Sept 3 2007

Just a quick note to apologise for not being very active on the site recently. This year has been busy, and as Bird Lives is a hobby, it has had to take second place to putting food on the table. If there is anything that needs updating or correcting or news stories I am missing, or anything you would like more information about, please use the Contact section of the site, and I will respond as quickly as I can.

Bird Lives

May 2007

Kansas City Lightning - The Life and Times of the Young Charlie Parker by Stanley Crouch

IT APPEARS THIS BOOK ALSO HAS BEEN DELAYED. IT HAS BEEN REMOVED FROM RANDOM HOUSE'S ON-LINE CATALOGUE, AND AMAZON BOOKS ONLY LIST AN AUDIO CASSETTE AVAILABLE AUGUST 2008.

Here is the blurb from Randon House:

"From the brilliant and provocative cultural critic, a singularly engaging biographical meditation on the formative years (1920–1942) of one of the most influential—and troubled—musical geniuses of the twentieth century.

As a child learning the saxophone, Charles “Bird” Parker, Jr., became entranced by Kansas City nightlife (both the up-and-up and the corrupt) and its vibrant music. In Kansas City Lightning, Stanley Crouch makes clear how this environment deeply affected Parker and traces his evolution as a musician. We see Parker as a sideman with local bands, apprenticing with Buster Smith, touring the Southwest with Jay McShann’s band, moving to Harlem in 1937 as he pursues his career while holding down jobs as a busboy and dishwasher, and then joining McShann again in 1942 for the grand battle of the bands that would begin Bird’s ascendance to unparalleled celebrity.

But Crouch also goes below the narrative of Parker’s life to explore the very nature of the drive that both fueled his genius and presaged his downfall. In so doing, he has given us a thrillingly evocative, revelatory portrait of a legend in the making.

STANLEY CROUCH is the author of, among other books, The All-American Skin Game (nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award). A recipient of a MacArthur fellowship, he is a longtime staff writer for The Village Voice, has written for The New Republic and the New York Daily News, appears frequently on television and radio talk shows, and has served as artistic consultant to Jazz at Lincoln Center. He lives in New York City. "

The book will be reviewed here.

Charlie Parker and Jazz Club Memorabilia - The Norman R. Saks Collection

UPDATE: The book is now apparently available? More to come?

I have recently been granted permission to see a few pages of this new book cataloguing Norman Saks' entire collection of Charlie Parker and Jazz memorabilia. For those who don't know Norman Saks, he has been collecting all things Charlie Parker for many, many years. Some of his collection is available on this site, but the staggering amount of items in his collection covers recordings, acetates, autographs, photographs and other ephemera. This little seen, unique collection is now being documented by Ken Vail, of Bird's Diary fame, and the full colour book will hopefully be available next year. From what I have seen, it will be the most exciting Bird publication in recent years. More information when I have it.

24th January 2006 - The Charlie Parker Story - BBC 4 - Director: Tony Followell.

It is surprising that the fiftieth anniversary of Charlie Parker’s death was marked, not only by two BBC productions, but also a book, all of which were of British origin. Along with this new television documentary, the excellent Russell Davis radio series, Birdsong, and Brian Priestley’s reworking of his 1984 volume, Chasin’ the Bird, are all tributes that, (as far as I know), have been unmatched by anything substantial from Charlie’s home country?

Nevertheless, Tony Followell’s documentary, The Charlie Parker Story, perhaps benefits from this, allowing him a freedom to interpret information without the limitations of historical bias or over familiarity. The danger that the documentary may have lost its focus because of this is has been carefully managed and on closer examination reveals rigorous research. The closing credits catalogue an honour role of Parker authorities, mostly American, who have written and published their own articles or books about Charlie’s life and work. There are a few missing, Stanley Couch, Karl Woideck and Norman Saks spring to mind, but the wealth of information drawn upon make this the best documentary about Bird since the excellent Gidden’s DVD,Celebrating Bird. 

The documentary follows a chronological layout with music samples, acted parts, snatches of interviews from the several Charlie Parker radio interviews, interspersed with interviews with many eminent Parker scholars. Gary Giddins appears and, as usual is wonderfully enthusiastic. His depth of knowledge and understanding on the subject of Charlie and jazz are as profound as they are fascinating, as are his thoughts about the Parker track, 'Koko'.

Chuck Haddix, another Parker academic is also present and his discussions are full of details about Charlie’s life that underlie the vigorous research Haddix carries out in the libraries and archives of Kansas City. This research makes his book Kansas City Jazz such a remarkable document, his viewpoint is fresh and the originality of his work is as exciting as it is informative. 

The film also contains archive footage of interviews with people who were part of Charlie’s life, such as Doris Sydnor, filmed in the 1987 talking about her time with Bird; there’s a very short clip of Chan and a marvellous interview with Dizzy Gillespie, who eagerly and openly talks about Charlie and their music. Interviews taken for the film include a delightful Jay McShann retelling the story how Charlie gained his nickname, ‘Yardbird’, (which is still subject to doubt). In addition, such luminaries as James Moody, Jimmy Heath, Ira Gitler, Nat Hentoff, Antonio Hart, Mitch Miller, Phil Woods, Sheila Jordan (Duke’s wife), and Johnnie Garry (ex-manager of Birdland) all add their own slant to the story of Charlie Parker. 

