bird left the Earl Hines Orchestra in August, 1943, and ended up back in Kansas City, where the second “Cherokee” was recorded, making autumn 1943 the generally accepted date. More recently, though, Chuck Haddix has upset the apple cart by proposing a June 1944 date. Haddix alleges Bird was in KC with the Billy Eckstine Orchestra around that time, although this date conflicts with the Leo Parker itinerary.

I believe the musical evidence argues against June 1944. The Tiny Grimes date (September 15, 1944, Savoy) marks the dawning of Bird’s mature style. Aside from minor differences in tone quality, any solo from this date could have been recorded in 1945. Great as the second “Cherokee” is (and it’s a masterpiece), I find it hard to believe that Bird could have advanced that much in the space of three months. Conversely, a June 1944 date would mean these two “Cherokee” versions are separated by roughly two years, equally hard to believe.

The two versions share little vocabulary. One of the joys of Bird’s apprenticeship period is his unfettered spontaneity. At this stage in his development, licks are virtually nonexistent. (For better or worse, this makes the dating process more difficult.)

A couple of overlaps occur in the bridge. This is unsurprising, since Bird fashioned set pieces to navigate those troublesome changes. The first set piece is the “Tea for Two” sequence, which Bird was already using during his time with McShann. Gene Ramey described it this way:

Bird used to sit and try to tell us what he was doing. I am sure that at the time nobody else in the band could play, for example, even the channel to “Cherokee.” So Bird used to play a series of “Tea for Two” phrases against the channel, and, since this was a melody that could be easily remembered, it gave the guys something to play during those bars.

Here’s the “Tea for Two” sequence, first “Cherokee” first, second “Cherokee” second:

The second set piece is actually central to the dating process, but it’s bound up in a tangle of assumptions. It will be examined more closely next time:

There are a few exact matches and near matches:

Other than that, though, the level of melodic invention is so high that every phrase is unique. Both versions find Bird conjuring an endless stream of brand new melodies in the moment. Ultimately, the very fact that they don’t share vocabulary is what ties these two versions together.

When you step back and stop looking for matching phrases, the significance of the first “Cherokee” becomes clear. It documents Bird’s burgeoning skill at spinning out rapid-fire melodies composed entirely of eighth notes, something he’d been working toward ever since “Honey & Body.”

His solo on the McShann version of “Honeysuckle Rose” (full track below) shows he had already achieved this in the context of those particular changes, simple chords in a familiar key:

The “Cherokee” chord changes are much more challenging harmonically, and yet the eighth-note based melodies flow effortlessly from Bird’s horn, with scarcely a quarter note in sight. This suggests that these two versions of “Cherokee” may have been recorded less than a year apart.

What’s that you say? What about the goddamn date?

I was getting to that.

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Here’s Bird’s second “Cherokee,” with Efferge Ware guitar, and “Little Phil” Phillips drums:

And here’s the complete “Honeysuckle Rose,” Jay McShann Orchestra, December 2, 1940:

From a considerably better recorded paper disc in the collection of the late Jerry Newman (although probably not recorded by Newman himself), this is believed to be Bird’s earliest extant performance of the tune he virtually invented modern jazz with. The circumstances as to how this tightly swinging solo concerto, with definite prearranged accompaniment, was recorded are still vague. –Dan Morgenstern

Everyone loves a good mystery, but it’s hard to love a mystery that can’t be solved, such as the exact date of Bird’s first “Cherokee” recording. When the solution is a lot of hemming and hawing, getting there better be half the fun. That’s the hope here, so let’s kick things off by listening to the track in question:

The Who, What, When, Where, and How of this recording are all adrift in a shadowy sea of red herrings. We do have a compass, though, and the argument keeps coming back to these four points:

1. Bird visited New York City in 1939, exact dates unknown. He was there for months, often jamming at Monroe’s, but was back in Kansas City by 1940, where he began working with Jay McShann.

2. Bird returned to New York City with McShann in January 1942. He is presumed absent from NYC in 1940 and 1941.

3. Jerry Newman returned to NYC from Europe on August 14, 1939. He enlisted in the army on December 19, 1941 (shortly after Pearl Harbor) and no Newman recordings have come to light between that date and the end of World War II. (Newman took part in D-Day.)

4. Ben Webster was on the road with Ellington throughout 1941 and 1942, and is therefore presumed absent from New York City, with two known exceptions: February 26, 1942 (Ellington recording session), and March 2, 1942 (non-Ellington gig at Stage Door Canteen).

The opening Morgenstern quote comes from liner notes for the CD release of Early Bird, on Stash Records (February 1991). To some extent, he wrote these new liner notes by cannibalizing his previous liner notes for Onyx 221, Charlie Parker First Recordings, released in May 1974.

Onyx was the first label to issue this “Cherokee” recording, and Morgenstern’s notes from that album lay out the elements of this mystery quite clearly:

The “Cherokee” that starts part two of our Bird trip comes from the Jerry Newman Collection. According to notations on Newman’s tape boxes it was recorded on a paper disc. Newman’s flaw was that he didn’t care for Bird; he never recorded him. He also did not use paper discs. So it’s reasonable to assume that Newman himself did not record “Cherokee.”

Obviously, it’s not from a jam session. There is a formal arrangement, at least a well-rehearsed “head,” for the little band. Producer Don Schlitten, friend and colleague Ira Gitler and other mavens guessed, proposed and argued, but there were no clues other than that “Cherokee” was Bird’s feature number with McShann. This was no clue at all, since neither piano nor band here is in McShann’s sound, style and size.

There was little to go on until Ben Webster posthumously lent a helping hand. In an interview with John Shaw in Jazz Journal, Ben reminisced about his first encounter with Bird. “I first heard Charlie at Monroe’s… There was this guy on the stand blowing weird stuff. It was Charlie. I said to Clark, ‘Is that cat playin’ what I think he’s playin’?’ Clark said yeah… I was feeling pretty fit but I wasn’t sure, I didn’t trust my ears.” Ben said he would return the next night to make sure he’d heard right, and Clark Monroe answered, “Well, if you come back tomorrow I’ll put him in the show, and he’ll be playing “Cherokee!”

Eureka! Here was our clue. If Bird played “Cherokee” in the show at Monroe’s, which had a small house band led by George Treadwell, this meant there had to be a small-group arrangement. And the music on Newman’s disc was no longer a mystery.

Dating the music precisely is impossible, but most likely it stems from the period after Bird left McShann. Though he had frequented Monroe’s earlier, he would not yet have had a special spot in the floor show, complete with arrangement, while a casual visitor. I surmise that it stems from the late summer, early fall of ‘42. The bass and drums, especially the former, give good support, but the piano’s vamping under Bird’s first chorus sounds a bit awkward.

A bit awkward?!? I will take this opportunity to argue that the pianist’s polka-like accompaniment makes Bird’s solo sound less modern than it is, possibly affecting attempts to date it, and the poor audio quality contributes to the same archaic atmosphere. In the unknown pianist’s defense, he handles the bridge of the melody chorus in a spare, Basie-like manner, suggesting that his regressive comping might have been dictated by the arrangement.

In more recent times, some researchers have claimed that the pianist is Jay McShann, which only makes me shake my head in wonder. Morgenstern dismisses this possibility on very solid grounds, and his reasoning is sound in many other respects, but he did make a serious, if understandable, mistake when “surmising” the date himself. Late summer, early fall of ‘42 certainly aligns with Bird’s whereabouts, but runs afoul of compass point 4. As soon as he adds Ben Webster to the story, he invalidates his own surmise.

Morgenstern had no way of knowing Webster was on the road virtually nonstop in ‘42. Webster’s presence in NYC on February 26 and March 2 means it’s not impossible that he heard Bird at Monroe’s after hours. But in Morgenstern’s telling, Webster encounters Bird two nights in a row. Again, not strictly impossible, but it requires stretching the facts like taffy.

It’s time, however, to bring Jerry Newman into the picture.

Newman has two competing claims to fame that tend to cancel each other out. He has the jazz world’s undying gratitude for the live recordings he made at Minton’s Playhouse, and the jazz world’s undying frustration with his dislike of Bird’s playing. He put it this way:

But Parker—I really passed him up. He blew so wild I used to turn off the machine when he started playing.

Newman documented the birth of modern jazz in 1941. Without him, we wouldn’t have the priceless recordings of Charlie Christian live at Minton’s, not to mention Dizzy, Monk, Kenny Clarke, Don Byas, Roy Eldridge, and many others. Oceans of laudatory ink have been spilled about that.

But his other claim to fame followed him like Mary’s lamb. The headline on the November 1, 1952 issue of Melody Maker, a British publication, dubbed him The Man Who Stopped Recording as Bird Began to Blow.

That article contains a lot of information about Minton’s, little of which pertains to Bird, aside from the headline and the above quote. However, an article from Esquire (January 1957) proves to be a holy grail of sorts. In it, Newman talks about his beginnings:

It was 1937, and I was taking a university extension in psychology. We had a lab hour, and people would come in and say strange things so we could study them, and we used to have a mic hidden and record what they said. The guy who ran the machine was a friend of mine, and he taught me how to cut records. In 1939 I bought my first disc cutter, a Wilcox-Gay; then in 1940 I got a Federal. I was nuts about jazz, and I used to take the machine up to Harlem to Minton’s, which was really the birthplace of bebop. I made thousands of hours of records–Charlie Christian, Charlie Parker, lots of others.

The identification and dating of the Wilcox-Gay and Federal disc cutters is the aforementioned holy grail, but Newman’s casual mention of recording Bird at Minton’s is the hammer to the forehead. What?!?

It’s possible that Newman was just trying to avoid another screaming headline, but he’s not necessarily contradicting himself. In the Melody Maker article, he adds:

“I gave Monroe a batch of the Parker stuff I’d taken down and forgot all about it. It was on paper-backed discs and I never took a copy.”

What’s implicit in the “I used to turn off the machine” quote is that Newman encountered Bird on a regular basis. And what’s implicit in the other quotes is that he didn’t always turn off the machine, otherwise he wouldn’t have had a batch of paper-backed discs to give Clark Monroe. The fact that he gave them all away is a measure of his indifference, but it seems he did record Bird after all. (Here’s a question: What became of those discs???)

Newman provides another bit of evidence in the Melody Maker article:

I was in on the earliest days at Minton’s. It started in January ‘41, at the Hotel Cecil on 118th Street. They turned the dining room into a club and built a stage for seven, and a bar.”

If this is true, and it is, Newman couldn’t have recorded Bird at Minton’s, due to compass point 1: Bird was back in Kansas City in 1941. But there’s a discrepancy here, anyway, because Newman says he gave his “batch of Parker stuff” to Clark Monroe. The notion that he would give discs recorded at Minton’s to the owner of Monroe’s is another taffy-pull. So any Newman recordings of Bird were almost certainly made at Monroe’s.

But when? This is where compass points 2 and 3 come into play. The only time Newman could have plausibly encountered Bird on a regular basis was in the final months of 1939, because it’s the only period when they were both in New York City at the same time.

So we can now say with confidence that any recordings of Bird were done on Newman’s first disc cutter, the Wilcox-Gay. (He didn’t buy the Federal until 1940.) This machine had a maximum blank size of ten inches, and a ten-inch blank had a time limit of about three minutes, assuming it was cut at 78 rpm.

Paper-backed blanks wouldn’t have been Newman’s only option, but they were less expensive and he was just getting started. In any case, the fact that he says he gave Monroe “paper-backed discs” confirms that he was using that type, in his early days, anyway.

So to recap:

• Newman says he actually did record Bird.

• “Cherokee” was recorded on a paper-backed disc.

• We are certain that Newman used such discs.

• “Cherokee” is short, 2:49, suggesting it was recorded on a ten-inch disc at 78 rpm, the Wilcox-Gay format.

• It all adds up!

No, it doesn’t. A 1939 recording date is impossible, based on the musical evidence. We know what Bird sounded like in 1940, and “Cherokee” is light years beyond that.

1942 is a plausible recording date musically, but highly implausible in every other respect. If you want to argue that the “Cherokee” in question was recorded by Newman in 1942 (after Bird came back to New York with McShann), you have to assert that Newman, serving in the US Army during wartime, came back to NYC on leave and hauled his old Wilcox-Gay disc cutter up to Monroe’s to record the one musician he specifically made a point of not recording.

It isn’t an impossible argument to make.

How much do you like taffy?

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Many thanks to Mike Parenti and Bill Pauluh for their assistance with this post.

One of Bird’s lesser-known “Cherokee” performances is also one of his greatest. In my opinion, it’s by far the most masterful track recorded during Bird’s time in LA, perhaps because it was early on in his stay, before heroin troubles began to affect his playing. The proposed date, April 1, 1946 isn’t entirely certain, but it’s good enough.

It was an AFRS (Armed Forces Radio Service) Jubilee transcription (No. 186), recorded at NBC’s Radio City West in Hollywood. Bird is backed by the Nat King Cole trio with Buddy Rich, and Ernie “Bubbles” Whitman is the MC. Bird succinctly mocks Whitman’s Uncle Tom persona in three little words. “Cherokee” was part of a medley, but I’ve left out Benny Carter and Wille Smith, with apologies.

[Note: Everything I’ve ever written about Bird, under the pen name youdoernie, can be found at charlieparkercentennial.com]

One prominent critic wrote, “Parker’s version of bebop varies from Dizzy’s in so much as he plays chromatic scales up and down all the keys.” Charlie was to quote this gem for years, often admonishing his sidemen to “watch out for those chromatics.” –Ross Russell, Bird Lives

One of the clearest distinctions between Bird’s early style (1940-43) and his mature style (1944 onward) can be found in his use of scale runs. (I define scale runs as consecutive notes of a scale used in a melodic line.) In Bird’s apprenticeship period, scale runs often spanned an octave or more. By the time he reached his mature style, scale runs generally spanned a fifth.

I’m arguing that Motive 1A, identified last time, allowed Bird to replace these descending scale runs with descending chromatic runs. (When I say chromatic runs, I’m talking about consecutive half steps in a melodic line.) Here’s Motive 1A:

(Bird’s early recordings are few, which makes them easy to pore over, and Remi Bolduc’s transcriptions make it easier still. Anyone can go to YouTube and evaluate the following argument on their own.)

Motive 1A allowed Bird’s lines to descend unbroken without spanning octaves. This made it easier to connect chord tones together, and made his lines more compact in general.

As Ben Webster deduced, five is the magic number. Harmonically, it spans a major third. Rhythmically, it starts and ends on a downbeat. In the case of Webster’s “Cotton Tail” solo, Motive 1A connects the 3rd to the root, but it can also connect the major 7th to the 5th. Both Webster and Bird frequently use it this way. In fact, it’s just as common. Here are three Webster examples:

Webster also uses Motive 1A to connect 9 to flat 7, as does Bird in bar 29 of “Thriving From A Riff” (November 26, 1945):

Scale runs are plentiful in “Honey and Body,” Bird’s first recording, which fades in as he’s heading into the bridge. The first complete phrase consists of a descending G major scale (all names in E-flat). He starts on a high D and descends an octave and a third, ending on a B. That’s ten consecutive scale degrees. Here it is:

In bars 37 & 38, Bird plays nine degrees of A major. In bar 99, he plays nine degrees of G major. In bar 118, he plays ten degrees of G minor. Here they are in order:

Scale runs were also common in Bird’s early solos with Jay McShann, known as the Wichita Transcriptions (November 30 & December 2, 1940).

In bars 11 & 12 of “I Found A New Baby,” he plays ten degrees of D minor. In bars 12 & 13 of “Lady Be Good,” he plays ten degrees of B major. In bars 23 & 24 of “Honeysuckle Rose,” he plays nine degrees of D major. Here they are in order:

Bird made startling progress in the fourteen months between the Wichita Transcriptions and the McShann Savoy broadcast (February 13, 1942), but scale runs didn’t change. On “I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles,” he plays fourteen degrees of Eb major, eleven degrees of F major, and eleven degrees of G minor. On “St. Louis Mood,” he plays nine degrees of Eb major, and thirteen degrees of Bb major. On “Swingmatism” he plays eleven degrees of F minor. Here they are in order:

Motive 1A didn’t spread like wildfire. It appears only occasionally on the Efferge Ware date in late 1943. (I disagree with the June 1944 date proposed by Chuck Haddix.) These four excerpts are from “Body and Soul,” “My Heart Tells Me,” and “I Found a New Baby:”

The Tiny Grimes session on September 15, 1944, marks the end of Bird’s “apprenticeship period,” and the dawning of his mature style. Motive 1A appears with much greater frequency here. Five is still the magic number, although Bird extends it at times. These ten excerpts are from “I’ll Always Love You Just The Same,” “Red Cross,” and “Tiny’s Tempo,” in that order:

Bird’s first recording session as a leader (November 26, 1945) demonstrates that the shift is essentially complete.

Evidence throughout this date shows that scale runs of an octave or more are in decline. Five-note scale runs are becoming the norm. Motive 1A is increasingly common, taking over the structural function that scale runs used to perform.

“Thriving From A Riff” and “Warming Up A Riff” provide much of this evidence.

Motive 1A appears three times in Bird’s 32-bar solo on “Thriving From A Riff,” in bars 3, 12, and 29:

There are only two descending scale runs, nine degrees of G major at bar 36, and a sixteenth note run at bar 44, also nine degrees of G major:

There are three descending five-note scale runs: at bar 5, bars 29 & 30, and bars 37 & 38:

“Warming Up a Riff” is much faster, which means Bird is relying more on his reflexes, and the shift toward Motive 1A is even more pronounced. Bird takes two 64-bar choruses here, with an extra 16 bars out front, making this solo 4.5 times as long as “Thriving From a Riff.” That makes it all the more surprising that there are only three descending scale runs (bars 38, 100, and 102).

There are only three five-note scale runs, as well (bars 5, 54, and 86), also a surprising decline:

But motive 1A is everywhere, as bars 18, 24, 36, 45, 58, 63, 72, 77, 79, 83, 121, and 127 make clear.

I will rest my case here. As of November, 1945, Motive 1A had become a lynchpin in Bird’s vocabulary, replacing long scale runs. As time went on, consecutive half steps in his melodic lines continued to expand, although five remained the norm. The record, as far as I can determine, is eleven, just shy of the entire scale. This excerpt comes from "Donna Lee," (May 8, 1947) bars 37 & 38:

But what about Motive 1B, briefly noted and quickly forgotten?

It may seem an afterthought here, but it also deserves a place in the pantheon of motives, occurring frequently on dominant 7th chords. It appears in bar 32 of “Honey & Body:”

Motive 1B only appears in “Honey & Body” once, but that’s enough to prove it was part of Bird’s vocabulary before he studied Webster’s “Cotton Tail” solo.

Or is it? I don’t relish shooting arrows at my own Achilles heel, but “Cotton Tail” was recorded May 4, 1940, and we don’t know the exact recording date of “Honey & Body.” So it’s possible Bird heard “Cotton Tail” before he recorded “Honey & Body.” And he had plenty of time to study it before the Wichita Transcriptions were recorded (November 30 and December 2, 1940).

But I’m sticking to my guns. It wasn’t so long ago that the handful of McShann studio recordings, with their meager solo space for Bird, were all we had to fill the gap between the Wichita Transcriptions and the Redcross recordings (February 15, 1943). Now we have the miraculous McShann Savoy broadcast.

