(jazz music) (jazz music) - When I hear Charlie Parker, what goes through my mind is the epitome of what jazz is supposed to be.

We're talking about an unbelievable amount of soul.

We're talking about a guy that is able to express himself so purely.

(jazz music) - The beauty of his sound, it's very beautiful, very lyrical, and his clarity in his communication of ideas from his mind through his heart, to his horn, the connection sounds and feels complete.

(jazz music) - I would put it like maybe George Orwellian to where he really is a future teller, it's there, sure, documented in 1947, but really it's like so far valid beyond 2027.

There's an entire universe that exists inside of what he presents within a five second span, even less, to be honest.

(jazz music) - You Google great alto saxophone break and what comes up is what he did when Dizzy Gillespie and him recorded "Night in Tunisia".

A break in the song, that's where at the end of the chorus, they give you two bars or four bars, sometimes even eight bars to enter your solo.

(scat singing) Three, four.

What he did in them four bars, everybody is still talking about him.

Google it, don't listen to me.

(jazz music) (jazz music) - Charlie Parker was born August 29th, 1920 at 852 Freeman in Kansas City, Kansas.

And it was a two bedroom apartment above a grocery store.

And his grandmother lived up the hill and his half brother lived up the hill and they'd get together and play in front of his house.

He called his half brother Ikey.

And he lived there until 1927 when his family moved to Kansas City, Missouri.

(jazz music) - Bird had those experiences similar to the ones I had, elementary school band, starting an instrument early, those things, music was very strong back then and that's part of being in Kansas City, having a strong instrumental program.

- Charlie first picked up the saxophone when he was in fifth grade, when the Kansas School District instituted the music program in Penn school.

And his mother bought him a $40 horn in a pawn shop and Lawrence Keyes described as being ragged as a pet monkey.

He grew up in the heyday of Kansas City jazz, when he was coming up, Bennie Moten was really at its peak, the Moten band was at its peak.

(jazz music) Kansas city was a hotbed for jazz because the Pendergast prosperity, the government fostered vice in corruption.

And there were clubs stretching from the river to out South in the County to 75th street.

Mary Lou Williams recalled 50 clubs featuring live, usually between 12th and 18th street and vices of all kinds were available.

On 15th street was the red light district to stretch for blocks.

From downtown 12th street was just a line of clubs.

Dave Dexter estimated there were as many as 20 clubs in a single block.

We were also gambling in the front windows and any kind of vice you wanted, marijuana was readily available as was narcotics.

And so musicians from the Southwestern territories came to Kansas City where they could find work.

- It's inconceivable to imagine a Charlie Parker being born in Oklahoma or Philly or any place else, and being able to nurture his art on that level.

And not that there wasn't great jazz going on in Philly or a lot of other places, but here in Kansas city at that time, when you have all this row of clubs and they're going all night long, seven days a week.

- And he began playing as a teenager when he was 15 years old.

his first group was called 10 Cords of Rhythm, later the 12 Chords of Rhythm, a group led by Lawrence Keyes, it played well right across the street at 18th and Vine in the Lincoln building at Lincoln Hall.

And it was a kid band and they were nonunion, but they made more money than union members because they played for the door.

And it was a very popular hall for Lincoln High School students.

And so they would pack the place and that's really where he got his start professionally.

(soft music) (jazz music) (jazz music) (jazz music) - I've been listening to Charlie Parker since I was, well, ever since I can remember, he was a friend of my father and my mother.

So he used to drive us down through all the areas where the cherry blossom and where the Reno Club and the Hey Hey Club, he used to tell us about these places.

- His favorite roost was a balcony above the Reno Club bandstand where the marijuana smoked from the Basie Band smoking reefers on the bandstand would waft upstairs.

- This was their heyday, they tell us about the all night jam sessions and the Reno club where you could buy reefer in it and stuff, that's part of the menu.

(jazz music) He came from an era that was very unforgiving too.

And I know that just from listening to my father and his friends talk about me.

And so, I mean, I didn't get a free pass with my dad and his friends when I was learning how to play.

Either you saying something or you not and I'm sure Charlie Parker's era because these were the guys of his era, that were molding my way of thinking.

- In spring of 1936, he sat in on a jam session at the Reno Club where the Basie Band was playing and he faltered while soloing on "Honeysuckle Rose" forgot the changes and Joe Jones threw a cymbal at his feet.

- Do you know, everybody wants to talk about when Charlie Parker got gonged by Joe Jones, but the part that you don't realize is he was back the next night or the week later.

And he had done that and it's this particular Joe Jones said, "I can't hear this no longer."

But it don't mean that he can't come back, it just means, "Okay, we've had enough tonight, Bird, "got to go."

- He was publicly humiliated, but also it inspired him to go to the woodshed as musicians would say to practice his horn.

So he retreated at the Addie's house and he played his horn sometimes 12 to 14 hours a day.

And he said he would never get caught short again.

So Joe Jones actually did him a big favor by humiliating him publicly.