There are also interviews with the English musicians Soweto Kinch, Peter King and Johnny Dankworth, and apart from revealing the documentary’s origins, the Dankworth memories of Parker in France and King’s musical examples of Charlie’s tunes show that Charlie’s music is alive and well in Britain.

There are also some rather puzzlingly interviews with relatives, who remarkably, seem to possess key insights about Charlie even though they had never met him, and there is also a peculiar part of the documentary where a rather unsympathetic Kim Parker, visits the apartment at Avenue B in New York where the Parker’s once lived. Her memories of her early childhood and the short time Charlie was a live display a remarkable, if not extraordinary clarity. In one scene, she leans through the door of a seedy looking bathroom and says in an almost dismissive voice, “Bird spent a lot of time in here, well, he was either setting the hamper on fire or doing something weird in here”. 

On the downside, the documentary skips over Charlie’s childhood, probably due to the time limitations of the film and other parts of the story are merged, or truncated. Charlie’s formative trip to New York ignores the stop in Chicago, and his final days with the Baroness were portrayed as occurring in a single day. 

The films use of blurred actors re-enacting key moments in Charlie’s life may have been rather artificial, but with the lack of footage of Charlie, and only audio interviews and music available, the director was probably reduced to this to help make the film run smoothly.

As an aside, to celebrate the first showing of this, BBC4 ran Clint Eastwood’s movie, Bird, after the screening of the documentary, and sadly, it looks extremely dated these days. However, it would appear that both Followell and Eastwood agreed at the key incidents in Charlie’s life as both cover pretty much the same ground. 

I am happy that the documentary did not dwell on the numerous anecdotes that are randomly trotted out whenever a discussion of Charlie Parker arises. However, the sixty-minute limitation seemed too short for the subject manner and there was a feeling that much had been cut to meet the timeframe. This was a shame, as The Charlie Parker Story could have benefited being in two hour long parts or one two hour film. Nevertheless, this was an admirable effort and my only wish was that this kind of journalism could have been carried out thirty years ago when many of the main protagonists were still alive.

Apparently there are no plans to release this documentary outside the UK and neither are there plans for a DVD version. If this changes, I will post the information here.
Bird Lives - London 2006

Francesco Cafiso - 20 November - London

I hadn't intended the site to cover non-Charlie related stuff, but last night I attended a gig in my favourite London jazz club, Pizza Express on Dean Street, where the 16-year-old Italian alto player, Francesco Cafiso played with a three-piece local group in a rare UK appearance. Last summer Cafiso played the Umbria Jazz Festival, where, using the original orchestrations specially shipped from the US, he performed Bird with Strings. My friend Gareth Marr and his wife Jane witnessed the Perugia event, though slightly reticent about the concept in the first place, said it was a remarkable and marvellous concert. With this in mind, I eagerly awaited the arrival onstage of Cafiso, who, aside from looking criminally young and more likely to be attending a Lazio or Roma football game rather than a small underground jazz club in London's Soho district, did not fail to impress. His technical ability is remarkable and one wonders what his life has been like up to this stage. He must have been immersed in jazz from a very early age. His tone was reminiscent of Art Pepper, and aside from a few licks, he refrained from indulging in any Parker tunes, but stuck mostly to originals. Obviously not comfortable with the English language, he said nothing between songs, but his musical communication with the local pick-up band, was excellent, especially with the awesome drummer, who's name I failed to write down!!(Troy Miller?) If you get a chance to see Francesco, I wholeheartedly recommend this saxophone player and advise keeping an eye on his development as he could turn out to be the best of his generation.

Visit Francesco's website www.francescocafiso.com

London 19 November 2005

First review of Brian Preistley's new book on Charlie, Chasin' the Bird, Equinox £16.99, from the Financial Times, London. The Sweet Yardbird by Mike Hobbard. Not sure about 'Parker's guitarist father', but a reasonable assessment of the book, which unfortunately perpetuates some Bird myths, and is sorely lacking the information from Chuck Haddix's book Kansas City Jazz.

Preistley writes very well, and this expanded version of his first stab at a Charlie Parker biography, originally published in 1984, only makes up about half the 242 pages, the rest is a 'complete' discography, which is rather a misnomer as the discography changes on a regular basis. There's musical analysis which appears to be rather similar to that which appeared in Carl Woideck's book, and before that in Thomas Owen's marvellous thesis. The photographs are wonderful and many sourced to Frank Driggs who also supplied many of the images for Chuck Haddix's book!! (There is a picture of Bird and Red Rodney with an 'unknown' person, who turns out to be Charles White!)

Overall a much better biography than Russell's and some others, but not one based on much original research other than his own interviews, it therefore rehashes much previously published literature. However grateful we may be that there is a new book about Charlie that keeps the flame buring, and that after fifty years his work is still a worthy subject for musical academics, this reader was left with a feeling that I had 'seen this movie before'. We're still waiting for a volume that can be seen as the master work on Charlie Parker.

Bird Lives. November 2005

Here is a much more detailed review of the book from Jazz Views including an interview with Brian Preistley.