Freed from the bonds of the recording studio, Bird takes extended solos on four out of the six tunes broadcast that night. Bird’s solo on “I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles” is a straight-up masterpiece, and his other solos aren’t far behind. (All four tracks below.) And none of these state-of-the-art, 1942 solos shows any sign of Webster’s influence. There’s no trace of Motive 1A, Motive 2, or even the growls that became a common effect in Bird’s mature style.

Consequently, I stand by my argument that Bird was influenced by Ben Webster beginning in December 1942, when he switched to tenor and joined the Earl Hines Orchestra. Although Bird was probably aware of “Cotton Tail” when it was released, I believe it took on new meaning as he turned to other tenor players for inspiration and fell under Webster’s spell. Little did he know how crucial this influence would be.

And with that stirring bit of oratory, Ben Webster Month comes to a close. If nothing else, this three-part argument has convinced at least one person: me! Parkeology 036, due out in mid-September, will examine Bird’s first “Cherokee” recording, extending some of the arguments in these August posts.

After all, if you don’t drink your own Kool-Aid, how are you supposed to get anything done?

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Here are the four miraculous tracks from the McShann Savoy broadcast on February 13, 1942. “St. Louis Mood,” “I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles,” “Hootie Blues,” and “Swingmatism” (Bird doesn’t solo on “I Got It Bad” or the sign off theme.)

[Note: Everything I’ve ever written about Bird, under the pen name youdoernie, can be found at charlieparkercentennial.com]

I got word that time that I could be in a jam session with Bird and Diz, and I walked two miles carrying my bass without gloves in ten below zero weather to the Ritz Hotel. It was a fine session. I remember a fellow named Red Cross taped the session. – Oscar Pettiford

Pettiford is referring to the jam session in Chicago on February 15, 1943, recorded by Bob Redcross. Bird switched to tenor when he joined the Earl Hines Orchestra in December 1942, and I’m trying to make the case that he was influenced by Ben Webster at this crucial juncture. Evidence abounds in “Three Guesses,” which bookends “Yardin’ with Yard,” both tracks being “I Got Rhythm” jams.

I’ve already made the argument that Bird adopted a chromatic motive from Webster’s “Cotton Tail” solo that became a fundamental building block in his vocabulary. (When I say chromatic motive, I’m talking about consecutive half steps in a melodic line.) I’ve labeled this Motive 1. Here it is, first Webster, then Bird.

The ultimate point here (don't hold your breath) is that Motive 1 offered Bird a solution to structural problems in his melodic lines, by replacing descending scale runs with descending chromatic runs. This shift took place gradually, between 1943 and 1945, and culminated in his first recording session as a leader, on November 26, 1945.

First things first.

“Three Guesses” is a mess (full track below). Pettiford isn’t playing, the presence of a second tenor player creates a lot of murk, and the guitarist is unclear on the very idea of form.

In a way, though, this is its strength. It seems unlikely that Bird had high expectations for this particular jam, which appears to have put him in a lackadaisical mood. The first minute and a half is so aimless that even Remi Bolduc didn’t transcribe it. And yet, of all the Redcross recordings, it offers the clearest proof of Ben Webster‘s influence.

Near the beginning of “Three Guesses,” after the two-horn noodling has passed, Bird mimics Webster for 45 seconds straight, from :42 to 1:27. These phrases aren’t quotes, so they can’t be linked to specific Webster solos. Here’s the 45 second stretch:

At 1:28, Bird drops his Webster impression and reverts to his own vocabulary. This is where Bolduc begins his transcription:

It's also worth noting that in the first few seconds, before the second tenor player begins noodling, Bird launches the whole affair with a Websteresque opening phrase:

We must now address the elephant in the room: Hawk. On the surface, Webster and Coleman Hawkins sound very much alike. Their differences are as subtle as they are profound. The result is a musical Rorschach test that applies equally to Bird’s mimicry. One discernable difference between the two is that Webster employs growls much more frequently, often as tone color. To my ears, Bird is growling throughout this stretch in the Webster style, but if you think it sounds more like Hawkins, drinks are on me.

It would be easy to go off in all directions here, so I will focus on three excerpts that can be traced directly to Webster. This chromatic motive is very similar to a Webster phrase in “Big Eight Blues” (December 15, 1940). I have transposed Bird’s excerpt to match Webster’s key:

The following three-note motive can be traced to both Webster and Hawkins:

Hawkins uses a three-note motive in the opening phrase in his famous 1939 “Body And Soul:”

Nevertheless, I think Bird is closer in spirit to Webster. Here’s an excerpt from Webster’s “I Surrender Dear,” matched with Bird’s three-note motive (I have again transposed Bird’s excerpt to match Webster’s key):

The third excerpt couldn't be more direct, but it come's from "Yardin' with Yard," not "Three Guesses." It demonstrates that Bird definitely had Webster on the brain. We find Bird quoting “Cotton Tail” behind Billy Eckstine’s trumpet solo, and, as the track trails off, Bird continues on, into the opening notes of Webster’s solo. First Webster, then Bird:

Admittedly, this is more of a paraphrase, suggesting that Bird never learned Webster's solo note-for-note, but he follows it with two more uncanny phrases that are pure Webster. Again, these aren't direct quotes, and that's the point. Bird is evoking Webster’s feeling, not copying his ideas. Here's the whole stretch:

Another example of this is the “Cherokee” recording made at Monroe’s Uptown House. (The accepted date is 1942 but I believe it was recorded significantly later.) I’m certain that Bird got the idea for this sequence from the second bridge of Webster’s “Cotton Tail” solo, despite the fact that they don’t intersect in any way (aside from telltale growls). First Webster, then Bird:

In an odd coincidence, Webster left Ellington and Bird left Hines at almost the same moment, in early August 1943. Just days after leaving, Webster opened with his own quartet at the Three Deuces on 52nd Street. Bird jumped ship in Washington DC and stayed in town for a spell before returning home to Kansas City.

We are fortunate that Webster recorded as he embarked on this new phase in his career, now a star in his own right. The following excerpts come from radio transcriptions made in September 1943 (full tracks below) and demonstrate that chromatic motives continued to play a prominent role in his conception.

I may be exposing my own ignorance here, but I can’t think of any saxophonist of this era who used this type of chromaticism other than Webster.

Motive 2 was mentioned in passing in Parkeology 033, and it’s an equally thought-provoking motive, even if it isn’t as consequential as Motive 1.

Motive 2 comes from Webster’s solo on “Linger Awhile” (November 2, 1940). This quote became another of Bird’s building blocks. He plays it almost exclusively in F concert, as he does here in “Scrapple From The Apple” Take C (Dial November 4, 1947). I’ve transposed it down a whole step to match Webster’s key (Eb). First Webster, then Bird:

There’s no way to prove Bird ever heard Webster’s “Linger Awhile” solo, but there’s also no need, because Motive 2 has another source. It appears in the “Cotton Tail” saxophone soli, likely written by Webster:

Bird rarely plays Motive 2 in B-flat concert, which is surprising, since that’s the original key, but he does so here, on “Anthropology” (Birdland, March 31, 1951):

The following examples, all in F concert, come from “Billie’s Bounce” Take 3 (Savoy November 26, 1945), “Marmaduke” Take 5 (Savoy September 24, 1948), and “Scrapple From The Apple” (Royal Roost February 5, 1949):

In terms of frequency, Motive 2 pales in comparison to Motive 1, but it’s a mainstay nonetheless. More to the point, it helps corroborate Webster’s influence.

But my argument doesn’t end here. At some point between 1943 and 1945, Bird split Motive 1 in two, separating the five descending notes from the three ascending notes. I have labeled these two motives Motive 1A and Motive 1B.

It was in fact Motive 1A that offered Bird the solution to structural problems, independent of Motive 1B, and it turns out that Motive 1B was already present in Bird’s vocabulary, dating back to “Honey & Body.” These matters will be addressed in Part Three.

I warned you not to hold your breath.

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Here's "Three Guesses:"

Here are the eight tracks from the September 1943 transcriptions (in the same order as the excerpts above): “Woke Up Clipped” (Webster),"Teezol” (Webster), “The Horn” (Webster), “Don’t Blame Me,” “I Surrender Dear,” “Tea For Two,” “Dirty Deal” (Webster), and “‘Nuff Said” (Webster).

Personnel: Ben Webster tenor, Hot Lips Page trumpet, Clyde Hart piano, Charlie Dayton bass, Denzil Best drums.

[Note: Everything I’ve ever written about Bird can be found here]

Still, one is brought up short by the realization that a “typical” Parker phrase turns out to be much the same phrase one had heard years before from, say, Ben Webster. The secret is, of course, that Parker inflects, accents, and pronounces that phrase so differently that one simply may not recognize it. – Martin Williams

Williams seems to have picked Ben Webster’s name out of a hat, but the connection might be deeper than he realized. Webster’s chromatic motives may have added a missing component to Bird’s conception in the early 1940s.

When I say chromatic motives, I’m talking about consecutive half steps in a melodic line. By that definition, Bird used few chromatic motives during his period with Jay McShann (1940-42), aside from connecting two diatonic notes together. This began to change in 1943, as evidenced by the Redcross recordings from February 15.

Bird became a tenor player when he joined the Earl Hines Orchestra in December 1942, and he’s playing tenor on these no-fi hotel room recordings. They add a great deal to our understanding of Bird’s development, while also revealing his remarkable grasp of the tenor saxophone tradition. He can sound, at will, exactly like Hawkins, Webster, or Lester.

Webster isn’t remembered as a modern jazz innovator, despite his involvement at Minton’s. This is likely due to bad timing. His melodic and rhythmic advances, different from Hawkins’, gathered steam in the late 1930s and culminated during his stay with Ellington, in the early 40s. This was good timing for Bird, who was at a crucial juncture in his development, but Webster’s contributions were quickly swept downstream by the bebop revolution. What’s more, Lester Young’s ascendance made Webster’s Hawkins-based tone sound outdated, even though his ideas were modern.

“Cotton Tail” (May 4, 1940, full track below) seems to have influenced Bird directly, not just Webster’s 64-bar solo but the saxophone soli, as well, which, as far as anyone can tell, was written by Webster himself. This alone qualifies him as a modernist pioneer.

A great unknown hovers over this thesis: when did Bird first hear “Cotton Tail?” As with all unknowns, we don’t know. He was probably aware of it when it first came out, but it’s likely the recording took on new importance when he began playing tenor. This would explain why Webster’s chromatic motives don’t enter Bird’s vocabulary until 1943.

We know Bird knew “Cotton Tail” (based on “I Got Rhythm”) because he quotes it in its entirety on the Redcross recordings. On “Yardin’ with Yard” (February 15, 1943), he plays it as a background riff behind Billy Eckstine’s (!) trumpet solo, starting at 3:11. He uses the main theme on the A sections and the saxophone soli at the bridge (full track below):

Until recently, I had been out to lunch concerning the “Cotton Tail” recording date, which I vaguely placed around 1943. As a result, I didn’t make much of the chromatic motive in Webster’s solo that became a mainstay of Bird’s vocabulary. In 1943, the zeitgeist was such that I thought Webster might have even picked it up from Bird, at Minton’s or Monroe’s. But the 1940 recording date changes everything. It was a one way street, Webster to Bird.

Here’s Webster’s chromatic motive from his “Cotton Tail” solo (0:58). Henceforth, this phrase will be referred to as Motive 1. (Recording slowed down for clarity).

Bird uses it for the first time (on record) in his solo on “Yardin’ with Yard,” at 1:14 (slowed down for clarity):

It should be noted that certain fundamental building blocks in young Bird’s vocabulary were actually quotes, “Honeysuckle Rose” being the prime example (Parkeology 005). I believe this is also the case here.

Webster’s Motive 1 appears throughout Bird’s career, in multiple keys. A brief survey of 1947 Dial recordings yields examples from “Bongo Bop” Take A (October 28), “Bird Feathers,” and “Klact-oveeseds-tene” Take B (November 4):

Motive 1 is equally common on Bird’s Savoy recordings from September 1948. Here are three examples, from “Barbados” Take 1, “Ah Leu Cha” Take 2 (September 18), and “Perhaps” Take 3 (September 24):

Motive 1 had the greatest impact on Bird, but Webster had many other unique chromatic ideas. His use of such motives developed gradually, but by the time he joined Ellington (1940) they could be found in most solos. Here’s a chronological pastiche, starting with “Congo Brava” (March 1940) and ending with “Main Stem” (June 1942):

One example does not an argument make, but I have a second. Webster plays a phrase in “Linger Awhile” (November 7, 1940) that appears in Bird’s solo on “Scrapple From the Apple” Take C, and in a great many other solos. I have transposed Bird’s phrase down a whole step so it matches Webster’s key:

Henceforth, this phrase will be referred to as Motive 2, but I’m leaving it aside for now.

Bird explicitly acknowledges Webster’s influence himself, in the rather surreal interview with John Fitch on WHDH radio, Boston (June 13, 1953). Armed with a list of inane questions, Fitch (aka McLellan), a goodhearted square, interrogates a very drowsy Bird about the origins of modern jazz.

John Fitch: Whom do you feel were the really important persons, besides yourself, who… started to experiment?

Charlie Parker: Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, Kenny Clarke… It was Charlie Christian… There was Bud Powell, Don Byas, Ben Webster, yours truly.

Note that Bird lists their names together, at the end. In my opinion, he’s acknowledging Webster’s influence on his own conception, as much as on the movement in general.

Those who doubt the Webster connection might argue that Bird was surrounded by influential saxophonists of every description, with Webster somewhere on the outskirts of this throng. What reason would Bird have had to single him out for study? There’s a simple answer to that: they were both born and raised in Kansas City.

Bird was eleven years younger than Webster, so it’s unlikely they ever met in their hometown (no such meetings have been documented). Webster was working locally with Andy Kirk in 1933, but in 1934 he joined Fletcher Henderson’s band and adopted New York City as his home. Bird would have been fourteen then, just getting serious about music.

Despite his departure, Webster was still Kansas City’s native son, and Bird would go on to work with many musicians who knew him and had played with him. This, I believe, drew his attention to Webster’s music, which might not have occurred otherwise.

We know Bird and Webster met in New York City, the only question is when. There are three contradictory anecdotes about their first meeting. The first, proposed date winter/spring 1942, takes place at Monroe’s Uptown House. Webster describes it in an interview with John Shaw:

There was this guy on the stand blowing this weird stuff. It was Charlie. I said to Clark [Monroe] “Is that cat playing what I think he’s playing?” I was feeling pretty fit, but I didn’t trust my ears.

The second anecdote takes place at Minton’s and comes from Billy Eckstine:

Charlie’s up on the stand and he’s wailing the tenor. Ben had never heard Bird, you know, and he says, “What the hell is that up there? Man, is that cat crazy?” And he goes up and snatches the horn out of Bird’s hands, saying, “That horn ain’t supposed to sound that fast.” But that night, Ben walked all over town telling everyone, “Man, I heard a guy—I swear he’s going to make everybody crazy on tenor.”

This couldn’t have happened any earlier than December 1942, when Bird switched to tenor.

In his own account, Webster says nothing about Bird playing tenor. There’s no mention of it in the Les Tomkins interview, either. Webster simply says:

New York was really the place to be, with guys around like Hawk, Don Byas, Chu, Pres, Herschel Evans, Ike Quebec. And I heard Charlie Parker for the first time and that was quite a thrill. This guy scared me to death!

In anecdote three, Jay McShann sows further doubt by claiming that Webster first heard Bird in February 1942, when his orchestra made its debut at the Savoy Ballroom:

When we got to New York, Ben Webster went down and told all the saxophone players down on 52nd Street, he said, “All you guys who think you can play saxophone, you’d better go up there and there’s this little saxophone player up there with Jay McShann’s band, a new band in town from Kansas City. All you guys better go up there and go to school.”

One simple fact clears away all this underbrush: Webster was on the road with the Duke Ellington Orchestra for all of 1941 and 1942, spending almost no time at all in New York City. (See the unimpeachable website The Duke—Where and When.) In 1942, the year these anecdotes purportedly take place, the Ellington band was only in NYC for one day, for a recording session!

Research concerning the Earl Hines Orchestra may not be as ironclad, but the band (with Bird on tenor) apparently rehearsed in New York City throughout December 1942, then played a Christmas Day gig, a New Year’s Eve gig, and a one-week stint at the Apollo Theater, January 15–21, 1943.

Meanwhile, the Ellington Orchestra was wending its way back to New York from Canada, finishing a three-day run at the Stanley Theater, in Utica, NY, on Thursday, January 14. They were off for the following three days, then reconvened at Nola Studios, NYC, on Sunday, January 17, where they rehearsed throughout the following week.

Nothing in either Webster biography suggests that Webster took some kind of hiatus from Ellington in 1942, returning to New York and encountering Bird at Monroe’s. It would seem, then, that he could only have intersected with Bird (on tenor) between Friday, January 15 and Thursday, January 21, 1943. By January 22, the Hines band was in Baltimore, and they spent the next three months on tour.

So Eckstine’s anecdote is more plausible than McShann’s. (McShann, more raconteur than historian, has provided three versions of how he first met Bird.) And it’s at least conceivable that Eckstine was confusing Minton’s with Monroe’s, in which case his recollection wouldn’t necessarily conflict with Webster’s. No point, though, in spinning my wheels here any further.

I don’t know whether or not I’ve drifted off topic, but there’s much more to say about Webster’s influence on Bird that will have to wait. Here’s one more Webster quote, though, that shows he had gotten to know Bird pretty well by 1945.

Bird played in Webster’s band on 52nd Street for a short time that year. Between sets, Bird would take his horn and sit in at other clubs, and if he was having fun he wasn’t overly concerned about making it back for Webster’s next set. Jay McShann dropped by one night to hear Bird, who was nowhere to be seen. He asked Webster if Bird was on the job and Webster replied:

“Yeah, he works for me, but he plays up the street.”

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Here’s “Cotton Tail,” and “Yardin’ with Yard” (Bird quotes Lester’s “Shoeshine Boy” solo at 0:43):

"I put quite a bit of study into the horn, that's true. In fact, the neighbors threatened to ask my mother to move once, when I was living out west. They said I was driving them crazy with the horn. I used to put in at least eleven, from eleven to fifteen hours a day.” –Charlie Parker, Paul Desmond Interview, January 1954

When Bird returned to Kansas City for his father’s funeral (late 1939 or early 1940) he moved back in with his mother. His wife, Rebecca, and his son, Leon, were living nearby, but Bird didn’t reunite with them, instead asking Rebecca for a divorce. He continued living and working in Kansas City, or touring locally, until 1942, when he moved to New York City.

It’s impossible to know whether or not Bird was referencing this period in the quote above. In some ways, though, this period is more plausible than earlier periods, when he was committed to marriage and fatherhood.

Bird had returned to Kansas City from New York with his “Cherokee” revelation top of mind, and it’s safe to assume he practiced a great deal when he wasn’t working. When you compare “Honey & Body” with the Wichita Transcriptions, only months apart, the rate of progress is striking. By the end of 1940, all the fundamental elements of his mature style are in place.

But on “Honey & Body” (full track and partial transcription below), Bird was still in the thick of developing the eighth-note based vocabulary that would enable syncopation at a deeper level. Lester had clearly pointed the way, but that still left Bird with an intricate puzzle to solve.