♪ They like WHDH - [Paul] Another thing that's been a major factor in your playing is this fantastic technique that nobody's quite equal to.

I always wondered about that too, whether that came behind practicing or whether that was just from playing, whether it evolved gradually.

- [Charlie] Well, you make it so hard for me to answer, because I can't see whether there's anything fantastic about it at all.

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 we were living out West.

She said I was driving them crazy with the horn, I used to put in at least 11 to 15 hours a day.

- [Paul] Yeah, that's what I wondered.

- [Charlie] That's true, yes.

So I did that for over a period of three or four years.

- If you listen to the precision, the specific nature of everything, the dexterity you can't do that without thousands of hours of practice in a particular isolated space and thousands of hours of actual application in public or whatever type of wide communal spaces with other people.

That's the only way you get to that level.

Natural talent only serves you so far, hard work is the thing that really is like the germinating factor for the seed that you're you're planting in the ground.

- [Charlie] Study is absolutely necessary in all forms.

It's just like any talent that's born within somebody, it's just like a good pair of shoes when you put a shine on it, you know?

Like schooling brings out the polish of any talent, that happens anywhere in the world.

Einstein had schooling, but he has a definite genius within himself.

Schooling is one of the most wonderful things there's ever been.

- Everybody knew Charlie Parker would be down in the park back then they used to call it Persale Park, now they call it Parade Park.

Back in Persale Park, he'd be practicing his horn in the afternoon, just in the park practicing.

Him and my dad were real good friends, he used to come my father, Sir James.

He used to go swing by the park and pick up Bird and Charlie Parker wouldn't miss a lead, he'd still keep practicing.

(scat singing) And so he'd be riding through the neighborhood in his convertible with my mom and Charlie Parker playing and in my mind, I'm like, oh my God.

(jazz music) That was just an example of how you always knew what Charlie Parker was doing.

He was always playing.

So he's at the park, practicing all day, sitting in the park all day playing and then at night he was bass in them struck up or Jay McShane or anybody, anybody that's got the hidden bands.

He'd go from place to place sitting in with everybody, all night long.

And so he lived it and he's a perfect example of artists living it.

I mean, and he said that, he said, "If you don't live it, it won't come out your horn."

(jazz music) - There a number of watershed incidents in Charlie's life.

He was on his way to a gig at Musser's Ozark Tavern, which was five miles South of Elgin, Missouri, and the car flipped over and threw him out of the car and it killed George Wilkerson, the leader, and threw his buddy, Ernie Daniel, 60 feet into a plowed field.

And it broke Charlie's ribs and it broke his back and it destroyed his horn.

So Mr. Musser bought him a new Selmer which gave him a lift, but it also gave him a habit because they prescribed heroin for his pain and he developed a taste for heroin and he struggled with that the rest of his life.

- And I feel like that other side is what people target a lot when they speak about Charlie Parker.

All I know is that what was left for me to examine is this wonderful body of work.

Genre wise, whatever I could ever sound like, it's only important that everyone knows it would not exist if it was not for Charlie Parker.

(jazz music) (jazz music) - It's so authentic, it's so real, it's so raw, it's perfect.

Even though it squeaks in the bad notes are perfect because that's what life is.

The scars that we get, they represent our experiences and Charlie Parker, when you hear him play, you hear the scars, you hear the laughter, you hear the pain, you hear the beauty, you hear all of it.

And there are very few musicians that can do it as obviously and as profound.

And he's not even a singer, he does it with an inanimate object.

When I reference my horn, I say, "I'm gonna go spend some time with my horn," versus, "I'm going to go practice my horn."

And that changes everything because the relationship with the instrument and my instrument in particular is a relationship, it's just that, it's not a practice session.

The instrument knows when you love it and it will beat you up if you take two weeks off and you try to come back, just like any relationship.

You don't call somebody for two weeks, you're supposed to call and they know that's the nature of your relationship.

You didn't do what you were supposed to do.

I mean, this horn has taken me all around the world, all the time, because the one thing that exists all around the world for sure are jazz festivals, jazz scenes, music, arts.

I can go anywhere in the world, not speak the language, but if I have this horn, I immediately will have a life.

(jazz music) (jazz music) Love you, Bird.

- Ultimately, all of this plumbing and metal and stuff is supposed to be an extension of you.

The ultimate goal is to express yourself, whether you're doing it with a trumpet or a saxophone or a piano.

In their time, it had no value to be able to say, "I sound just like Duke Ellington "or this guy here sounds just like Lester Young, "or he's just like pops."

That has really no value in the big picture of what jazz is about or any art.

I wanna hear you, I wanna get to know you.

So if you can paint just like Picasso, at best you can only become a second best Picasso.

(jazz music) (jazz music) (audience claps) - Our power is moving the air with sound, you know?

Listening to a record that moves the air too.

But being in front of the live music in a room where the air is being transformed and the molecules are being transformed by the sound, that's an experience, you know, live.

(soft music) - And then the third watershed period in his life is the summer of 1937 when he went with Georgia Lee's band back to Musser's Ozark Tavern.

