For Bird’s 100th, a Bibliophile’s Guide to Big-Hearted Books

By: Karla Deel

“To Jay McShann,” writes Stanley Crouch in Kansas City Lightning: The Rise and Times of Charlie Parker, “Parker seemed to have a crying soul, a spirit as troubled by the nature of life as it was capable of almost unlimited celebration.”

Read it again: A spirit as troubled by the nature of life as it was capable of almost unlimited celebration. Charlie Parker contained multitudes. A lifetime of pain punctuated by an accumulation of real moments of ecstasy. The glorified highlights of his life unfolded a little something like this: Genius alto-saxophonist born in Kansas City, Kansas, who revolutionized music and blew his horn to international fame, left several broken marriages in his wake only to die young, addled and addicted. But where is the ordinary Charlie Parker? Who was the man in between his milestones and out of the limelight? What was the world like around him? To him? How did his lovers, friends, and peers see him? What were the social contexts and constraints of his time? Are there books written about this stuff?

This shy little boy hailing from the heartland, survived a Depression-era childhood, came of age in a corrupt city hellbent on profiting off the backs of its Black culture—which Parker propelled to the world stage—changed the landscape of music forever, reaching “Black Broadway” then beyond to pack out the most famous houses in New York City, blowing the roofs off the joints with ease, only to succumb to death the way he did, and so young. Maybe that tells us everything. Parker lived too many lifetimes in his short 35 years.

To those who were close to him, to those who celebrated the wild career of this charismatic, erratic, jazzman, to those who’d spend the nights dancing and sweating in the clubs ‘til dawn, and to those who knew his grit and tenacity to survive dire lows, the idea of Parker burning out in a blaze of drugs and alcohol must have seemed plausible—he tugged his dark shadow around like an albatross for all to see. But also, in a word, his death was shocking. When he died, the entirety of the world mourned. Biographers, historians and writers have spent the past 65 years upturning the many truths behind Parker’s life and death. His truths are melancholy ones, as are those of most revolutionaries.

Headlines leading up to his death explored his deterioration as follows: “Is Parker Washed Up?” (Melody Maker, December 26, 1953) ; “Bird on the Run” (Metronome, March 1954) “Bird Attempts Suicide on the Eve of Tour,” (Melody Maker, September 18, 1954) ; and again, newspapers and magazines the world over relayed the sad news of his death: “Sudden Death of Charlie Parker,” (Melody Maker, March 19, 1955), “Fallen Bird,” (Melody Maker, 1955), “Troubled Genius,” (Melody Maker, March 26, 1955), “Farewell to Bird,” (Melody Maker, 1955), “Jazz World Mourns the Loss of Charlie Parker,” (Downbeat, 1955), and “Parker Finally Finds Peace,” (Downbeat, 1955).

There should be little surprise that thousands of articles and many books have been written about Charlie Parker. The myths and legends surrounding this genuine musical genius continue to develop. We all keep trying to understand him and celebrate and mourn him by tracing the path of his improvised life to get to an end that feels right. We might never be able to do that. It is said that nothing new can be written about him. No new insight is to be had. That might also be true, but the book titles below, to this writer anyway, offer three distinct ways of deeply witnessing the life and times of the man known fondly as Bird.

The first of its kind to be written about Charlie Parker by a Black writer, Kansas City Lightning, the Rise and Times of Charlie Parker, is delivered by Stanley Crouch, a jazz historian, author and poet known for outspoken, from-the-hip commentary on music and culture who crafts each sentence with the punch and power of a poet. Here, he delivers an evocative deep dive into the life of the man we all think we know so well.

Crouch takes you into the scene at every turn. You’ll feel the sweat on the horn blower’s brow and the exhaustion of overnight drives slapping your cheeks to keep from swerving off road. You’ll arrive in a new city, jetting to a club, blowing, jamming, ripping through songs late into the night, fueled by drugs in your veins coated in the scent of endorphins. That’s how you’ll experience this book, right in the action at every turn. You’ll feel it all. This is the kind of book that leaves you totally satisfied. Served up neat and perfectly portioned.

Of the musicians of the era, Crouch states over and over that “they were jazzmen,” like a secret handshake is needed to even utter the phrase. He speaks of them with such reverence for their toughness you get the feeling the boys could wrestle a grizzly bare-handed. These were jazzmen, let it linger on your tongue, and Charlie Parker was a Messiah among them “sweating like a waterfall” night after night delivering his message as if he were on a mountaintop.