Picking up where I left off, below are the last three bars of the first bridge (bars 6, 7 & 8). On balance, this phrase can be considered mature vocabulary.

The first six notes in bar 6 are commonplace in Bird's mature style:

The figure in bars 7 and 8 is a prototype, so to speak, of a mature figure from "Scrapple From The Apple" Take B (Dial 11/4/47) that hinges on the #5.

As Bird enters the last A, he seems to fall back on old vocabulary, playing three simple, unsyncopated one-bar phrases (bars 9, 10 & 11). He creates tension by moving up a half step to Eb major, an early experiment in chromaticism, but one too simplistic to survive the transition to his mature style.

A much more sophisticated version of the concept can be found in the last A of "Scrapple From The Apple" Take C, in essentially the same place. Bird moves up a half step to Eb major, but here he plays a melodic fragment from the "Honeysuckle Rose" A section, a favorite formulation in his mature style.

Bars 12 and 13 qualify as new vocabulary, given the burst of 8th notes. The highlighted notes outline a cell (5, b3, 2, R.) that Bird uses to imply IV minor, in this case G minor. IV minor is an essential component in Bird's vocabulary, inherited from Lester, the jazz tradition in general, and harmony itself.

Bird seems to be struggling to fit this cell into the melody rhythmically. Starting it on an upbeat causes problems. The G should naturally resolve to F#, but it seems he’s forced to place an E in between, diluting the resolution.

Bird plays a similar idea in bar 32 (leading into the bridge of the second chorus). This time, the cell falls on the downbeat, and the G resolves directly to F#. Astute observers will notice that bar 32 only contains three beats. This brings up a topic much too involved to address here.

In bars 78 & 79 (the last two bars of the last A of his second full chorus), Bird seems to combine both previous attempts. Giving the D a longer value makes the Bb feel like the beginning of a three-note cell starting on a downbeat. This more definitive outline of IV minor makes the E sound more musical.

Bird closes out the “Honey” portion of the track with the IV minor cell in its strongest iteration (bar 110):

By the time of the Wichita Transcriptions, Bird is able to integrate the IV minor cell with ease into his uptempo solo on "Honeysuckle Rose" (December 2, 1940). He deploys it on the downbeat within of a rapid stream of 8th notes.

IV minor is fully in evidence in Bird's mature style, including in his compositions. "Marmaduke" implies IV minor twice, in bars 4 and 6. Some would argue that the Bb in bar 4 sounds as the b9 of the A7, but I hear that bar as Gmaj7 going to Gm(maj7). The Bb in bar 6 can also be looked at as a b9, but to me those four notes clearly outline G minor. And who says it can't be both?

There’s a larger lesson to be drawn from Bird’s trial-and-error use of this particular cell.

Bird’s innovations were largely a matter of rhythm, phrasing, and articulation, which is why his “Cherokee” revelation, confined to harmony, may not have precipitated a radical change in style. But rhythm, harmony, and melody can be impossible to disentangle.

An eighth-note-based vocabulary presents intrinsic challenges. Quarter notes, and longer note values, are essential to melodic structure. Creating a melody that consists entirely of eighth notes requires a new conception of melody itself. This is the task Bird took on.

In Bird’s eighth note lines, rhythm has to be expressed through shape, articulation, and dynamics. Eighth-note triplets are another important tool. The shape of the line is rendered by changes in melodic direction, but these changes also create the rhythmic structure, so the two become inseparable.

All of which goes to say that Bird’s “Cherokee” revelation, while primarily harmonic, would have had a big impact melodically, which in turn would have produced new rhythmic innovations. “Honey and Body” documents Bird deep in the process of working all this out.

The idea that the “Honeysuckle Rose” solo below could predate “Honey and Body” is unthinkable, so the only question is how much time separates the two. Given the degree of progress, I believe “Honey and Body” was recorded in early 1940, shortly after Bird’s return to Kansas City. Even Bird would have needed months to put his “Cherokee” revelation into practice.

He had to take it one fifteen-hour day at a time.

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Here’s the full “Honeysuckle Rose” solo" (12/2/40):

Here’s the full audio of “Honey & Body” with a transcription of the “Honeysuckle Rose” portion:

Bird in Kansas City circa 1952

[This is an introduction to the fifty-two weekly postings, written throughout 2020, which can be found at charlieparkercentennial.com.]

Charlie Parker’s hundredth birthday has come and gone, and what have we learned? Various recordings were reissued, obligatory articles were written, and a graphic novel was published. But the standard narrative didn’t change. We were still told that Bird’s life was a tragic, chaotic waste that resulted, inexplicably, in supremely beautiful music.

This narrative never sat well with me, and, in the course of writing these weekly essays, I became increasingly dismissive of it. Thanks to Bird’s many biographers, the basic facts are beyond dispute. It’s the interpretation that could stand more scrutiny. To deny the connection between the way Bird lived and the music he created is to marginalize his accomplishments, which were a profound intellectual achievement.

As fate would have it, Bird’s centennial year played out against the backdrop of the opioid crisis and the Black Lives Matter movement. Addiction and racism are the cornerstones of Bird’s life story, yet the standard narrative still made its rounds unquestioned. Now that America has admitted that racism is alive and well and that addictions require compassion, this should turn Bird’s story on its head.

Who is qualified to rewrite the standard narrative? Not I, that much is obvious. But I’m willing to suggest that it should be rewritten, and that the first step is to read old biographies with new eyes. This is the theme that takes shape over the course of these fifty-two essays.

The essays began as promotional blurbs for weekly live performances of Bird’s music, in honor of his centennial year. These ended abruptly when the pandemic hit. The essays, however, continued, expanding in the process. Each weekly essay drew on an event in Bird’s life that occurred on or around that date. By luck of the draw, some periods received more attention than others, with Bird’s early life on the losing end, not least because few exact dates can be pinpointed.

I recently returned to the earliest essays, intending to expand them, but that didn’t go well, so I decided to write this introductory essay instead. I hope to provide an overview of Bird’s life, with an emphasis on his early years, at the same time introducing his many biographers--the good, the bad, and the ugly. Fear not! The weekly essays are shorter by far. But even a flyover requires persistence, because Bird crammed a great deal of living into thirty-four years. What’s more, his story increases in complexity as you expunge all the doomed-artist cliches and cartoon racial stereotypes.

So pack a lunch and let’s get started.

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Some months ago, I had an unsettling experience while looking up Bird on YouTube. I made the mistake of reading the comments, in which some innocent Bird enthusiast became the target of sarcasm, mockery, and naked rage. In the midst of this melee, someone wrote a comment that struck a nerve with me. It was something like, “You all think you know who Charlie Parker was, and you think he was just like you. But you don’t really know who he was, and he wasn’t just like you, so why don’t you all just stop pretending you know what you’re talking about.”

This sentiment wasn’t new to me. I had directed it at myself more than once. To find it being wielded like a cudgel, however, caused me to reflect. I will skip straight to my conclusions.

The vast majority of jazz critics who have written about Bird never met him and have based their opinions on second-hand knowledge. Nevertheless, they all seem comfortable passing judgement on his life. This is intrinsically patronizing, and racial bias can’t be removed from the equation.

Nobody knew Charlie Parker, including his contemporaries. He was a complex and private man who left us few explanations. Even the judgements of his wives can’t be considered definitive. So I hereby issue this proclamation to anyone who loves Bird and his music: as long as your theories fit the established facts, your conclusions about who he was are just as valid as anyone else’s, including--and especially--those of his biographers.

If you don’t know where to start, look up Bird’s 1954 radio interview with Paul Desmond and listen to the sound of his voice and the way he expresses himself. That alone is more revealing than all the biographies put together.

Then listen to “Embraceable You.”

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Charlie Parker was born in Kansas City. This is the central fact of his early life and musical development. The details of his childhood, fascinating though they may be, don’t really matter. If you sift through them looking for portents of genius, you will come up empty handed. It’s safe to say his genius was innate and would have manifested itself anywhere, but it’s the culture of Kansas City that shaped Bird’s life and music, more specifically, the African American culture. That culture, in turn, was shaped by American racism, and this is the other central fact of Bird’s life. This racism is woven so thoroughly into the fabric that it almost vanishes. If you attempted to point out every instance, there’d be no room to talk about anything else.

Bird was born Charles Parker, Jr. on August 29th, 1920. Not much is known about Charles Parker, Sr.’s life. In his younger years, he was an entertainer, touring the country with Ringling Brothers and performing on the vaudeville circuit. He was apparently quite intelligent, and, according to Bird, “spoke two or three languages.” He met and married Bird’s mother, Adaline (Addie) Bayley in Kansas City, bringing with him a son, John, from a previous liaison with an Italian woman. Addie described her husband this way: “He could cook anything. He could dance. He was a good scholar. He could play the piano. But he was a drunkard.” In the early years of their marriage, Charles Sr. worked on the railroad lines as a waiter, which kept him away from home much of the time. He eventually left the railroads and took a job as a janitor. Addie tried her best to help him control his drinking but it was no use. His alcoholism destroyed their marriage and he gradually abandoned his family. In 1940, the woman Charles Sr. had been living with, who may or may not have been a prostitute, stabbed him to death during a drunken quarrel.

Biographers relate these facts without mention of racism, yet racism is the canvas upon which they are painted. It may be cold comfort, but Charles Sr. did pass on his intelligence and talents to Charles Jr. (In addition to Bird’s other gifts, he was reportedly a good cook, especially with leftovers, and also a good dancer.) And the fact remains that without Charles Parker Sr. there would have been no Charles Parker Jr. In that regard, his life was hugely consequential.

Bird developed a sudden interest in music at age thirteen. It’s a great blessing that Lincoln High School (segregated) had an exemplary music program, run by bandmaster Alonzo Lewis. Bird started on baritone horn and clarinet, but alto saxophone soon became his infatuation. Although he had been a star pupil in grade school, due in part to his photographic memory, once his attention turned to music, academics lost all meaning.

By this time, the family had moved across the river, from Kansas City, Kansas, to Kansas City, Missouri. Absent any financial support from Charles Sr., Addie added a second job, cleaning the Western Union telegraph offices on the night shift, leaving Bird unattended. He now lived within walking distance of 18th and Vine and began roaming the streets after dark. Kansas City was an infinitely corrupt town whose entertainment district was immune to both Prohibition and the Great Depression. It churned out its illicit profits twenty-four hours a day, with full employment for musicians. Saxophonists based in Kansas City at the time included Ben Webster, Hershel Evans, and Lester Young. Bird heard them in person, first from outside the clubs in the alleyways, and then, when he was older, from a few feet away.

Surprisingly, Bird showed little promise as a saxophonist, aside from sheer determination. At age fifteen, though, he stopped attending high school altogether in order to focus on music, leaving Alonzo Lewis behind and moving out into the real world of the Kansas City jazz scene. This is the period of his intense friendship with trombonist Robert Simpson. They were comrades in a band led by pianist Lawrence Keyes, known as the Deans of Swing, which grew out of the Lincoln High School music program. (Some biographers give the name as the Ten Chords of Rhythm.) Bird and Robert went everywhere together, practiced together, searched for gigs together, sat in at jam sessions together. Bird was still an inept saxophonist and endured many musical humiliations. Ultimately, these only made him more determined, and he had Simpson’s support to cushion the blows.

There are conflicting stories as to how Robert Simpson died. The most theatrical goes as follows: after Bird had been fired by a local club owner, Simpson left his sick bed and travelled by streetcar to beg the club owner to take Bird back. As a result, he died of pneumonia shortly afterward. Other accounts have Simpson dying on the operating table sometime later. The exact date remains unknown. In any event, his death is the defining trauma in Bird’s early life. A few months before his own death, he spoke of it to Ahmed Basheer, who recalled:

When we started back to New York after the gig, Bird turned to me in the car and said, “Basheer, I don’t let anyone get too close to me, even you.” I said, “Why?” He said, “Once in Kansas City I had a friend I liked very much, and a sorrowful thing happened.” I said, “What?” figuring the guy must have cheated or betrayed him. Bird said, “He died.”

For some reason, biographers don’t give this much weight when psychoanalyzing Bird. Contemporary accounts, however, make clear the impact of Simpson’s death. Lawrence Keyes remembered it this way:

The name of the third fellow was Robert Simpson and he played trombone remarkably. To say that Charlie admired him is perhaps too mild. Charlie worshipped him and was in his company a great deal. Suddenly at twenty-one Robert Simpson died, of what we were never sure. A heart ailment was thought to be the cause. That tore Charlie up. He and Charlie took to each other, and Charlie had a lot of trouble getting over that. A lot of trouble.

By most accounts, Simpson died in 1936, around the time that Bird began using narcotics. Pianist George Wallington, among the first modernists on the 52nd Street scene, spoke about Bird’s reaction to the death of Clyde Hart, an important transitional pianist, in 1945. Bird had recorded with Hart twice that year.

When Clyde Hart died, Bird felt that his friends were getting too worked up over an inevitable part of existence. “Why should we feel sorry? Let’s not get emotional about it.” This was just Bird’s armor.

Wallington also provided insight into Bird’s attitudes concerning racism.

Bird seemed to avoid the topic of race. About the South, he said, “The only way to get around down there is with a gun. Why should anyone live down there when there’s a place like New York?” Statements like those were rare. Usually, when someone brought up the topic, Bird would smile and say, “Why discuss these things? Let’s get high.”

Taken together, these remarks suggest that narcotics were Bird’s shield against the twin realities of death and racism, neither of which he could control or mitigate.

A third event coincides with Simpson’s death and Bird’s first use of narcotics. On July 25th, 1936, he married Rebecca Ruffin, his high school sweetheart. Bird still showed no signs of genius, although he was managing to find steady work. Few people saw any real potential in him, but Bird sensed his own growing mastery and his ambition knew no bounds.

And so, in 1936, marriage, death, destiny, and addiction all arrived at Bird’s door.

A month after his wedding day, he turned sixteen.

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According to the standard narrative, Bird’s life was tragically cut short. His death at thirty-four has given every jazz critic a shocking statistic to build upon, but they fail to acknowledge what is strikingly obvious: the events of Bird’s life are so compressed in time that he was essentially living at twice the ordinary speed. If the dictum “the flame that burns twice as bright burns half as long” applies to anyone, it applies to Charlie Parker.

Also according to the standard narrative, Bird’s use of heroin, alcohol, and amphetamines was self-destructive, driven by his “demons.” There’s no question that he wore out every organ in his body by overindulging in every form of pleasure, but this was largely hedonistic. None of it was done with the intention of destroying himself, except, perhaps, in his final months.

Furthermore, his substance abuse, like it or not, was an integral part of his creative process. Viewed from the outside, Bird led a hand-to-mouth existence throughout his late teens and early twenties, characterized by aimless wandering, excessive drug use, and extreme unreliability. And yet, by the time this period came to an end, he had invented a new musical language that drew deeply from existing traditions and renewed them in ways that propelled jazz into the future.

To assert he did this through some form of unfathomable genius is to rob him of all he accomplished through the power of his intellect and the strength of his spirit.

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By his sixteenth birthday, Bird had already arrived at a phase of life that most people reach when they’re nearing thirty, to wit: married and established in his profession. Bird’s transformation from laughing stock to hometown hero happened around this time and was also characteristically compressed. Many eyewitnesses claim it happened over the course of a single summer, although a definitive chronology of Bird’s teenage years is maddeningly out of reach. Rather than trekking through the weeds, let’s go with the traditional version.

Bird travelled to Eldon, Missouri, on a number of occasions, to work at Musser’s Ozark Tavern. Clarence Musser, a short, volatile man with reputed underworld connections in Kansas City, bought an old gas station and the parcel of land that came with it, and built a resort there. It opened on Thanksgiving Day, 1936, and it’s assumed that Bird was en route to play the opening when he was involved in a serious accident. The car in which he was travelling lost control on a patch of ice and rolled over a number of times. The bass player was killed, and Bird broke two ribs and fractured his spine. He was bedridden for months while Addie and Rebecca nursed him back to health. Morphine was given freely for pain, possibly in place of proper medical treatment, and this played some role in his growing addiction to narcotics, although it probably wasn’t the starting point.

Subsequent automobile trips to Eldon were uneventful, and Bird played a long engagement at Musser’s in the summer of 1937, as a member of George E. Lee’s band. For at least three months, he was free to woodshed to his heart’s content, and this may be one of the periods he was referencing when he said, “I used to put in at least eleven, eleven to fifteen hours a day.” He brought with him Count Basie records featuring Lester Young and memorized Lester’s solos. Guitarist Effrege Ware tutored Bird in advanced harmony. At summer’s end, Bird returned to Kansas City transformed.

Bird’s deficiencies around 1936 are well documented. Kansas City bandleader Oliver Todd put it more bluntly than most:

His playing at the time was lousy. Lousy! We used to make fun of him.

Bassist Gene Ramey, one of Bird’s oldest friends, was more tactful:

Bird wasn’t doing anything, musically speaking, at that period. In fact, he was the saddest thing in the band, and the other members gave him something of a hard time.

Both vividly recall Bird’s 1937 return from the Ozarks.

Ramey:

He lost his Sweet Lucy sound, which is like a combination of a man talking and drinking wine at the same time. His style had completely changed. He became the darling of K.C.

Oliver Todd:

He played a melody down just perfect. Then he got a-loose [improvised] and tears came streamin’ down my face. He looked at me, said “What are you cryin’ for?” I said, “I seen a miracle.” And I mean it was a miracle. He showed you what study will do for you. He went down to the Ozarks and came back swingin’. He was righteous!

The transformed Charlie Parker was suddenly in demand, and the fall of 1937 marks the beginning of his “apprenticeship period.” For the next few years, he gained experience working for all manner of bandleaders. An accurate chronology is a pipe dream, but the order doesn’t much matter. Many associations were brief, often ending with Bird being fired for unreliability (and being immediately hired by somebody else), but two were of exceptional importance: for a time, alto saxophonist Buster Smith became his mentor and father figure, and he worked for pianist Jay McShann off-and-on until 1942, when the McShann Orchestra made its triumphant debut at the Savoy Ballroom. At the end of that engagement, Bird jumped ship.

From that day forward, New York City would be his adopted home.

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Bird was seventeen years old when Rebecca gave birth to their first and only child, Leon Francis, on January 10th, 1938. (Some biographers give his name as Francis Leon.) Although Bird bonded with his infant son, he was already outgrowing his marriage, and his musical ambitions conflicted with fatherhood in every way.

It’s not unfair to say that Bird gradually abandoned his family, just as his own father had, but the circumstances were different. He was genuinely in love when he married Rebecca, and his desire for a family was sincere. We perceive Bird’s life as predetermined, but he couldn’t see his own future. Getting married and starting a family both made sense at the time, when his musical destiny was far from certain. It’s impossible to know when he recognized his own genius, but he must have had some sense of it by the time Leon was born, and it must have come as a surprise.

When he requested a divorce In 1940 (at the age of twenty), Bird asked Rebecca to free him so he could “become a great musician.” If it seemed like a flimsy pretext at the time, he did, in fact, do exactly that. That doesn’t lessen the fact that Leon grew up without a father.

Not much is known about Leon’s life, but I happened across a surprising 1959 article published in Jet magazine that, in the space of two paragraphs, gives us a much clearer sense of Leon than any Bird biography. The article deals with the battle for Bird’s estate, and at the end the writers turn their attention to Leon, twenty-one at the time of publication.

