Thursday, June 15, 2006

Bird on a tightrope

Brian Priestley's "Chasin' the Bird: The Life and Legacy of Charlie Parker," Oxford University Press, says Parker played with a plastic alto sax in his later years because no self-respecting pawn shop would take take it in hock. Hence, he'd have a horn to play when he got a gig.

I believe Charlie Parker, over and above being a substance abuser, clearly suffered from mental illness for which he'd be treated, independently of his addictions, today. One question in my mind is whether that contributed to his music's nature, just as one wonders in the case of van Gogh and his paintings; and how would treatment have changed his music, or would it have, if so?

Parker himself said drugs made it harder to do what he did, rather than serving as some sort of twisted muse. It's wrong that he still gets tarred (I think mostly by people who just parrot the same old line) as the root of the widespread use of heroin by jazz musicians during his era, for which there were other cultural and societal reasons. The evidence is that he discouraged younger guys like Red Rodney, Jackie McLean and Sonny Rollins from using and despaired when they did.

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