The sentences roll on and perfectly so, recreating the details of the jazzman’s mind as shining like Klondike gold. He refers to the energy of the music as the nappy-necked lighting of jazz. Parker’s friend Glasco is described as easily black enough to knock the daylight out of the sky with his fist. And Parker’s mom Addie had eyes as hard as cherry pits.

The book is full to the brim with stories about Charlie Parker’s life that you don’t want to miss out on. You’ll learn about his boyhood through stories of Cabbage Night, where he and his friends would ransack cabbage patches and hurl the biggest heads on to porches. Or how they’d wait year-round for Halloween to go to Eighteenth and Vine to watch the Parade of Homosexuals in dresses and falsies.

This must read will take you on a serious journey leading you though many sequences that provide a wider lens view of all the gritty aspects of the Jazz Age, and of Parker’s life and plight of being a black man in mid-century America.

In Queering Kansas City Jazz, Gender, Performance and the History of a Scene, author and associate professor of anthropology and director of McClure Archives at the University of Central Missouri, Amber R. Clifford-Napolene shines a spotlight on the people most Kansas City jazz historians paint in the background, if at all. The first sentence sets the book apart stating that “this is not a book about jazz,” and that is true. This is a book magnifying the underground of the jazz scene, looking at the wives of the male jazz musicians, often musicians themselves; the prostitutes, drag performers, female impersonators, gender benders, table singers, burlesque dancers, and entertainers who helped deliver an overlying context of pleasure, elation and a genuine, soul-deep fulfillment that defined our particular jazz culture and catapulted our great city into the national spotlight. Clifford-Napolene criticizes the way historians have created a grand narrative immortalizing male jazz musicians, including Charlie Parker, without looking deeply into the backdrop of issues surrounding gender, sexuality, race, and class. How can we celebrate and fantasize about the Jazz Age without celebrating and fantasizing about all aspects of who created it?

If you can get out from underneath the elevated academic language of the text, then you’ll find Clifford-Napolene there to help you transcend a one-dimensional story line about Kansas City Jazz. You’ll find an extraordinarily fresh look at Kansas City’s jazz scene, including a celebration of those who deserve so much more than to be viewed as mere commodities and products of a scene, and to be immortalized, instead, for creating the scene. Clifford-Napolene asks readers to suspend what they think they know about the story of Kansas City Jazz and its music joints, culture, and people and settle in for a riveting ride through the subcultures who were forced into the “margins of our social histories.”

Through a series of mini essays, you’ll get to know the man behind the myth with first-hand reminiscence by those close to him. Bird, The Legend of Charlie Parker by Robert George Reisner offers a glimpse into the smaller moments that made up Charlie Parker’s life. You’ll feel as if you are sitting on the couch hearing these stories directly from those who shared his life with him.

Aptly titled, this work is less biography and more a romp through the strange life and times of a larger-than-life legend. But don’t let that turn you off. There are great and powerful moments of real insight into the deeper interior life of Parker. In a straight-talk essay, Angelo Ascangi, who looked after Parker’s kids, writes that Parker did not enjoy the doe-eyed way America worshiped the jazz musician as an African genius with uninhibited power. The truth, he says, is that Bird just wanted to be treated as a human being, not a minstrel buffoon.

Pietro Carbone, proprietor of one of the most unusual shops in Greenwich Village, knew Parker for fifteen years and describes him as founded in the past due to his love of ancient music Carbone played in the curiosity shop. In a later essay, Doris Parker, whom he married in Tijuana in 1948, argues against the misconceptions about her late husband, some of which might surprise you. The stories go on and you’ll hear from musicians, producers, club owners and various others who experienced Parker personally. This book might not be a highly acclaimed, journalistic work of art, but it has real soul and delivers on its willingness to uplift and express the many voices from Parker’s short life.

The final pages include a comprehensive discography which is entirely valuable in and of itself.  

Happy 100th Birthday, Bird…We will continue to try and get it right, holding vigil for all the wrong doings along the way!

Karla Deel

Karla Deel, the blogger behind Kansas City history-based website SqueezeBoxCity.com, recently published her first book. Storied and Scandalous Kansas City: A History of Mischief, Corruption and a Whole Lot of Booze. Deel also serves on the Jackson County Historical Society board, volunteers for several local nonprofits, practices Kundalini yoga, eats vegan food, drinks red wine and makes mischief with her daughter, Salem.

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