Probably the most confused of the litigants is Leon Parker, a pre-law student at Lincoln (Mo.) University and an Air Force veteran. Like all of the litigants, he has no anger and naturally wants anything due him. But he seemed more inclined to talk about the man who was his father than anything else. The antithesis of his fabled father, Leon, a non-smoker and non-drinker, said: “Even if he were not my father, I would have to say he was the greatest jazzman who ever lived. I was a child when I heard his Laura, but I understood everything he was saying. It was as if I had a built-in understanding. But I never wanted to be a professional musician because I feared I would never be accepted because of him. I only saw him twice in my life and was always sorry I could never be around him. I gave up trying to play alto at 15.“

Whatever the outcome of the court battle for the Bird’s estate, Bird, unlike most of the dead, can return again. For while Leon will not admit it, his mother Rebecca insists: “Leon not only walks, talks, smiles, eats like his father, when he plays the alto, his hands move with the same lightning, he plays with the same fire and has the same sound.“

The caption that accompanies Leon’s picture states: “Leon Parker says he wants to make his contribution in law.” But his brief obituary in the Kansas City Star (June 12th, 2004) reads as follows:

Parker graduated from Lincoln University in Jefferson City and the Kansas City Business College. He was a licensed barber by trade and was CEO of his company, Three Sisters Inc. Parker served in the Air Force.

It would seem, then, that he ended up a barber, not a lawyer. Does this indicate that his life was as conscribed by racism as that of his father or grandfather? Let’s hope not.

The obituary continues:

He is survived by his wife, Wanda Parker, a son, Bryan Parker, and two daughters, Kristal Parker and Korey Parker, four grandchildren and one great-grandchild.

In her only interview, Addie related a conversation she had with Bird about his children, during which he said, “Mama, after I’m gone, the Parkers will still live.”

Leon was seventeen years old when Bird died, the same age Bird was when Leon was born. It’s unlikely he was aware of his father’s wishes, but he fulfilled them nonetheless.

It was as if he had a built-in understanding.

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The most detailed accounts of Bird’s teenage years come to us through biographers Gary Giddins and Stanley Crouch, both of whom relied heavily on Rebecca’s recollections. In the acknowledgements to Celebrating Bird: the Triumph of Charlie Parker, Giddins’ 1987 biography, the author writes:

My first debt is to Stanley Crouch, friend and colleague, who has been working since 1982 on an exhaustive study of Parker’s life and art. In what was surely an unusual if not unprecedented act of scholarly comradeship, Stanley made all of his research available to me so that I could “get it right.“ His extensive interviews with Rebecca Parker Davis convinced me that she knew the story I wanted to tell.

The title of Giddins’ book is a bit perplexing, because there isn’t a whole lot of triumph to be found. It’s essentially the same narrative that Ross Russell had sensationalized, stripped of outright fabrication and dialed back a few notches. I suppose this passes for celebration, if your standards aren’t too high, but it was far from an enlightened reassessment. As a matter of fact, Giddins robs Bird of his accomplishments in broad daylight, on a crowded street! The very last paragraph reads:

As with Mozart, the facts of Charlie Parker’s life make little sense because they fail to explain his music. Perhaps his life is what his music overcame. And overcomes.

Yeah, yeah, tell it to the judge.

Crouch gets much credit for recognizing Rebecca as a valuable source and doing the legwork to track her down, but he tossed her story into his biographical stewpot and let it simmer for another couple of decades. Giddins ran with it, presenting her version of events without any mention of corroboration. Suspect or not, Rebecca’s recollections contributed much of value, and she had certainly been overlooked by previous biographers, such as they were.

British jazz critic Max Harrison gets the prize for earliest biography, publishing his synopsis of Bird’s life and music in 1960. This seventy-four page narrative was just one book in a series called Kings of Jazz, which only increases its resemblance to the Gospel of Matthew. Harrison lays out an unadorned timeline that documents where Bird went and what he did, with relatively little attention to Bird’s personal life and addictions. There’s a lot to be said for this, although Harrison’s assessment of Bird’s personality is bizarre. He paints him as pathologically isolated from all those around him, due to an unspecified mental illness that worsened over time. He’s entitled to his opinion, but he withholds exculpatory evidence: not only is Rebecca’s name nowhere to be found, he makes no mention of Bird’s other three wives, either (aside from one fleeting reference to Chan). To be fair, the treasure trove of information we possess today didn’t exist at the time Harrison was writing. He constructed the basic framework of Bird’s life story from scratch, and certainly deserves credit for that.

Robert Reisner’s book, Bird: The Legend of Charlie Parker, came next. This 1962 collection of firsthand accounts was never intended as a biography, and, as the title warned, didn’t even aspire to veracity. Why Reisner failed to solicit a remembrance from Rebecca is unknown. It would appear that he travelled to Kansas City to conduct interviews, but Rebecca was long gone by then, having remarried and moved to Detroit. In general, though, the book’s spiritual home is New York City, and, with so much material close at hand, Reisner may have lacked the impetus to seek her out.

The next stop is Ross Russell’s Bird Lives, published in 1973. This exceedingly irresponsible book not only twisted the truth, it drove a stake through its heart. In recounting Bird’s early years, he is so preoccupied conjuring up fictional characters and events that he gets Rebecca’s last name wrong. Introducing her as Rebecca Ruffing, he proceeds to dismiss her in a paragraph that brims with sexist/racist cliches and adds nothing to our knowledge. Regrettably, Bird Lives remains the most widely read of all Bird biographies, and Russell’s portrait of a contemptible man who made sublime music is now so embedded in popular culture that it’s impossible to pry loose.

Eleven years of silence followed Bird Lives, until Brian Priestley spoke up from across the Atlantic. Titled simply Charlie Parker, his 1984 biography was part of the Jazz Masters series, a set of miniaturized hardcovers whose size belied their quality, which was impressive in a reserved British way. (Priestley would update, expand, and rename his book in 2005, when it returned, much larger and thicker, as Chasin’ The Bird.)

Much to his credit, Priestley seems to have ignored Russell entirely, except when it comes to Rebecca. Like Harrison, he was in no position to locate Rebecca and interview her, so he adopts Russell’s dismissive attitude and leaves it at that. On the whole, his narrative is reasonably balanced, and yet the first sentence of the last chapter throws it completely off kilter. He laments “the rootless confusion of Charlie Parker’s private life and the waste of his undoubted intellect.” First of all, whose private life are we judging Bird’s against? Secondly, and more grievously, the claim that he wasted his intellect implies that his accomplishments sprang from some non-intellectual source. This is dangerous territory indeed.

The 1987 release of Giddins’ Celebrating Bird was done in conjunction with a documentary of the same name, and this one-two punch caused a minor sensation in jazz circles. Lawrence O. Koch’s biography, Yardbird Suite, was published a year later. This must have been an unfortunate coincidence, because it can’t have been good for sales. But Koch’s book is an extraordinary feat of scholarship, one that required listening to Bird’s entire output, reviewing each track individually, and transcribing a multitude of musical examples. If the biographical side is undernourished, it’s clearly a tradeoff Koch intended to make. It’s no surprise that he has little to say about Rebecca. He must have been in the throes of finishing his own book when Giddins’ came out, too far along to rewrite his opening chapters.

Yardbird Suite raised the bar. The four previous biographies had been aimed squarely at the general public, with no attempts made at serious musicology. Koch’s book seemed to be aimed at jazz musicians, also not great for sales, but it helped usher in a new era. The next biography, Carl Woideck’s 1996 Charlie Parker: His Music and Life, was close to Koch’s in design and depth of scholarship. Woideck incorporates Rebecca’s story into the long opening chapter, but his tight focus on Bird’s musical development deemphasizes it.

Woideck’s book is a masterful achievement, and I mean no disrespect as I snap at his heels, but his preoccupation with Bird’s addictions is judgemental in an oddly dispassionate way. They form a running subplot, dryly noted whenever the opportunity presents itself. He makes no secret of his feeling that Bird failed to build on his initial accomplishments due to his addictions, and he makes a convincing case. All I can say is this: how much more should we reasonably expect of Bird?

The new millennium brought us Chasin’ the Bird in 2005, but, as noted above, that was old wine in sheep’s clothing. 2013, however, made up for lost time by bringing us two Bird biographies. Redundancy hovered like a spectre, but the books proved to be opposites.

Bird: the Life and Music of Charlie Parker, by Chuck Haddix, is the best general biography we are likely to get. In addition to synthesizing all the available facts into a flowing (and accurate) narrative, Haddix’s extensive research produced fascinating new details and upended received wisdom. He gives Rebecca’s story its due, although it doesn’t appear he made much effort to vet it, a missed opportunity, to be sure. Haddix’s tone is matter-of-fact, and he draws the line at ascribing internal thoughts, a technique that was flagrantly exploited by Russell, and is alarmingly present in Crouch’s book, albeit for nobler purposes. Like Woideck, Haddix seldom turns down an opportunity to make note of Bird’s addictions, but he refrains from explicitly passing judgement.

Stanley Crouch’s Kansas City Lightning, was long overdue in at least two senses: it took thirty years to write, and Crouch is the first African American author to tackle Bird’s life. Why this is so I wouldn’t presume to guess, but we at last have a Charlie Parker connected to the African-American culture of Kansas City. Crouch, however, doesn’t stop there. He diverts from the narrative whenever the mood strikes, giving us mini-biographies of important Kansas City musicians and guided tours through African-American history and sociology. At times, you have to consult the dust jacket to make sure you’re reading a book about Charlie Parker. As a result, Crouch only makes it to 1942. A second volume was planned, but his untimely death, on September 16th, 2020, casts doubt on that prospect.

If you weed out all the digressions, Kansas City Lightning is more a love story than anything else. Crouch, it would seem, encouraged Rebecca to pour out every detail of every memory, then tracked down her sisters and asked the same of them. We now know everything we will ever need to know about Bird’s first marriage, except, of course, Bird’s side of the story. Crouch seems to take everything Rebecca said as gospel, as did Giddins. My concern is that this creates the illusion of corroboration where none exists, heightened by the fact that the books were published twenty-five years apart. At this point, however, Rebecca’s portrait of Bird is just as ingrained in the jazz world’s imagination as Ross Russell’s.

At least she loved him.

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The McShann Orchestra’s success at the Savoy Ballroom allowed them to establish a home base in New York City, but they still had to make their living on the road. Bird was weary of that life, which had recently included an arrest and beating one night in Mississippi, for smoking a cigarette on a screen porch, in violation of the Blacks-only curfew. And he was even wearier of the big band environment, with its constraints on spontaneity and freedom. His “apprenticeship period” had long since expired, and he now surpassed everyone in McShann’s band, both technically and conceptually. There was no future for him back in Kansas City, which had been cleansed of all corruption by the late ‘30s. Above all else, he had discovered kindred spirits in Harlem, at the after-hours jam sessions at Minton’s and Monroe’s. All this led Bird to choose New York City as his adopted home. As he put it:

When I came to New York and went to Monroe’s, I began to listen to that real advanced New York style. I’d listen to trumpet men like Lips Page, Roy, Dizzy and Charlie Shavers outblowing each other all night long. And Don Byas was there, playing everything there was to be played. That was the kind of music that caused me to quit McShann and stay in New York.

Bird was always modest about his own contributions, and it was certainly a two-way street, but it’s hard to overstate the impact his playing had at that exact moment. Bird doesn’t mention Minton’s, but the house band there included Thelonious Monk and Kenny Clarke, with Dizzy an unofficial member, as well. The modernists on the Harlem scene had gathered together the components of a new style but were still in the process of assembling them. Swing had run its course, something thrilling was taking shape, but no one was sure exactly how it was supposed to sound. Then an obscure territory band swept into the Savoy, with a prophet in its saxophone section. Bird’s personal style catalyzed the entire movement. Equally important, the scene at Minton’s and Monroe’s gave him a context for his own continuing development. He was no longer alone in his quest.

He was, however, unemployed. He couldn’t even look for work, because the musician’s union enforced a strict three-month waiting period for newcomers. As a result, he was trying to survive on his cut of the jam session tip jars. He had no fixed address, no idea where his next meal was coming from, no idea what tomorrow would bring. And yet this is how he described these months, in his 1954 radio interview with Paul Desmond:

Those were the, what you might call, good old days. Gay youth, lack of funds. There was nothing to do but play, and we had a lot of fun trying to play. I did. Plenty of jam sessions, meant much late hours, pretty good food, nice clean living, you know? But basically speaking, much poverty.

There is an understated joy in Bird’s description of his life in late 1942. The act of playing was clearly a transcendent experience, where all cares dissolved into the ever-present Now. For Bird, literally nothing else mattered, and it wouldn’t be surprising if he found the exploitation of this spiritual pursuit offensive. This would go some way in explaining his unreliability, which wasn’t much of a sin, if it was even a sin at all.

All the hyperbole from jazz critics about chaos and erratic behavior really boils down to one simple fact: Bird didn’t play unless he felt like it. That’s it. This was the source of all his difficulties.

Perhaps we’ve finally reached the point, in 2021, when it’s clear that the real sin was the persecution Bird had to contend with as a result. In the 1940s and 50s, a Black man who only played when he felt like playing was flaunting his freedom in a way that provoked outrage in White authority figures. We should start giving Bird the benefit of the doubt in these situations, which are without number.

While we’re at it, we should acknowledge that Bird’s addictions were in no way a matter of depravity, and that much of his “bad behavior” was a result of heroin’s illegality and the lengths he had to go to in order to procure it and pay for it. Compassion toward heroin addicts never gained much traction until White people began dying in large numbers. We should start applying some of that compassion to Bird retroactively. His addictions were an untreated illness, not the measure of his worth. All jazz critics, to varying degrees, have forced Bird’s complex and nuanced personality into the pigeon hole marked heroin addict. This is risky business, because the issue of drug abuse is an unguarded doorway through which racial bias slips unnoticed.

Bird’s biographers, with the exception of Stanley Crouch, were all White, as are virtually all the jazz critics who have ever written about him. It isn’t necessary to make accusations when assessing the racial bias in their writings. Any White person capable of reflection has recently come to realize just how much unconscious bias we harbor. There isn’t much we can do about it, other than make a fresh start.

The point here, once again, is that times have changed, and the standard narrative must change with them.

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I will now pick up the pace by zooming out, in the process neglecting, among many things, the remaining three of Bird’s four wives. I apologize for this Harrisonesque behavior.

In desperate straits financially, Bird couldn’t escape the tyranny of big bands right away. Friends helped him land a spot playing tenor in the Earl Hines Orchestra. There was a bright silver lining to this, in that the band contained a cadre of modernists. Bird cemented his relationship with Dizzy during this time, and the following year they transitioned together into the Billy Eckstine Orchestra, packed with even more modernists.

The Eckstine Orchestra broke up in 1944, and soon the modernists were infiltrating 52nd Street. The more open-minded swing stars began hiring them as sidemen, such as Tiny Grimes, with whom Bird made his first small band recordings. In 1945, Dizzy opened at the Three Deuces with the definitive all-modern quintet, Bird sharing the front line, and they were active in the recording studio, as well, together and separately.

Bird made his first recordings as a leader in November, employing the nineteen-year-old Miles Davis, then traveled with Dizzy to Los Angeles in December, for an eight-week engagement at Billy Berg’s. When their run ended in early February, 1946, the band returned to New York minus Bird, who stayed on in LA, possibly to break with Dizzy.

Things went well in California for a time. Bird led a band at the Finale Club, signed a recording contract with Ross Russell, owner of Dial Records, and made his second date as a leader, which produced excellent music. But work and heroin were both scarce in LA, and Bird soon discovered just how addicted he had become. He coped with withdrawal by substituting alcohol, which was both ineffectual and debilitating. Despite the heroic efforts of Howard McGhee, Bird’s health deteriorated rapidly.

Fearing his only recording artist was reaching the point of no return, Russell rushed to record him a second time, which resulted in the infamous July 29th, 1946 recording session that produced “Lover Man.” Bird was arrested that night outside his hotel, naked and disoriented, in a state of acute withdrawal. He spent the next six months at Camarillo State Mental Hospital, where he recovered from his addictions, gained some weight, and emerged in good health.

Bird returned to New York City in April, 1947, and set about forming what became known as his classic quintet, which included Miles Davis and Max Roach. He soon resumed his hedonistic ways, although it isn’t entirely clear when or if he became fully re-addicted to heroin. He may have used alcohol to ward this off, a disastrous strategy. But the recordings he made with his working quintet for Dial and Savoy are brilliant without exception, and are the high-water mark of his recorded legacy.

As the decade came to a close, Bird signed a deal with Norman Granz on the Verve (Clef/Mercury) label. Their association soon resulted in the “Charlie Parker with Strings” recordings, panned by critics but an enduring commercial success. Granz, however, for reasons unknown, was disinclined to record Bird’s working quintet. This had negative consequences in the long run, and may be why Bird’s Dial and Savoy recordings are widely considered superior.

When Bird made his return from California in 1947, he was little more than a cult figure. Less than three years later, he reached the pinnacle of his fame, which had spread worldwide. This highpoint was tacitly acknowledged with the opening of Birdland, a jazz club named in his honor, on December 15th, 1949.

To say this ascent happened at twice the ordinary speed doesn’t even come close, and his time at the top was so fleeting as to be a cruel joke. His descent was more drawn out, perhaps, depending on when you mark its beginning, but it was a plummet straight into hell.

The loss of his cabaret card was the most conspicuous turning point. Bird spent a fair amount of time outwitting the vice squad, but he eventually got busted in 1951. He was fortunate to draw a lenient judge and received a suspended sentence, but the NYPD twisted the knife by pulling his cabaret card, without which he couldn’t perform in New York City nightclubs. By this time, Bird was doing his best to settle down and raise a family, and regular employment at Birdland was providing the necessary stability. The powers-that-be yanked that out from under him, punishing his wife and children in the process. Bird was forced back out on the road, which he loathed, and he deadened his despondency with booze, an unavoidable temptation on the nightclub circuit. This was the beginning of the end.

Meanwhile, all was not well creatively. Granz did a great many things to help a great many musicians, and he was loyal to Bird to the bitter end, but their musical association was a comedy of errors, without the comedy. Bird envisioned a grand fusion of jazz and classical music, something like what became known decades later as Third Stream. What he got instead was a dispiriting parade of white elephants, doomed by Granz’s choice of formats, arrangers, and personnel. As all this was coming to naught, Bird’s working quintet quietly ceased to exist. Lacking this fundamental source of inspiration, his artistic decline began in earnest.

His physical decline was also well underway, and it began to compromise his playing. He had been suffering from painful peptic ulcers since the late forties, brought on by his fondness for straight spirits. Now doctors began treating him for heart problems, liver problems were indicated, and he was gaining weight at an alarming rate. On any given night, he could still astonish, and even hint at new breakthroughs, but there were also nights when he seemed drained of all strength and inspiration.

There is no doubt whatsoever that Bird’s health problems were directly related to his overconsumption of absolutely everything. If there’s a corollary to “twice the ordinary speed,” it would be “ten times the ordinary amount.”

Many quotes attributed to Bird that can’t be verified, but this one comes directly from pianist Walter Bishop, Jr., who worked closely with him. On more than one occasion, Bird told him:

The greatest thing a man can do is find self-satisfaction. If it makes you happy to eat that glass, well, eat it.

I wouldn’t rest my case on this statement alone, but it’s certainly evidence that Bird sought gratification, not annihilation. Perhaps it slipped his mind, but Bird makes no mention of demons.

Another reputable source who didn’t get the memo on demons was Kenny Dorham, who observed:

Bird was a real happy person, and it never seemed like he had any acute traumatic grievances. He knew our society wasn’t right and he would talk about it sometimes. His thing was like he’d just get high and blank that other part out. I guess he saw it wasn’t going to get together in his lifetime.

As the 50s progressed, there was more and more to blank out. No one knows when Bird came to the realization that he would be confined to nightclubs for the rest of his life, but it must have sickened him. His final years were clouded by protracted legal disputes with a variety of club owners and managers who fired him and/or refused to pay him, in response to his outrageous (to them) behavior (showing up late).

Biographers present these incidents as evidence of Bird’s growing mental instability. I see them as defiance born of hurt and frustration. How would you feel if you were one of the highest-ranking geniuses of 20th Century music, condemned by racism to the lowest rung of the showbiz ladder, to serve at the pleasure of eels and sharks?

I will take the word of Teddy Reig, Savoy Records’ ursine A&R man, over that of any biographer. He summed up Bird this way:

He was an angel. That man was so abused that anything he did was excusable.

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Biographers feed on the grisly details of Bird’s final months, treating them as a morality play, when in fact they were very much an anomaly. I prefer instead to zoom out even further.

On March 6th, 1954, Bird’s two-year-old daughter died from undiagnosed cystic fibrosis, sequestered in an oxygen tent, while he was in California, sequestered on a calamitous gig. He had been struggling with alcoholism for quite some time, and his marriage had already lost its footing. His baby daughter’s death brought his whole world crashing down. The depression that followed was so severe that Bird sought psychiatric help at Bellevue Hospital, where shock treatments were the only item on the menu. His depression went untreated, his drinking continued, his marriage collapsed, and he lived out his remaining days on the streets of Greenwich Village, essentially homeless. He died on March 12th, 1955.

Lobar pneumonia was listed as the cause of death, but it was thirty-four years of passionate, headlong living that had brought his body to its final collapse.

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I have gone on far too long, but I hope this introduction succeeds in laying out a basic chronology, because the weekly essays jump back and forth in time. Again, they are much, much shorter, and needn’t be read in any particular order, which is their main virtue.

If you want to truly celebrate the triumph of Charlie Parker, it isn’t complicated. Seek out his music for its unsurpassed beauty, which was his ultimate goal, and ignore all those who present it as anything else.

Bird catalyzed a once-in-a-lifetime revolution that transformed and enriched jazz on every level, at the same time gazing far into the future and pointing the way ahead. That was his destiny, he fulfilled it with grace, style, and drugs, and he departed when his work was done.

Why must everyone make it into a tragedy?

John Purcell

The Lester Young Band, 1941, Kelly's Stables, NYC

Is there any point in asking a question that can never be answered? The question in question is this: why did Lester Young’s style change suddenly and dramatically in 1942? It can never be answered because Lester never addressed it directly, leaving only hints, and few of those.

Absent definitive answers, all I have to offer is the story of my attempts to understand this stylistic change. Whatever value this may have rests on the fact that I’ve been chewing over the evidence for a long, long time.

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Why did Lester Young’s style change suddenly and dramatically in 1942?

In recent times, biographers have failed to tackle this question or even raise it. In one regard, this is an improvement, because the rote answer given by jazz critics for decades has always been wrong. Lester’s wartime persecution at the hands of the United States Army had nothing to do with it.

Simplistic answers are made easier by a clear dividing line. Lester left the Count Basie Orchestra on December 13th, 1940, and his studio recordings sputtered to a halt on April 3rd, 1941. When the silence broke, on July 15th, 1942, Lester’s style had changed completely.

Or had it? The change is surprisingly difficult to quantify. Analysis of notes on the page wouldn’t reveal any substantial harmonic or rhythmic differences. Comparisons of phrasing and articulation reveal no radical alterations. And yet the overall effect is so strikingly different that some listeners and critics dismiss everything Lester did after 1941.

The possible reasons behind Lester’s stylistic change are equally difficult to quantify. If there are any answers at all, they exist only in the aggregate, with no single factor of paramount importance.

For simplicity’s sake, I will refer to Lester’s early work as 30s Lester and the period after his stylistic change as 40s Lester. But I don’t want to oversimplify these terms. 30s Lester was by no means all of a piece. His style was evolving throughout the 1930s, right up to the 1941 dividing line.

(Note: any reference to the Basie years means 1936 through 1940.)

What’s more, there’s every reason to believe that Lester had gone through one or two mature styles prior to his first recordings, which were made at age 27. What Lester sounded like in his formative years will never be known, barring a discovery on the order of the Dead Sea scrolls. Continued evolution is also quite apparent in 40s Lester, and another stylistic change takes place in 50s Lester.

Most importantly, though, this is the way Lester viewed his own development, as expressed emphatically and profanely in an interview given shortly before his death, in 1959:

So I’ve developed my saxophone to play it, to make it sound just like a alto, make it sound like a tenor, to make it sound like a bass, and everything, and I’m not through working on it yet. That’s why they get all trapped up, they go, “Goddamn, I never heard him play like this!” That’s the way I want things! That’s modern, dig? Fuck what you played back in forty-nine, what the fuck you gonna play today?

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I discovered jazz in high school through my stepfather’s collection of 78s, starting with Benny Goodman. As I wandered unguided, fortune led me to Lester’s recordings with Billie Holiday. I had never heard anything more beautiful in all my life. I quickly sought out his Basie recordings, which were equally beautiful in different ways.

In the age of vinyl, the cutout bin was a valuable resource, and I was willing to bet a couple of bucks on a Lester Young album. That’s when I was confronted with 50s Lester, through a random live bootleg. For me, the difference was stark.

Everything about 30s Lester was superhuman: the originality, the spontaneity, the drive, the swing, the perfection. And, above all else, the sound, as pure and as luminescent as moonlight.

50s Lester was painfully mortal, struggling with intonation and execution and breath support, moonlight replaced by fog, playing to a cluster of obnoxious drunks and one mad whistler. Everything about it seemed sad, and it left me open to the received wisdom that 30s Lester was the peak, and that all that followed was a drawn-out decline and a tragic end.

And yet something kept bringing me back to that record. For all its infirmities, Lester’s playing was compelling in its logic and feeling. He didn’t seem to be talking about himself or expressing everyday emotions. He seemed to be talking about life, in all its mystery and complexity. It was beautiful, but it was a sad kind of beauty, and I would only visit 50s Lester once in a while.

After all, why spend time there when 30s Lester delivered a jolt of pure joy and inspiration in every solo, from the opening bars of Shoe Shine Boy (November 9th, 1936) to the closing bars of Broadway (November 19th, 1040)? There was so much vitality to explore in that four-year span that listening to 50s Lester felt like visiting a dying friend.

Shoe Shine Boy November 9th, 1936

Broadway November 19th, 1940

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When Lester says he made his saxophone sound like an alto, this is presumably a description of his sound during the Basie years. Other musicians even used the term “alto tone” to describe Lester’s sound, and not always as a compliment. Billie Holiday reported that Lester was insecure about his tone and needed her reassurance. She also reported the following exchange between Lester and fellow tenor saxophonist Herschel Evans, a Coleman Hawkins disciple:

Herschel: Why don’t you go buy an alto, man? You only got an alto tone.

Lester (tapping his forehead): There’s things going on up here, man. Some of you guys are all belly.

During his stint with Fletcher Henderson in 1934, where he took over Hawkins’ chair, Lester’s sound was rejected out of hand by the entire band, which wounded him deeply. For his part, he rejected the idea that he should sound like anybody other than himself. Always soft spoken, he phrased it as a question: “Why should I blow like someone else?”

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In time, having worn the grooves off of every 30s record I could find, I decided to explore Lester’s later work. I had been marinating myself in Bird, hence I was familiar with some 40s Lester through Jazz at the Philharmonic (JATP), so I started there.

As an impressionable teen, I had read Bird Lives, Ross Russell’s reprehensible Charlie Parker biography, swallowing whole its unforgivable lies. This is where I first heard the trope that Lester’s wartime traumas caused his change in style. Russell has the nerve to plant this misconception inside Bird’s thoughts, an appalling fabrication among many.

The setting is the JATP concert at Philharmonic Hall in Los Angeles, held on January 28th, 1946. It’s certainly true that Lester had recently been released after ten months in an Army detention barracks in the Deep South, but the truth ends there. Russell has Bird listening from the wings with increasing dismay as he discovers that his childhood idol is now a shattered man whose playing is just short of pathetic.

Regrettably, this affected my own interpretation of Lester’s playing. I heard what Russell had told me to hear: Lester’s sound had lost the purity of his Basie years; his sweeping lines had been hobbled; his kinetic sprinting had been reduced to dolorous wandering. Not as sad as 50s Lester, maybe, but no source of inspiration, either. More regrettably, this conception of 40s Lester clouded my judgment for decades.

I can’t blame Russell entirely, or myself, for that matter. Even more enlightened jazz critics hold that 40s Lester wasn’t the same person as 30s Lester. If he no longer felt the joy so evident in his Basie years, they argue, then small wonder the joy went out of his music in the 40s. We are advised to take consolation in the melancholy of his ballad playing, the only change considered an improvement.

In light of all this, I set out to answer two questions: why did Lester leave Basie, and what happened during his fifteen month absence from the recording studio?

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Lester lived by a gentleman’s code, it would seem, that precluded speaking ill of others. On the subject of why he left Basie, his lips were sealed, his most direct answer being, “That’s some deep shit you’re asking me now.”

But possible reasons abound. The band was going through a rough patch in terms of management and touring schedules, and personal tensions between band members were high. Lester had also been refused a raise, despite being the undisputed star of the band. And the nature of the music itself was changing, consigning him to shorter and shorter solos. He failed to show up for a recording session on December 13th, 1940, leading to his dismissal, and just like that his Basie days were over.

Lester’s first attempt at bandleading got off to a good start. He formed his own six-piece group and took up residence at the prestigious Kelly’s Stables, replacing, ironically, Coleman Hawkins. Just a few weeks into the gig, though, Lester had a run-in with one of the waiters that led to an ugly exchange of words. Racism was a factor, and Lester, deeply insulted, refused to play there anymore.

The band made one studio recording of limited scope in March 1941, backing up vocalist Una Mae Carlisle, and Lester was also hired for a session with Billie Holiday. On April 3rd, he recorded four tunes with a pickup group billed as Sam Price and his Texas Blusicians, and then recording work dried up for good.

With no manager and no business skills of his own, Lester had to disband his group. He fell back on playing for tips in Harlem, at Minton’s and Monroe’s Uptown House. In May, he moved to Los Angeles to work for his younger brother Lee, an excellent drummer and capable businessman who had the bandleading skills Lester lacked.

Given all that, it’s not unreasonable to view Lester’s decision to leave Basie as a disaster, and his move to Los Angeles as a form of exile.

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It’s only natural, I suppose, that I would look at Lester’s life through the lens of my own experience. In my twenties, I overestimated my own independence a number of times. Believing I needed no one, I pulled up stakes and moved to new places, giving no thought to whom or what I was leaving behind. The immediate result was depression, and eventually I figured out that removing myself from my social structure wasn’t such a great idea.

These experiences shaped my working hypothesis. Was Lester’s melancholy a matter of clinical depression? Did he underestimate how much he needed the structure of the Basie band to maintain his exuberant attitude toward life?

Since the mid-30s, the Basie band had been Lester’s home and family, more or less literally. They accepted his eccentricities and deeply respected his playing, which wasn’t necessarily true of the world at large, including many jazz musicians. He was a genius, well ahead of his time, for which there is always a price to be paid, and his feelings were easily damaged.

I could picture Lester deeply depressed in LA, exiled from the Basie band and the hip New York jazz scene, his radical style incomprehensible to not-so-hip West Coast audiences, surviving on charity from his brother, forced to insert himself through nepotism into an inferior band that likely resented the intrusion.

It seemed like a sound hypothesis.

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Lee Young’s Esquires of Rhythm already had a steady gig before Lester arrived in May 1941. Billy Berg operated a series of LA nightclubs throughout the 40s, rolling with the punches in an unstable business. Lee was working at the Club Capri when Lester first joined. That shut down for reasons unknown, but Berg soon opened a new club, the Trouville, and immediately rehired Lee’s group, now known as the Lee and Lester Young Band. After that came the Swing Club, and then he opened yet another club, Billy Berg’s, where Bird and Diz debuted their radical music in December 1945.

Due to union rules, there was a waiting period before Lester could join as a full member of the Esquires of Rhythm. Until then, he could only play three tunes per set, and did so standing on the floor in front of the band, as he was prohibited from playing on the bandstand. He spent his considerable downtime seated on a milk crate backstage, sipping straight spirits from the bottle and playing a card game called “tonk.”

Lee already had a tenor player in the band before Lester joined, Hubert “Bumps” Myers, and he kept Bumps on, so the group had two tenors. By all accounts, Bumps could really play, and he was a hometown hero in LA. Unsurprisingly, he played very much in the Hawkins style, so Lester was once again being judged against the Hawkins model. That in itself must have been disheartening, without Bumps being declared the winner by audiences and critics alike.

In May, shortly after the band moved to the Trouville, Billie Holiday came west and sang with them for two months. How this affected Lester is impossible to know, but at the very least she must have been a reminder of better times, when fortune smiled and an exciting future beckoned. Times when he was seldom seated on milk crates, getting drunk and waiting to play.

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This brings us to the doorstep of the July 15, 1942 recording date.

Dave Gelly’s biography, Lester Young, published in the UK in 1984, has much to recommend it, despite some inaccuracies. He grapples directly with the change in Lester’s sound, which he calls “profound and disturbing.” He describes it in detail:

[Lester] plays with a kind of wistful absent-mindedness quite unlike the energetic, youthful sound which had popped like a cork out of the Basie ensemble. The new tone is heavier, with a certain amount of edge, and the articulation is not quite so sharp. Along with this comes a kind of reflective diffidence in phrasing and far less of the long, flowing line which had been Lester’s most notable attribute in the thirties.

Gelly goes on to search for practical and physical reasons for this change and finds no obvious suspects. He does, however, note a change in mouthpieces, from the metal Otto Link of the Basie years, to a Brilhart Ebolin.

Gelly’s book was the only Lester biography I owned for many years, and there is no question that it colored my perceptions, especially in regard to the July ‘42 recording session. Gelly told me what I was supposed to hear, so I heard it, and it’s difficult to start over with a clean slate. I can’t get past my initial perception of a feeble sound, lackluster lines, and an underlying melancholy devoid of inspiration.

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The Lee and Lester Young Band became quite a success in LA, which led to a booking in New York City, at the Café Society Downtown, where they opened on September 1st, 1942. The band was a hit, and the original one-month engagement was extended time and again.

Lester had returned from exile with a splash, but the gig came to an abrupt end when Lee and Lester’s father, Willis Young, died, on February 6th, 1943. Their stepmother, Sarah, followed him two weeks later.

Lester had suffered a great deal of loss during this period: the loss of his social structure in the Basie band; the loss of his first gig as a bandleader and the band that went with it; the loss of recording sessions; and now the most irrevocable loss of all.

Before I got the dates straight, I thought that Lester’s father and stepmother had died before the July ‘42 recording session, which would have strengthened my hypothesis. Since their deaths occurred six months afterwards, they clearly played no role. But the death of Herschel Evans probably did.

Herschel, who was Lester’s bandmate, close friend, and musical twin, died of a heart attack on February 9th, 1939. This seems to have been an emotional turning point for Lester, the beginning of his dissatisfaction with his surroundings, which may have served as a constant reminder of this loss. Jo Jones reports that after Herschel’s death, Lester kept his hat and coat under his music stand, ready to bolt the moment the impulse struck. Sometimes they would have to grab him by his coat tails and pull him back down onto his seat.

At this point, my hypothesis seemed to be coming together. I felt ready to make my case.

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My hypothesis ran as follows:

In the three-year period from 1939 to 1942, Lester Young experienced changes, setbacks, and traumas that brought about episodes of clinical depression. As a result, the joy and vitality that characterized his early playing style was replaced by a profound melancholy, and his playing thereafter lacked the inspiration, creativity, and brilliance of his early work.

Between early 1939 and late 1940, the Basie band encountered difficulties and underwent changes that bruised Lester’s sensitive nature, forcing him to leave. Quitting the band meant leaving behind a social structure that had provided much-needed emotional support, keeping Lester’s hypersensitivity in check and allowing him to fully experience the joy his music so vividly conveyed.

In leaving, Lester seriously overestimated his abilities as a bandleader and businessman. Fate had given him a golden opportunity in replacing Coleman Hawkins at Kelly’s Stables, but his hypersensitivity to racism brought that engagement to a sudden end. It soon became clear that he lacked the interpersonal skills and business acumen to find work elsewhere, and this forced him to disband his group.

The depression that might have resulted from leaving Basie had been held at bay by the excitement of forming a new band. Now, with no band, no work, and no recording contracts, depression descended in full, robbing him of whatever resilience he might have otherwise possessed. Incapable of decisive action, he was reduced to playing for tips at Harlem jam sessions.

Lester could see only one way out of this crisis: he turned to his younger brother Lee for help. The two were not particularly close, the age difference was significant, and they were opposites in personality. Lee was a respected drummer but by no means the genius that Lester was. Turning to him for work was humbling at best, and a measure of Lester’s diminished sense of self-worth.

Lester hadn’t lived in New York City for very long, but he thrived on its music scene, and he would adopt it as his home in later years. Now he was forced to leave it for Los Angeles, in many respects New York’s opposite, not least because West Coast audiences and musicians lagged behind in their acceptance of new trends. Lester’s style wasn’t fully accepted even in New York.

One of Lester’s frustrations in the Basie band had been the increasing lack of solo space. As a bandleader, he had been able (briefly) to give himself as much solo space as he pleased. Now, he was a sideman again, and a redundant one at that, given that Bumps Myers had stayed on. Having two tenor players in the band also affected the amount of solo space, and the waiting period, as dispiriting as it was absurd, robbed him of even more.

Inevitably, Lester’s personal style was met with incomprehension. That was depressing enough, without the nightly popularity contest with Bumps Myers to drive home the rejection. The only thing audiences wanted to hear from Lester, it seems, were ballads.

Lester was not known as a drinker in his Basie days, but now, a prophet without honor, he began self-medicating with hard liquor, the worst possible remedy for depression, starting down the road toward the alcoholism that would kill him at age 49.

It was under these conditions that Lester limped into the July 15th, 1942 recording date, a wounded man groping his way through the fog of depression, unable to recreate by half the life-affirming playing of his glory days, which had ended only two years earlier.

It was a sound hypothesis. It only had one flaw: it was wrong.

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Lester may have been absent from the studio for 15 months, but live recordings have surfaced that fill in this gap in tantalizing ways. I had no idea they existed until relatively recently, and they blow my hypothesis out of the water.

On one hand, their existence makes it even harder to understand why recent biographers gloss over Lester’s stylistic change. On the other, the recordings reveal a continuity to this change that makes it considerably less striking.

First things first. We now have a handful of live recordings of the Lee and Lester Young Band, from ‘41 and ‘42, and Lester is playing his ass off! Furthermore, he seems to be the driving force behind the band.

It’s worth noting that there isn’t a lot of evidence here. These airchecks are short, three-minute songs, with a sound quality that ranges from just okay to voyage-to-the-bottom-of-the-sea. Nevertheless, it’s clear that Lester’s sound is as powerful as ever.

Benny’s Bugle, an early aircheck, is definitely from the Club Capri era, as stated at the end of the broadcast. I’m disappointed that there are no solos from Bumps Myers to be heard here, but the head is played in unison by all three horns (two tenors and trumpet) plus guitar, and displays the band’s forceful sound. It’s possible this track was captured during the waiting period, making it one of Lester’s three featured tunes per set. Tightly executed ensemble passages alternate with wide open spaces, and Lester gobbles up everything.

Benny’s Bugle December 2nd, 1941

But it’s later broadcasts from the Trouville that were the death knell for my hypothesis. In addition to a single number, Frolic Sam, from May 6th, 1942, Lester also solos on four tunes from a June 1st, 1942, aircheck. The momentum he generated in his Basie years is still in evidence, albeit in an earthier form. The notion that he could have lost this ability somehow between June 1st and July 15th is just silly.

Frolic Sam May 6th, 1942

The sound quality is wretched on the Trouville broadcast, but you can still get a clear sense of how dynamic the group was. Its seven members manage to invoke the sound of an entire big band. Apparently Gerald Wilson and Billy Strayhorn did some arranging for the group, and the quality is certainly up to that level. As to Lester’s tone, a surfeit of surface noise makes it difficult to tell whether or not he has changed mouthpieces. He still sounds like 30s Lester in some ways, but differences are clear.

These differences didn’t appear out of the blue. In his final recording session with the Count Basie Orchestra, which produced Broadway, we can discern the changes that had taken place gradually during his tenure. His sound has grown darker, his range has skewed lower, and his phrasing has shifted toward the back of the beat. These are the foremost characteristics of 40s Lester, so it’s important to note that these changes were underway while he was still with Basie.

In a 1950 article by Leonard Feather, Lester offered his own description of this shift toward the back of the beat. The subject under discussion was the birth of modern jazz in the early 40s, and Lester called the shift: “a lag-along style where you relax instead of hitting everything on the nose.” He said this in reference to Charlie Christian and Bird, but he seemed to be speaking about himself, as well.

The three studio dates Lester made before moving to LA document his post-Basie sound, as do other airchecks. The recording session that best captured this sensuous tone was the March 10th, 1941 date with vocalist Una Mae Carlisle, which produced Beautiful Eyes. Lester couldn’t be more languorous, having checked all rhythmic drive at the door. Pure, concentrated beauty is the goal, and his Beautiful Eyes solo represents the zenith in that regard.

Beautiful Eyes March 10th, 1941

A close second would be his All Of Me solo from the March 21st date with Billie. Airchecks from his Kelly’s Stables group also capture this serenely magnificent sound, so rich you could eat it with a spoon.

All Of Me March 21st, 1941

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If Lester cultivated the alto sound he refers to in the 1930s, it stands to reason that he cultivated the tenor sound in the 1940s. As noted above, it’s surprisingly difficult to quantify the changes in style on a rhythmic and harmonic level. The change is in Lester’s overall sound. It’s almost as though he’s playing a different instrument, and in a sense he is, because he has, I believe, consciously transitioned from his “alto sound” to his “tenor sound,” which, among other things, placed a greater emphasis on the low end of his range.

The first studio recording Lester made upon his return from LA was a Dicky Wells session on December 21st, 1943, and he’s on fire from beginning to end. There’s a conceptual throughline that connects this date to the Trouville airchecks and reveals how anomalous the July 15th, 1942 date really was.

The key difference on July 15th was the format: a drummerless trio. The other two musicians, pianist Nat King Cole, and bassist Red Callender, had to hold the time together without benefit of percussion. As a result, the time was pliable, which had a profound effect on the feeling of the date. The hushed surroundings also affected the character of Lester’s tone, which is delicate to the point of fragility. This isn’t just a question of volume. The 1938 Kansas City Six date was equally quiet, and yet his tone there was supernatural in its fullness.

In my own mind, I am supremely confident that Lester is using a different mouthpiece on July 15th. I’m also willing to propose that the change happened shortly beforehand. Dave Gelly documents the switch from Otto Link to Brilhart Ebolin around this time, and notes that Lester also changed saxophones, from a Conn to a Selmer, but he considers the impact on Lester’s sound negligible:

So, apart from some possible minor effect brought about by switching instrument and mouthpiece, we can rule out a purely mechanical explanation.

Then, in the following paragraph, he eloquently describes the mysterious nature of tone production on the saxophone, a description seemly at odds with the above conclusion:

The [mouthpiece] goes inside the player’s mouth, not far, but it is enough to establish a mysterious intimacy. What goes on inside there? Once the jaws close and the lips form an airtight seal, the sliver of cane and wedge of metal or plastic become a temporary part of the human physiognomy. The diaphragm pushes the lungs, air is expelled, the reed vibrates and its movement resounds in the teeth, the mouth cavity, the intricate labyrinth of sinuses. In that secret place, the saxophone player makes his sound.

It’s safe to say that switching mouthpieces is how Lester changed his tone. This, however, doesn’t get us any closer to why.

Furthermore, it’s difficult to pinpoint exactly when Lester made the switch. The photographic evidence is inconclusive. Sometime in 1943, the Link disappears, never to return, replaced by a Brilhart or something similar in appearance. But it’s possible Lester tried other mouthpieces during this critical period, or went back and forth from Link to Brilhart, or even switched between different Links.

I struggle to maintain my confidence about July 15th in the face of one of the most famous of all Lester photographs. It was taken in the fall of 1942, during the Café Society gig, and shows him still playing a Link!

In my opinion, though, the aural evidence is conclusive. On Indiana, the first track recorded, two choked off notes are heard early in Lester’s melody statement, a flaw unthinkable in the 30s. Something similar happens in Body And Soul, along with a couple of squawks. I consider this evidence that he’s still in the process of adjusting to a new mouthpiece.

Indiana July 15th, 1942

Body And Soul July 15th, 1942

While we’re at it, Body And Soul is an audacious choice, given that Coleman Hawkins’ 1939 recording had just taken the jazz world by storm. Comparisons had dogged Lester throughout his life, and yet he seemed to be inviting them here. What was he trying to say? Here’s one possibility: I’ve developed my saxophone to make it sound like a tenor! Now compare me to Hawkins!

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This long, undocumented period came to an end in December ‘43, when Lester rejoined Count Basie. Shortly thereafter, he returned to the studio for the Dicky Wells date. By this time, of course, his stylistic transition was long over. We simply have to accept that much of it took place in a black box and will never be documented. Needless to say, any discussion of mouthpieces would be sheer fantasy.

This makes the Trouville airchecks even more valuable. Despite the yawning gap, I can hear, as noted above, a throughline that connects them to the Wells date. The two styles have much in common, and neither matches Lester’s style on July 15th.

The June 1st, 1942 aircheck from the Trouville Club captured four numbers with solos from Lester: Two versions of Broadway, a second version of Benny’s Bugle, and a heavily arranged rendition of Lady Be Good. At this point, there isn’t much to say that hasn’t been said already. I will sum it up by saying that Lester’s sound here is much closer to “all belly” than “alto tone.”

I have taken the liberty of combining both versions of Broadway into a single track. I’m not convinced they’re from the same date. It seems unlikely that the band would have played a song twice in a single broadcast, and the sound quality differs quite a bit. Otherwise, though, they’re two of a kind.

Broadway June 1st, 1942 (two takes combined)

It’s a stroke of luck to have a second performance of Benny’s Bugle, which allows a before-and-after comparison with the December ‘41 version. This is hindered somewhat by very rough audio quality and the fact that the band has changed keys, from B flat to A flat. Nevertheless, we have 30s Lester and 40s Lester in the closest possible proximity here, a mere six months apart.

Benny’s Bugle December 2nd, 1941

Benny’s Bugle June 1st, 1942

An incomplete solo makes Lady Be Good somewhat disappointing. Lester fades in during the bridge, so we only get twelve bars or so. It’s almost worth skipping, except for one thing: We finally get to hear Bumps Myers! After Lester’s opening solo is through, I believe the remaining three saxophone breaks are handled by Bumps, and he sounds superb. The second break is indisputably Bumps, while the other two are more ambiguous. Just the fact that there’s doubt is a measure of how much Lester and Bumps must have influenced each other. (Note: The trumpet and piano solos have been edited out.)

Lady Be Good June 1st, 1942

The Trouville airchecks make clear that Lester’s stylistic transition happened in the first half of 1942, virtually overnight. Elements of 30s Lester remain, of course, many of which are long gone by December ‘43, but the change is still striking. Again, it’s surprisingly difficult to quantify. If you find yourself wandering through this hall of mirrors, unable to put your finger on what, exactly, has changed, and beginning to wonder if it’s all in your head, just remind yourself that countless listeners and critics dismiss everything Lester did after 1941.

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In my hypothesis, I suggested that Lester’s move to LA made him a stranger in a strange land. That wasn’t the case. Lester had family in LA, starting with his brother, Lee, of course, and his sister, Irma, but also his father and stepmother, who had been living in a house at 1706 Central Avenue since 1936. Lester even gave this as his home address on his Social Security application. Nieces, nephews, and cousins came and went, as well, so the rich social structure of his real family awaited him in LA.

Lester’s influence on modern jazz is often noted, but modern jazz’s influence on Lester less so. All the jamming he did at Minton’s and Monroe’s before leaving for LA wasn’t the waste of time implied in my hypothesis. This was the legendary era of Monk, Dizzy, Charlie Christian, et al. He must have left for LA with a head full of new ideas, and it’s likely he had plenty of time to work them out, possibly while also playing “tonk.”

And he must have resumed jamming in Harlem the moment he returned to New York, in September 1942, which was an equally fertile period that may have included young Charlie Parker. Lester’s solo on I Got Rhythm from December 21st, 1943, alternates between his rhythm and blues vocabulary and phrases that follow the emerging contours of modern jazz.

I Got Rhythm December 21st, 1943

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Lester’s development continued right up to his kidnapping and torture at the hands of the US Army. Not only that, after they chewed him up and spat him out, further development was evident. Only a few weeks after his dishonorable discharge, he was back onstage at JATP, incorporating modern jazz chromaticism into his style.

Chromaticism began entering his vocabulary prior to his induction, but not to the degree heard at JATP. Thus it would appear that his stylistic development continued even during his incarceration, away from his instrument, just as Bird’s would while locked up at Camarillo.

Speaking of Bird and JATP, if you wish to purge yourself of Ross Russell’s egregious horseshit, check out Lester’s playing on the January 28th, 1946 concert. Not only that, check out his interactions with Bird. I believe sharing the stage held deep meaning for both men.

Bird sounds on edge that day, possibly due to inferior grade LA heroin. His tone is strident and his mood ambivalent, but he creates at least one timeless masterpiece, his solo on Lady Be Good. This song had figured prominently in the lives of both men. Lester’s 1936 Lady Be Good solo, from his very first recording date, is one of the most celebrated in all of jazz history.

Lady Be Good November 9th, 1936

Bird recorded Lady Be Good in 1940, on his very first recording date with Jay McShann, and his opening phrase is a joyous acknowledgement of his debt to Lester.

Lady Be Good December 2nd, 1940

Much had happened to both men in the intervening years, and now they found themselves together onstage at JATP. Was it the first time they’d met since Lester’s discharge? Maybe. But Bird had arrived in LA in December, the same month Lester returned from the Army. Given their love of jam sessions, and the bustling LA scene, who knows how many times their paths might have crossed? Lester addressed this in 1950, saying: “I thought Bird was a genius. We did a little jamming mostly when I was out in California in the forties.” It’s a direct reference to this period.

In any event, this was no doubt their first formal appearance together, and very much in the public eye. If there was ever an occasion for acknowledgements, this was it.

On the opener, Blues For Norman, their solos are too far apart to divine any give-and-take, but Lester’s solo is as joyous as any 30s Lester, if not as untroubled. He had endured his worst nightmare and it would be part of his story from now on, but he sounds elated to be out the other side. Elated and triumphant. (Bird solos much later, with a somewhat frantic abandon, and seems to make a point of quoting Lester Leaps In.)

Blues For Norman January 28th, 1946

Next comes I Can’t Get Started, where Lester and Bird solo back-to-back. Lester goes first, his playing now contemplative. With so much on his mind, he needs two choruses to tell this particular story. There are quite a few moments of chromaticism here, but they’re incidental to the overall design, which is complex.

Bird solos next. In my opinion, he’s playing to Lester alone, and I believe he performs a miracle. To a remarkable degree, he eschews his own vocabulary in favor of Lester’s, fashioning a solo of pure melodic invention that’s practically a running inventory of all that he’d learned from his idol. As always with Bird, it displays an astonishing balance of intellectual and emotional power. It’s the most heartfelt thank-you note in jazz history.

I Can't Get Started January 28th, 1946

After that comes Lady Be Good. Bird plays first, transforming Gershwin’s show tune into a blues. Then, after an impromptu bass solo, Lester, in my opinion, replies to Bird’s thank-you note with his own miracle.

He fades in from off-mic, a reminder of his Basie years, and the solo that follows is saturated with chromaticism, especially half step substitutions that create a new emphasis on flat and sharp ninths. In essence, it’s a catalog of all he had absorbed from Bird’s vocabulary, and it’s equal in its intellectual and emotional power. For those inclined to compare it to the 1936 version, perhaps Lester would reply, Fuck what you played back in thirty-six, what the fuck you gonna play today?

Lady Be Good January 28th, 1946

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There is much to marvel at in all of Lester’s solos that day. They are a retroactive rebuke to every jazz critic who ever said the Army destroyed his playing. Does he sound like 30s Lester? No. Perhaps he would reply, I’ve developed my saxophone to make it sound like a tenor!

And, in the last analysis, that might be the only way to measure the stylistic shift in 1942: Lester has transitioned from his alto sound to his tenor sound, the difference made more startling by the change in mouthpiece and the unique circumstances of the July 15th recording date.

Regarding the stylistic shift in 50s Lester, perhaps he would reply, I’ve developed my saxophone to make it sound like a bass!

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As advertised, I have failed to answer the question of why Lester abruptly changed his style. I’m certain it was an artistic choice, not the result of any form of decline, but anything beyond that is guesswork. Having come this far, though, I might as well give it a shot.

It’s worth reiterating that Lester probably changed styles more than once in his early career, before he ever recorded. He already had a reputation for astonishment by the late 1920s, when alto was his main instrument. Descriptions of his style then suggest that it differed greatly from his subsequent tenor style, leaning more toward technical prowess, perhaps due to his Jimmy Dorsey influence. On the other hand, some describe a style characterized by increased use of empty space, also unlike his tenor style-to-be.

On the matter of abruptness, his switch from alto to tenor happened in a single day. Lester convinced a bandleader to buy him a tenor so he could replace the band prima donna, and he was a tenor player from that point onward. So the sudden change he made in 1942 wasn’t out of character.

It could be argued that his 30s style had run its course by then. Airchecks from early 1941, by his Kelly’s Stables band, don’t show a clear musical direction. Lester plays creatively and beautifully, but it’s as if he isn’t sure what he wants to do next. Versions of Tickle Toe and Taxi War Dance sound empty stripped of their big band settings. The band had no pianist, and the guitarist, John Collins, played four-to-the-bar, Freddie Green style, thus the music lacks the virtues a small band setting should have offered.

Tickle Toe February 15th, 1941

Taxi War Dance, February 15th, 1941

In jazz, the term “cool” survives for lack of anything better, but it does sum up 30s Lester in a word. It’s fair to say that Lester’s playing grew increasingly cool during the Basie years. In relative terms, Shoe Shine Boy (November ‘36) isn’t cool at all, compared with Jive At Five (February ‘39).

Jive At Five February 4th, 1939

This quest for maximum cool intensified post-Basie, with Lester continuing to move further back in the beat (the “lag-along style”). As noted, he was even willing to sacrifice rhythmic drive in pursuit of this goal. This approach can’t be called a dead end, since it resulted in beauty of the highest order, but it’s hard to imagine how much further Lester could have gone in this direction. It’s even harder to imagine Lester freezing this style– or any style–in place and using it for the rest of his career.

The December ‘41 aircheck of Benny’s Bugle, from the Club Capri, proves that Lester continued using the maximum cool approach after his arrival in California. But by the time of the Trouville airchecks (May and June ‘42) the change in style is evident.

I can’t help but wonder how Bumps Myers factored into this change. Based on the various airchecks, it’s obvious that the Lee and Lester band drew much of its power from the sound of two tenors in unison. So Lester and Bumps spent untold hours blending their forceful sounds into one, both on the bandstand and during the many rehearsals Lee Young insisted upon.

Comparisons to Herschel cry out. It has never been entirely clear how close Lester and Herschel really were, in part because they were musical rivals, in part because Herschel was belligerent by nature, but mostly because Lester hid his true feelings. After Herschel’s death, though, some say Lester would trade phrases with himself, four bars Lester, four bars Herschel.

We know even less about his relationship with Bumps, which is to say nothing at all, but Bumps was an easygoing bear of a man and there are no reports of personal conflicts. In any case, playing in unison with him for a year and a half surely exerted some influence.

I will now rush in where real jazz writers (Ross Russell not included) fear to tread, by adopting Lester’s point of view.

I can picture him at a tipping point in early ‘42. The transition to his tenor sound has stalled out as he struggles to get the tone he wants out of the Link. The goal of pure, concentrated beauty has been accomplished months before, yet his artistic direction remains uncertain. He has pushed maximum cool as far as it can go and it hasn’t led to greater success. In fact, this unguarded expression of his being has left him more vulnerable than ever, while bringing only rejection in return.

Meanwhile, his association with Bumps is providing unexpected inspiration. It turns out Bumps is a first rate musician who has his own original take on the Hawkins style. It’s becoming clear that he can borrow from Bumps (Herschel?) without compromising his own individuality. Absorbing some of Bumps’ muscular approach will displace some of his cool, but it offers a way out of the prolonged impasse. He still has no interest in sounding like Hawkins, but the time has come to flex his own muscles, to move back toward the center of the beat, to be more direct and less abstract, to tell stories through prose, not poetry. And for that, he’s going to need a new sound.

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How plausible is any of the above? I have no idea. This is where it always gets maddening, because the change of style and the change of sound happen simultaneously. If he’d kept his 30s sound, would the change in style have been less conspicuous? Definitely. The similarities far outweigh the differences.

But sound is everything. Lester’s sound in the 30s was a miracle of nature, as though God had said, “Let There Be Cool,” and Lester sprang into existence. 30s Lester was an introvert who worked through understatement. 40s Lester was–-relatively speaking-–an extrovert, willing to raise his voice to make a point. Much of what he played, though, was still undeniably cool. Had it been played with his 30s sound, I’m not sure anyone would have noticed the change.

The best I can do is suggest that the new sound is intrinsically less cool. Much of the moonlight is gone, especially in the upper register, which was its natural habitat. With more edge comes more grit, a roughness that highlights the declamatory nature of his new phrasing. It seems to me that 30s Lester made the tone in his upper register a priority over the tone in his lower register, and that the reverse is true of 40s Lester. This clouded over the moon even more.

Cool, of course, can’t be notated or quantified, but you know it when you hear it, or when you don’t, which is why listeners and critics reacted so strongly to 40s Lester. For many, he had lost his cool, and without that he was a stranger.

30s Lester offered a paradise of exquisite beauty, conjured from his dreams. 40s Lester grappled with reality, where beauty was hard-fought. He could be cool when he wished, especially on ballads, but his stories were about the real world now, and it was certainly no paradise.

Those who consider his 40s playing inferior have every right to do so. Rather than lamenting it, though, they should marvel instead at how much 40s Lester doesn’t sound like 30’s Lester. Only a true genius could have made such a dramatic shift in style, at will, in such a short period of time.

Lester’s playing did deteriorate in the 50s, in lockstep with his deteriorating health, but he was still forging ahead, in pursuit of new ideas, and there are a great many treasures for the taking. Tragically, alcoholism was the ultimate legacy of his Army experience, and it claimed his life on March 15th, 1959.

As long as Lester had his strength, though, every solo told a new story, fashioned in the moment from the deepest of emotions, and structured by the keenest of intellects.

Perhaps Lester would reply, That’s the way I want things! That’s modern, dig?

John Purcell May 2023

Charlie Parker’s chronology from late 1938 to early 1940 is rather sketchy. It is known that his mentor, Buster Smith, left Kansas City for New York in 1938, and that Parker eventually followed suit. By early 1940, Parker was definitely back in Kansas City working with McShann. –Carl Woideck

We know this because Bird’s estranged father died, stabbed to death by the woman he was living with, and nineteen-year-old Bird was called home to Kansas City for the funeral, moving back in with his mother.

Always eager to go out on a limb, I will argue that Bird spent this crucial period working through the implications of his “Cherokee” revelation, still very fresh in his mind. I will channel Bird’s musical thinking with false bravado, well aware that my bold pronouncements are just untethered speculation.

At some point in 1940, Bird made his first recording, informally titled “Honey & Body” (full track and partial transcription below). It’s just Bird alone on alto, playing a medley of “Honeysuckle Rose” and “Body And Soul,” recorded by a Kansas City friend on a portable disc-cutting machine (sound quality abysmal). It documents Bird in the process of creating a new vocabulary. His claim that he practiced between eleven and fifteen hours a day may include this stretch of time.

Since no pre-revelation recordings exist, “Honey & Body” is all we have to give us some inkling of Bird’s earlier style, but it reveals a lot.

I will break down the “Honeysuckle Rose” portion of the track (Bird segues into “Body And Soul” at 2:11) into short segments and sort the phrases into three categories: old vocabulary (pre-revelation), new vocabulary (post-revelation); and mature vocabulary (still present in his mature style).

The recording (slowed down for clarity) fades in as Bird is finishing the second A, heading into the bridge. This first phrase is actually the end of a phrase whose beginning wasn’t captured. It’s important, and will be discussed later, but I am starting with the first complete phrase, which begins with pickups into the bridge. The first bar of the bridge will be designated bar 1. Here are the first five bars:

Right off the bat, we get very old vocabulary. The opening idea, three repeated notes on consecutive upbeats, probably dates back to Buddy Bolden, and is certainly part of Louis Armstrong’s vocabulary, not to mention Lester Young’s. This is followed by a long descending scale run, uncharacteristic of Bird’s mature style. Whatever the nature of his “Cherokee” revelation, it had nothing to do with scale runs, so this has to be considered old vocabulary.

The fragment in bar 2 appears frequently in Bird’s mature style.

This is followed in bar 3 by new vocabulary, inspired by his "Cherokee" revelation. The descending Am7 arpeggio is a product of the ladder of thirds.

Bird actually uses this same descending Am7 arpeggio in the next bridge, at 0:45.

Bar 4 is clearly old vocabulary, a simple major pentatonic phrase that Bird often used in a blues context. The fact that it rests on the 9th suggests that his love of 9ths predated his “Cherokee” revelation.

The figure in bar 5 is the legendary Motive 1A of Thomas Owens, which ranks number one on the basis of sheer frequency. Owens groups all such arpeggios together without regard to harmonic differences. The ladder of thirds unites the many iterations of this motive that Owens catalogued.

This figure (transposed) occupies the 2nd rung on the ladder of thirds. Measure 60 of “Koko” (Savoy 11/26/45) provides an example.

The 2nd rung is a dominant 7th chord run from the 3rd up to the 9th. 2nd rung vocabulary is easy to find. Here are six examples from "Honey & Body." Note that Bird often ends these arpeggios on the b9.

2nd rung vocabulary didn't originate with Bird. Louis ran dominant 7th chords up to the 9th all the time:

The first five bars of “Honey & Body” are an intriguing amalgam of old and new melodic material, but it’s important not to lose sight of the forest here. These opening bars are a continuous melodic line made up almost entirely of eighth notes.

Louis’s 1920s vocabulary was quarter-note based, although it pointed the way toward eighth notes. Lester’s 1930s vocabulary was, all in all, still quarter-note based, but it offered a clear blueprint for an eighth-note based vocabulary. This was not lost on Bird!

Working over “Cherokee” with Fleet, Charlie suddenly found that by using higher intervals of a chord as a melody line and backing them with appropriately related changes, he could play this thing he had been “hearing.” –Michael Levin and John S. Wilson, “No Bop Roots In Jazz: Parker.”

Levin and Wilson were unwitting masters of misdirection, drawing our attention to higher intervals while Bird’s innovations were almost entirely a matter of rhythm, articulation, and phrasing, all in service of an eighth-note based vocabulary.

Which raises the question: if Bird’s “Cherokee” revelation was entirely harmonic and in no way rhythmic, how different could his pre-revelation style have been? We know it was formidable. In 1938, Bird hoboed his way to New York via boxcar, passing through Chicago, where he stopped at a breakfast dance. Looking every inch the hobo he was, he borrowed “Goon” Gardner’s alto and astonished everyone, including Billy Eckstine, who never forgot it.

So the “Cherokee” revelation may have been a significant harmonic turning point for Bird himself, allowing him to access melodies that had hitherto eluded him, but would listeners have noticed a big difference? It stands to reason that Bird was already deep into fashioning an eighth-note based vocabulary well before his revelation. It’s even possible he was trying to fashion it from day one, and that his early reputation as the worst saxophone player in Kansas City had been earned due to such efforts.

As to those “higher intervals,” they’ve existed in jazz from the start. We can save a lot of time if we stick to one unequivocal example, from Louis’s solo on “Once In A While,” December 9, 1927. This excerpt is a garland of 9ths, 11ths, and 13ths over a secondary dominant chord, in this case D7:

It’s hard to find anything that wasn’t foreshadowed by Louis. As Nicholas Payton put it, “Some of the things he was doing in the 20s and 30s, people still haven’t dealt with.”

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Here’s “Honey & Body” with a transcription of the “Honey” portion of the track:

Unfortunately, the surviving editor, Nat Hentoff, cannot reconstruct how the second version came to be written in such a way. Hentoff believed that Nat Shapiro edited the Parker section in question, but he felt it was unlikely that Shapiro would have simply altered the Down Beat text to make it read better. Hentoff could not recall if perhaps Shapiro worked from notes supplied by Levin or Wilson. Attempts to pursue this point with John S. Wilson, co-author of the original article, have thus far failed. -- Carl Woideck

And that’s the last word on the Levin-Wilson article and its one-sentence paraphrase of Bird’s 1939 “Cherokee” revelation.

Every attempt to understand this revelation meets with the same immovable object: We have no idea what Bird sounded like before 1940. Personally, I would trade every word ever written about Charlie Parker for one solo from 1938. Until such time, it’s all just hot air.

That’s my cue!

Bird, it seems, was drawn to 9ths. It’s apparent from the standards he chose to play (”Out Of Nowhere,” “Star Eyes,” “I’ll Remember April,” “If I Should Lose You,” “Laura”) and in his own compositions (”Red Cross,” “Now’s The Time,” “Bird Feathers,” “An Oscar For Treadwell,” “My Little Suede Shoes”). It’s impossible to say when Bird acquired this affinity, but it was probably innate and guided his development from the start. That’s worth emphasizing here, because 9ths play a key role in his “Cherokee” revelation.

I believe Bird’s flash of intuition revealed something akin to the ladder of thirds:

Visualizing it as four 9th chords, Bird suddenly understood that everything is the upper structure of everything else.

It began with the realization that the Em9, built from the 5th of the A7, spelled out the A7's entire upper structure.

Following the same principle, he realized that the Bm9, built from the 5th of the Em9, spelled out the Em9's entire upper structure.

Following the same principle again, he realized that A9, built from the 5th of Dmaj7, formed the Dmaj7's entire upper structure (notes transposed down an octave for readability), thus bringing the ladder of thirds back to its starting point.

What was it about “Cherokee” that made this so apparent? In short: The bridge. To begin with, the melody has plenty of 9ths, which may have attracted Bird in the first place, but it also has two very telling 13ths.

The example below is in alto saxophone key (as are all examples). It’s worth noting that the melody sits high on alto, which allowed Bird room to descend the ladder of thirds without bottoming out.

Also noteworthy, I am using the changes from the Charlie Barnet version of “Cherokee,” likely the one Bird was most acquainted with. Today’s fake books retroactively add II-V progressions where none exist on the original recordings. This is especially important in bars 33 and 41.

The first chord of the Bridge is Eb7, not Bbm7 (retroactive II chord). This is quite clear on all three recorded versions, Noble, Basie, and Barnet (in order of recording date, full tracks below). This Eb7 sounds as Eb13 because of the melody note and the horn voicings underneath it. This is consistent in all versions:

And Efferge Ware is most definitely strumming an Eb7 behind Bird:

Needless to say, Bird knows he’s on an Eb7 chord, and he knows the melody note is a C (highlighted). Here come the unanswerable questions:

Was he thinking of that note as the 6th? If so, did he suddenly realize he could think of it as the 13th instead? Did it just suddenly sound like the 13th to him?

“I kept thinking there’s bound to be something else,” he recalls. “I could hear it sometimes but I couldn’t play it.”

If Bird suddenly heard/realized that the melody note was a 13th, did he simply connect the dots down the ladder of thirds, all the way to the root?

Did the melody note in the next bar, a Bb on top of Abmaj7 (highlighted), suddenly sound like the 9th instead of the 2nd?

This new intuition would have been reinforced and broadened by the next two bars, in which Abmaj7 becomes Abm7, thus setting up a bona fide II-V-I progression, still unusual in 1939.

Here’s this key moment of transition from all three recordings:

The melody notes (highlighted) explicitly walk down the II chord (Abm7) from the 9th, land on the 5th of the V chord (Db7) (written 8vb), and end up on Db itself (8vb). This can also be viewed as a descent via the ladder of thirds. The fact that it begins on the II chord and carries through the V chord only reveals the ladder's function more clearly.

This would have been the moment of truth, when Bird realized that the Abm9 spells out the entire upper structure of the Db7. Again, both ladders above are easily playable on saxophone, from the 13th down to the root, and the same applies to the second half of the bridge, which continues the same pattern.

Did Bird possess the requisite knowledge to grasp all this in a matter of seconds? By 1939, he was, by his own account, striving to move beyond what must have been a more conventional, yet fully realized, style that had made him the darling of Kansas City. It’s not hard to imagine that he possessed, at age nineteen, a wide array of knowledge that still lacked organizing principles. Again, if we knew what he sounded like before 1940, this tedious guesswork wouldn’t be necessary.

Some may find the argument above simpleminded, others too complicated. Bird’s thoughts are unknowable and any argument is unprovable. The only real measure is plausibility, and that’s entirely subjective.

One thing, however, is certain: I suffer from delusions of grandeur. I plan to present a complete analysis of Bird’s style, post by post, for free here on Substack, as well as at charlieparkercentennial.com, until such time as I drop dead.

You can also find me wherever angels fear to tread.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Here are the three recorded versions of “Cherokee” that would have been available to Bird, in chronological order, Ray Noble, Count Basie, Charlie Barnet:

M.1A is an ascending arpeggio, usually played as a triplet, but also common in other rhythmic configurations. Preceded by an upper or lower neighbor, it fre­quently begins a phrase. About forty percent of these arpeggios are of minor-seventh chords; E minor-seventh is the most common. – Thomas Owens, 1974 Dissertation

Forty percent is quite a statistic, and the fact that Em7 is the most common certainly suggests that D major was Bird’s primal key. More broadly, it confirms that four-note ascending arpeggios were central to Bird’s vocabulary. This is so self-evident that no examples are required.

What’s needed, though, is an underlying principle that accounts for the many manifestations these arpeggios present, hence the ladder of thirds.

Bird's thought processes are unknowable, but I'm arguing that his "Cherokee" revelation began with the realization that the Em9 arpeggio spells out the entire upper structure of the A7.

Don’t forget there were no II-V progressions (as we know them today) in 1939, just V chords. Bird, at the age of nineteen, had to conjure up the II chord and invent a new vocabulary that incorporated it, an extraordinary intellectual achievement. To quote Dizzy:

You didn’t find many musicians who could show you on the piano what they were doing. But Charlie Parker could, even then. He was only a kid. We were both only kids.

On a practical level, Bird divided the ladder of thirds into four-note groups, creating seven rungs.

As Owens notes, Bird often played these arpeggios as triplets, leading into them with an approach note. This is such a common form that it functions as a default setting for all rungs. Bird, however, never used the 1st Rung, so it isn’t included below. It’s best considered a foundation that anchors the ladder itself.

In practice, then, the six remaining rungs look like this:

Takes 5, 9, and 12 of “Marmaduke” (Savoy, September 24, 1948) provide any number of examples, but Take 5 is best suited to the purposes at hand. It was already examined in Parkeology 028, documenting Bird's use of the D major ornament found in the opening bar of "The Jumpin' Blues."

The solo from Take 5 below highlights those previous examples with circles, while the new ladder of thirds examples are highlighted with rectangles. Note that rungs can descend as well as ascend. Here’s the full solo, slowed down for clarity:

It’s plain to see that the D major ornament is deeply ingrained in Bird’s muscle memory, and that its use isn’t limited to the I chord. In fact, it has even broader applications than these, in other contexts and other keys, but that’s a subject unto itself.

Owens’ forty percent statistic is not only met but exceeded, with the 3rd rung, Em7, appearing five times out of ten. This isn’t surprising, given the key of D major, but it leaves no doubt that minor 7th arpeggios are a key building block.

But other four-note arpeggios are quite common, foremost among them the 2nd rung, which runs the V chord up to the 9th:

Bird frequently uses the 4th rung, which runs the II chord up to the 9th:

It's less common, but Bird uses the 7th rung to run the I chord up to the 9th:

Bird also uses the 5th rung, but it's a special case, rarely seen in the form below. It's the most ambiguous harmonically, which reflects the ambiguity of the "Honeysuckle Rose" melody itself. The 5th rung deserves its own discussion elsewhere.

Given all this emphasis on 9ths, dividing the ladder of thirds into five-note groups offers a valuable perspective. It doesn’t, however, negate the fact that Bird primarily thinks in four-note groups.

By viewing the ladder of thirds as four 9th chords, we come as close as we can get to Bird’s 1939 “Cherokee” revelation. Levin and Wilson paraphrased it one sentence:

Working over “Cherokee” with Fleet, Charlie suddenly found that by using higher intervals of a chord as a melody line and backing them with appropriately related changes, he could play this thing he had been “hearing.”

I paraphrase it as: Everything is the upper structure of everything else.

Needless to say, this statement needs further explaining, but the above diagram is somewhat self-evident. I will only add that the phrase “higher intervals of a chord” was a red herring of blue whale proportions.

Bird never thought past the 9th.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

I’d learned the scale and I learned how to play two tunes in a certain key, in the key of D for your saxophone, F concert? I learned to play the first eight bars of "Lazy River" and I knew the complete tune to "Honeysuckle Rose." I didn't never stop to think about there was other keys or nothing like that! –Charlie Parker

It’s hard to overstate the importance of “Honeysuckle Rose” in Bird’s development. It was the first song he recorded on his own, and among his first with Jay McShann.

Furthermore, “Scrapple From The Apple,” based on the “Honeysuckle Rose” A section, was a mainstay in his repertoire throughout his life. Its “I Got Rhythm” bridge, however, disqualifies it as a contrafact, thus the award goes to the relatively obscure “Marmaduke” (Savoy, September 24, 1948).

More broadly, “Marmaduke” is a study of the key of D major, Bird’s primal key. It’s here that he fashioned the vocabulary that suffused his playing in all keys. It’s also the best place to continue the ladder of thirds discussion.

Bird says he learned the D major scale, but what form did it take? I submit that the opening phrase of his solo on “The Jumpin’ Blues” (Jay McShann, Decca, July 2, 1942) is an iteration of the D major scale that sprang from his earliest attempts at improvisation.

Jazz writers searching for the origins of this phrase often point to Lester Young's solo on "Shoeshine Boy," noting that he plays a similar figure coming out of the second bridge.

The similarity is striking, and we know Bird learned this solo note-for-note. Furthermore, Lester is playing this phrase over a concert C7, which on tenor is a D7. Lo and behold, both phrases employ the same fingering

I remain skeptical. For one thing, there's a crucial difference. Lester doesn’t resolve the ornament to F# in the second bar, skipping down to an E instead. The resolution to F# is the heart and soul of Bird’s phrase. Furthermore, since Bird learned this solo on alto, he would have been playing Lester’s phrase over an A7 (concert C7), not a D7, which requires an entirely different fingering.

In fact, ease of fingering explains a lot. The central ornament in this phrase is easy to execute in the key of D major and such ornaments were common practice in jazz. Given that the phrase is a simple scale run, the similarities between Lester and Bird could be entirely coincidental.

But the best argument might be circumstantial. Given all the wonders in Lester’s solo, why would Bird latch onto an inconspicuous transitional phrase and make it the centerpiece of his vocabulary? I believe it springs from a deeper source.

Bird famously said, “I was crazy about Lester. He played so clean and beautiful. But I wasn’t influenced by Lester. Our ideas ran on differently.” Let’s take him at his word and move along to “Marmaduke.”

Between chirping reeds and fluffs by Miles, Bird needed quite a few takes to get a usable version, offering an extensive look at his “Honeysuckle Rose” vocabulary. He’s in a relaxed, swinging mood, and there’s an air of nonchalance throughout (despite moments of frustration). He’s not trying to break new ground, and some of the ideas that flow from his horn might well date back to teenage years.

The “Marmaduke” melody is in part a transfigured “Honeysuckle Rose.” Here are the first four bars, minus the pickup:

The second bar is "Honeysuckle Rose" shifted over by half a beat. This practice goes all the way back to Bird's first recording, "Honey and Body," the generally accepted date of which is early 1940. He repeats the "Honeysuckle Rose" opening phrase as a motive, shifting it by half a beat in the process:

The third bar of "Marmaduke" contains the D major ornament first seen in "The Jumpin' Blues."

The D major ornament also dates back to "Honey and Body:" (The first note is a ghost note.)

Just for good measure, here's the D major ornament in Bird's solo on "Honeysuckle Rose" with Jay McShann (November 30, 1940). Again, the first note is a ghost note.

Bird recorded three complete takes of “Marmaduke,” takes 5, 9, and 12, each with equally good solos. Take 12, having the cleanest ensemble passages, became the master. I will be drawing examples from Take 5, referencing them by timing rather than by measure numbers.

The D major ornament is deeply ingrained in Bird’s muscle memory and surfaces five times in Take 5 (full solo below with D major ornament highlighted):

More than any other set of changes, "Honeysuckle Rose" offers a line of sight into Bird's early development, which began in the key of D major. This is why the ladder of thirds is best conceptualized as the upper structure of A7, the V chord.

It may be unclear at this point what the D major ornament has to do with the ladder of thirds, or with Bird’s “Cherokee” revelation. The best way to answer that might be to return to the Levin-Wilson one-sentence paraphrase of this revelation:

Working over “Cherokee” with Fleet, Charlie suddenly found that by using higher intervals of a chord as a melody line and backing them with appropriately related changes, he could play this thing he had been “hearing.”

If I had to paraphrase Bird’s revelation in a single sentence, I would put it like this:

Everything is the upper structure of everything else.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Here is Bird’s “Marmaduke” solo from Take 5, slowed down for clarity:

Working over “Cherokee” with Fleet, Charlie suddenly found that by using higher intervals of a chord as a melody line and backing them with appropriately related changes, he could play this thing he had been “hearing.” –Michael Levin and John S. Wilson, “No Bop Roots In Jazz: Parker.”

This single-sentence paraphrase of Bird’s “Cherokee” revelation has been chewed over for generations, with little to show for it. Had Levin and Wilson simply given us Bird’s exact words, it would’ve saved everyone a lot of trouble. Instead, another poor schmo, namely me, is about to tilt once again at this weary windmill.

Here’s what the Levin-Wilson paraphrase suggests to me: Bird had a flash of intuition which made clear that an array of separate harmonic concepts were in fact all connected. Of course, Bird’s thought processes are impossible to know, so no assertion can ever be proven right or wrong. Plausibility is the only measure of any argument.

Whatever Bird’s revelation was, it must have been simple enough to be grasped on the spot. I will argue that it was a self evident, though not necessarily obvious, concept I call the “ladder of thirds.” (If there’s a proper jazz theory term for this concept, I have no idea what it is.)

Once I’ve outlined it, I will turn to the “Cherokee” bridge and argue that its harmonic construction revealed to Bird this ladder of thirds. Adrenalin rush guaranteed!

First, though, a note of caution. It’s easy to forget that II-V progressions, as we know them today, didn’t exist in the 20s, 30s, and early 40s. For Louis, Lester, and the fledgling Bird, there were only V chords.

The ladder of thirds is shown below in the key of D major because that was Bird’s primal key. As a beginner, he taught himself two tunes in D major, “Honeysuckle Rose” and “Lazy River,” as well as the D major scale.

The ladder of thirds is simply a dominant 7th chord ascending diatonically in thirds, starting from the root and rising through its entire upper structure until, two octaves later, it reaches the root again. (The 3rd and 5th are repeated above the second root for diagrammatic purposes, not musical ones.)

A subset of notes, building from the 5th of the dominant 7th chord, spells out an Em9 chord. We recognize this now as the related II chord, but II Vs didn't exist in 1939, which is why this subset would have been the starting point in Bird's revelation.

Bird never ran all the way up the ladder of thirds. I contend that he divided the ladder into seven four-note groups. Expanding my dubious metaphor, I will call these four-note groups “rungs.”

To establish the principle that Bird would sometimes think in four-note groups, here’s an excerpt from his late-1943 “Cherokee” solo, recorded with Efferge Ware (full track below). He plays the following sequence twice, first in mm 125-128, and later as an ending. He makes it sound musical, but he’s just spelling out seventh chords in the key of G major.

Bird uses a subtler version of the same idea on "Out Of Nowhere" Take B (Dial November 4, 1947).

We now turn to the rungs. The 1st rung is inconsequential, in that Bird almost never runs dominant seventh chords up from the root. It just sounds very square, like an exercise. Rare examples can be found, but they're exceptions that prove the rule.

The 2nd rung is quite the opposite. Bird frequently runs dominant seventh chords from the 3rd up to the 9th. There's nothing remarkable about this. Lester did it all the time, as did Louis before him. Nevertheless, it's an essential component of Bird's vocabulary. Here are six examples from the same "Cherokee" solo:

The 3rd rung is significant indeed, given that it guided Bird toward the concept of II-V progressions.

The Flat-7 of the Em7, D, is the so-called “avoid note” on the A7, which is the chord the rhythm section would have been playing behind Bird as he deployed the 3rd rung, thus requiring him to resolve to C# at some point.

Bird states this resolution very clearly in the “Tea For Two” pattern he applies to the “Cherokee” bridge. Note that Ware is chunking V chords behind him all the way. This example also reinforces the notion that Bird sometimes thought in four-note groups.

This brings us to the foot of the “Cherokee” bridge, but it’s too soon to cross.

Here are the remaining rungs in the ladder of thirds:

There’s much more to say about the 3rd rung, which works in tandem with the 4th rung. For that, however, we must turn to “Marmaduke,” Bird’s contrafact on “Honeysuckle Rose,” which was named for his dog.

You heard me. Bird had a dog.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Here's the complete "Cherokee" track, with Bird and Efferge Ware.

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Charlie’s horn first came alive in a chili house on Seventh avenue between 139th Street and 140th Street in December, 1939. He was jamming there with a guitarist named Biddy Fleet. At the time, Charlie says, he was bored with the stereotyped changes being used then.

“I kept thinking there’s bound to be something else,” he recalls. “I could hear it sometimes but I couldn’t play it.”

Working over “Cherokee” with Fleet, Charlie suddenly found that by using higher intervals of a chord as a melody line and backing them with appropriately related changes, he could play this thing he had been “hearing.” Fleet picked it up behind him and bop was born. –Michael Levin and John S. Wilson, “No Bop Roots In Jazz: Parker.”

This is the original text from the Levin-Wilson Down Beat article, published September 9, 1949. I suspect it was rewritten as a verbatim quote by Nat Shapiro, to fit the requirements of his 1955 book, “Hear Me Talkin’ to Ya.” It has appeared in the following form ever since:

I remember one night before Monroe’s I was jamming in a chili house on Seventh Avenue between 139th and 140th. It was December, 1939. Now I’d been getting bored with the stereotyped changes that were being used all the time at the time, and I kept thinking there’s bound to be something else. I could hear it sometimes but I couldn’t play it.

Well, that night, I was working over Cherokee, and, as I did, I found that by using the higher intervals of a chord as a melody line and backing them with appropriately related changes, I could play the thing I’d been hearing. I came alive.

Putting these words in Bird’s mouth has given them an authority they don’t deserve. Any attempt to understand what he might have been saying requires that we acknowledge Levin and Wilson’s paraphrasing and parse it in search of its underlying truth. Let us begin.

Fleet picked it up behind him and bop was born.

The mere existence of such a sentence calls into question Levin and Wilson’s understanding of the subject at hand.

At the time, Charlie says, he was bored with the stereotyped changes being used then.

First of all, I doubt Bird used the word “bored.” Is there a single moment anywhere in Bird’s entire recorded output where he sounds bored? Urgency is a hallmark of his style. “Frustrated” would be more apt, given that he couldn’t catch hold of these fleeting internal sounds.

I also doubt that Bird used the term “stereotyped changes.” What does that even mean? Bird wouldn’t have had any issues with chord changes per se. I imagine he was talking about the swing era vocabulary, which was becoming formulaic.

Working over “Cherokee” with Fleet…

The fact that Bird was playing“Cherokee” when he had his chili house revelation is the biggest clue we have, so props to Levin-Wilson for including this detail. At the same time, why did they treat Bird’s awakening as little more than a droll anecdote?

…Charlie suddenly found…

Bird, it would seem, described this revelation as almost instantaneous.

…that by using higher intervals of a chord as a melody line and backing them with appropriately related changes, he could play this thing he had been “hearing.”

If only we had Bird’s exact words! The meaning of “appropriately related changes” is anyone’s guess. The “higher intervals of a chord” implies 9ths, 11ths, and 13ths, but what did Bird actually say? And what led Levin and Wilson to compress Bird’s revelation into a single paraphrased sentence?

In The Leven-Wilson Controversy Part 4, Youtuber Andy Shaw takes a valiant stab at interpreting the paraphrased sentence, bringing to light anecdotal testimony from Biddy Fleet himself.

As Biddy Fleet later explained to the writer Ira Gider “The voicing of my chords had a theme within themselves. You could call a tune, and I’d voice my chords in such a way that I’d play the original chords to the tune, and I’d invert ‘em every one, two, three, or four beats so that the top notes of my inversions would be another tune. It would not be the melody to the tune I’m playing, yet the chords, foundation-wise, is the chords to the tune.”

This leads Shaw to argue that Bird’s revelation concerned voice leading. He makes his case with a very involved analysis of Bird’s solo on “Klaun Stance.” I’m not convinced, largely because of his argument’s complexity. Whatever Bird’s revelation, it happened in a flash of insight. That suggests to me something that united preexisting ideas to reveal a grand scheme. He could suddenly see that an array of separate harmonic concepts were in fact all connected.

More about that later. Meanwhile, we will turn to my favorite punching bag, Ross Russell, who novelized Bird Lives to the point of no return, dishonoring himself for all time. Here’s his version:

One morning at Dan Wall’s Chili House, an all-night restaurant at Seventh Avenue and 139th Street, Charlie was jamming with a rhythm section led by guitarist Biddy Fleet. They were working Cherokee. Charlie had been over the changes countless times, and the tune was beginning to sound stale. Charlie got to thinking, “There’s got to be something more, some new way to go.” Then an idea struck him: if he played the top notes of the chords instead of the middle or lower notes, he would have a new line. It was worth trying. Asking Biddy Fleet to continue, Charlie played through another chorus. The notes sounded strange, but it worked. He was using the upper intervals, ninths, elevenths, thirteenths, skimming along on the very tops of the chords.

I will bite my tongue and limit my ridicule to one sentence: “Charlie had been over the changes countless times, and the tune was beginning to sound stale.”

The original version of “Cherokee,” by Ray Noble, was recorded for Brunswick on October 8, 1938, but received only limited airplay, and we don’t know if Bird was aware of it. But Charlie Barnet’s recording for Bluebird, released July 17, 1939, made it to #15 on the charts. This is very likely the version Bird was familiar with, although he may have also heard the Count Basie recording, released April 1939.

So when Bird and Biddy were jamming on “Cherokee,” in the latter half of 1939, it was essentially brand new. Bird couldn’t have been “over the changes countless times,” nor would the tune have sounded “stale.” Indeed, “Cherokee” would inspire Bird to the highest of heights for years to come.

When all is said and done, the paraphrased sentence points in a general direction and has been widely understood to mean that Bird fashioned melodies from the upper structures of the chords, while anchoring them with lower chord tones. The problem is that Louis Armstrong, Lester Young, Art Tatum, and many others did the same thing. Bird’s rhythmic innovations were what defined Bebop.

I don’t think I’m going out on a limb when I say that the “Cherokee” melody and its underlying harmony, especially in the bridge, was what led Bird to his revelation, and fortunately I’m not alone. I will let Henry Martin, an authority on all things Bird, make the final point:

Cherokee already uses chordal extensions! It is probably the case that Parker found a way to expand his improvisational style by making use of what was already present in the song’s melodic structure.

Truth.

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“Bop is no love child of jazz,” says Charlie Parker. The creator of bop, in a series of interviews that took more than two weeks, told us he felt that “bop is entirely separate and apart” from the older tradition; that it drew little from jazz, has no roots in it. The chubby little alto man, who has made himself an international music name in the last five years, added that bop, for the most part, had to be played by small bands. –Michael Levin and John S. Wilson, “No Bop Roots In Jazz: Parker.”

Thus begins the questionable Levin-Wilson article, published in Down Beat magazine on September 9th, 1949. Foremost among the questions is this: to what extent was Bird putting the authors on?

But first things first. Chubby little alto man? I’ll try not to get hysterical, but this description makes me doubt the judgement of both writers. Regardless of how it was meant, it’s demeaning. More to the point, it’s inaccurate. Bird stood approximately 5 ‘10”.

Moving on. Levin and Wilson quote Bird verbatim and at length. In general, the direct quotes they select pertain either to Bird’s definition of bebop or his opinions about Dizzy, both highlighted, perhaps, to stoke controversy. But most of the biographical information is paraphrased, which forces us to rely on their editorial judgement. How accurately did they convey what Bird had told them?

As with so many things about Bird, no definitive answer is possible. But the information Levin and Wilson relay often flies in the face of established facts, at times to the point of absurdity. A lot can be forgiven, since few biographical facts were known in 1949, but it appears they overlooked Leonard Feather’s 1947 Metronome article, “Yardbird Flies Home,” which established a basic framework, including Bird’s correct birth year, 1920. Levin and Wilson give it as 1921, another ding in their accuracy. Nevertheless, “No Bop Roots In Jazz” is a foundational document. Three of Bird’s most iconic quotes appear there:

It’s just music. It’s trying to play clean and looking for the pretty notes.

Music is your own experience, your thoughts, your wisdom. If you don’t live it, it won’t come out of your horn.

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

I don’t doubt these are Bird’s exact words. But when Levin and Wilson paraphrase biographical information, all hell breaks loose. Take this paragraph:

Parker’s indifference to the revered jazz tradition certainly will leave some of his own devotees in a state of surprise. But, actually, he himself has no roots in traditional jazz. During the few years he worked with traditional jazzmen he wandered like a lost soul. In his formative years he never heard any of the music which is traditionally supposed to inspire young jazzists–no Louis, no Bix, no Hawk, no Benny, no nothing. His first musical idol, the musician who so moved and inspired him that he went out and bought his first saxophone at the age of 11, was Rudy Vallee.

The problem here is that this can’t possibly be true. (We’ll leave poor Rudy Vallee out of it.) Were we to invoke Occam’s razor, we might conclude that Bird was simply putting on a couple of squares, but that’s taking the easy way out. If Bird did indeed engage in a series of interviews, then he was taking the opportunity seriously, and the direct quotes seem entirely sincere.

But it’s simply a fact that once Bird discovered jazz, in his early teens, he absorbed everything around him, in Kansas City, the shadow capitol of advanced swing, and on record. It’s all there in his playing, and if you need further proof, there’s always his 1948 Down Beat blindfold test, in which he readily identifies Stan Kenton, Benny Goodman, Red Norvo, Bud Powell, Igor Stravinsky, “Hot Lips” Page, Dizzy Gillespie, Count Basie, Charlie Barnet, Duke Ellington, and Johnny Hodges. He also misidentifies George Wettling as Baby Dodds, thereby displaying some familiarity with 20s jazz.

Summing up at the end, Bird says to Leonard Feather:

Music, if it’s presented right, is music, whether it be Dixieland, jazz, swing, or what have you. Personally, I just like to call it music.

What does Bird mean when he uses the term “jazz?” This question comes up again and again in the Levin-Wilson article, starting with its very title. The above quote implies that jazz, to Bird’s mind, is something distinct from Dixieland or swing, but that doesn’t help much. When pressed by Levin and Wilson, Bird also makes a clear distinction between bop and jazz, saying, “Bop has no continuity of beat, no steady chug chug. Jazz has, and that’s why bop is more flexible.”

This lack of a clear definition may have contributed to Levin and Wilson’s confusion over Bird’s musical roots, and Bird’s resistance to labeling music likely made matters worse.

Continuing their paraphrasing of Bird’s development, the authors write:

Tossed into the jazz world of the mid-30s with this kind of background, he had no familiar ground on which to stand. For three years he fumbled unhappily until he suddenly stumbled on the music which appealed to him, which had meaning to him.

This isn’t within shouting distance of the truth. We know Bird spoke to them of early humiliations at jam sessions, and he probably belittled his own abilities as a beginner. Did the authors reduce all this to “fumbled unhappily?”

Once Bird hit high school, he abandoned academics and pursued music with a single-minded intensity, trying to play with, and learn from, everyone he could, and gradually earning a place for himself on the bottom rung of the Kansas City jazz scene. Everyone agrees that he didn’t show much promise early on, but his determination was evident, and he worked with any number of local bands. In no sense did he “wander like a lost soul.”

All of which makes this paragraph seem very much like a put-on:

After his brief exhilaration over Vallee, Charlie heard no music which interested him outside of boogie-woogie records, until he quit high school in 1935 and went out to make a living with his alto horn at the age of fourteen. As has been mentioned, he was under the influence of none of the jazz greats. He had never heard them. He was influenced only by the necessity of making a living and he chose music because it seemed glamorous, looked easy, and there was nothing else around.

I’m not sure this paragraph contains any truth at all.

If you’re wondering what the point is here, your long wait will soon be over. The Levin-Wilson narrative is that Bird had no interest in the music around him in Kansas City, never listened to jazz on record, only took up saxophone to make a living, and felt alienated playing traditional jazz for a period of years. All this is a buildup to the Big Moment in the following paragraphs:

Charlie’s horn first came alive in a chili house on Seventh avenue between 139th Street and 140th Street in December, 1939. He was jamming there with a guitarist named Biddy Fleet. At the time, Charlie says, he was bored with the stereotyped changes being used then.

“I kept thinking there’s bound to be something else,” he recalls. “I could hear it sometimes but I couldn’t play it.”

Working over “Cherokee” with Fleet, Charlie suddenly found that by using higher intervals of a chord as a melody line and backing them with appropriately related changes, he could play this thing he had been “hearing.” Fleet picked it up behind him and bop was born.

We arrive at the point at last: this is not a quote! It’s another Levin-Wilson paraphrase. The distinction is crucial, because this is as close as Bird ever came to explaining his musical thinking, let alone the nature of his breakthrough. As a paraphrase, then, there is good reason to doubt its accuracy, given all of the above.

Somewhere along the line, this paraphrase was converted into a quote, and it has remained so ever since. Here it is:

I remember one night before Monroe’s I was jamming in a chili house on Seventh Avenue between 139th and 140th. It was December, 1939. Now I’d been getting bored with the stereotyped changes that were being used all the time at the time, and I kept thinking there’s bound to be something else. I could hear it sometimes but I couldn’t play it.

Well, that night, I was working over Cherokee, and, as I did, I found that by using the higher intervals of a chord as a melody line and backing them with appropriately related changes, I could play the thing I’d been hearing. I came alive.

It’s clear to me that someone rewrote the Levin-Wilson paragraphs in the first person, rearranging and embellishing them to sound more speechlike. I have my own theory of the crime, with only circumstantial evidence to support it. The above quote comes directly from Nat Shapiro’s book, “Hear Me Talkin’ to Ya,” published in 1955. (Bird died that March.) The premise of that book was to tell the history of jazz in the words of the musicians who created it, and it’s composed entirely of first person accounts from a multitude of jazz players.

When it came to quoting Bird, though, Shapiro only had two sources: “Yardbird Flies Home” and “No Bop Roots in Jazz.” To his credit, all the other Bird quotes he appropriated from these two sources are verbatim, but his motive for transforming the Levin-Wilson chili house paraphrase into a quote couldn’t be clearer. Presumably, “Hear Me Talkin’ to Ya,” became the common source for this “quote” thereafter, the book being easier to get hold of than a fleeting Down Beat article.

We will never know exactly how Bird described his “Cherokee” revelation in his own words. Unfortunately, the Levin-Wilson paraphrase stops short of making sense–the authors weren’t musicians–and yet there are still enough clues to take a serious guess at what Bird was talking about. A little hubris is all that’s required.

I know just the guy.

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