And you know, that's an area known as little Dixie where shunned down communities, where African Americans better not be caught after dark.

And so they stayed on site and kept a low profile.

And Charlie spent all that summer practicing.

- Charlie Parker is somebody that was born basically right at World War I.

He lived and died only ever seeing black only and white only everything.

So he never knew anything else, except this.

(soft music) - That's the way it was and that's the way it still is.

It's not so overt and for a black person it'll drive you crazy, trying to keep your eye on what's real and hesitating to judge people and struggling to trust people while being on the lookout for the elephant in the room.

I think our biggest problem now, the unconscious racism.

I like to say racism, the unconscious racism.

To call somebody a racist, I think that's more extreme, that has a definition.

But racism shows itself in many ways without white people ever knowing.

- [Director] I grew up here.

Why didn't I learn about Charlie Parker growing up?

- Okay, let's have some real conversation.

I grew up in Kansas City, had it not been for my father.

I wouldn't even know about the history of Kansas City jazz.

One of the greatest jam sessions that ever took place in the history of jazz, took place right here in Kansas City around 18th and Vine street area, between Coleman Hawkins and Lester Young.

All of that was erased.

I think that the people that are influential in deciding the image that they want Kansas City to have wanted to erase that whole Pendergast era, the whole 18th and Vine Street, people going partying all night and jazz going on.

I think, they wanna be known as the city of fountains and they wanna have a statue of Winston Churchill on the Country Club Plaza.

Now I got nothing against fountains or Winston Churchill, but the bottom line is that, who has more to do with our authentic history, Charlie Parker or Winston Churchill?

What image do people think of worldwide when they think of Kansas City?

Do they think of jazz or do they think of the fountains?

Again, it's hard to not be somewhat blunt.

I think because a lot of it is black history.

- Because it was black music man, that's it, it's that simple.

We're influenced by what we see and what we hear.

I mean, I wish I could think of another reason.

I don't have to get angry, I don't need a soap box.

I don't need a podium because that's not what I'm about.

When people come to the gig, they wanna hear music, but you still have an obligation to make them think, to make them reminisce, to make them dream, to make them forget.

That's our job and that's our calling.

And that's what I heard from Bird, and as we circle back that's all in Bird, what I'm talking about.

The jazz musicians, the Charlie Parker in them that's why when they got on a stage and they played, that was a beacon of hope and light.

And you can see all that, their pain and their struggle and their triumph over adversity, that's what that was.

- When they asked me about Bird, I hear triumph over adversity.

And it was in all of them.

Some people like to step around things, you can't.

You gotta go through things to get to yourself because no one just rises out of the ground.

You got to come through something.

- Back to Musser's Ozark Tavern, Charlie spent all that summer practicing and he began experimenting with the changes and different harmonic approach that would lead to bebop.

He learned all the chords and all the inversions when he was down there, he mastered his horn and returned to Kansas City, just a musically changed man.

(jazz music) (jazz music) (jazz music) - He was one of the fellas and even the way he got that nickname, that tells you who he was, he's a country boy.

- In 1930, there was a stage production at Penn School and Charlie and the other kids were out playing in the yard, the other boys were up playing in the yard.

And the band director, music director said, "Hey, you little yard birds," talking about chickens, "get in here."

And Charlie who loved chickens, got a kick out of it.

And so he began referring to chickens as yard birds.

And in the fall, I think it was of 1940.

The McShann Band was on its way to play for Big Red up in Lincoln, Nebraska.

And they were traveling caravan style in cars.

And the Charlie was riding in, ran over chicken and he begged the driver to come back, to go back and retrieve the bird.

- You're riding in the car, you hit a chicken, you say, "Whoa, whoa, stop, I want that.

"One man's road kill is another man's meal."

See what I mean?

They hit a chicken, he decided we were gonna pick it up.

And when they get to where they're going he got the lady to cook it for him, that was why they started calling him Yard bird, which eventually got to be Bird.

(jazz music) - In those big bands, they were primarily playing for dancers.

Duke and Count Basie, a lot of their gigs, in fact, all their gigs, probably, were dance gigs.

(jazz music) And so that means people were listening with their bodies.

And I think the difference between that era and the bebop cats, they wanted people to listen with their ears, not just feel the music, but hear the music.

- I think that's why so many intellectuals and beatniks, hip cats we're all attracted to it and artists.

Because it was an original expression of music.

And it forced you to listen.

You know the whole thing about chasing the bird.

If you heard Bird, he would immediately get your attention and you would immediately focus on him because of what was coming out of his horn.

(jazz music) (jazz music) - The tempo went up and then the melodies got more complicated, like for instance, this is like swing era.

(jazz music) You know, and then Bird then took that same progression and he sped it up and he put another melody on top of it so he wouldn't have to pay royalties.

So then you get like, I think it's "Scrapple from the Apple".

(jazz music) (jazz music) That's the difference right there.

The tempo and the melodies were more rhythmic, you know?

And then they were original material.

They wrote a lot of original material in the bebop era.

- Charlie was playing bebop in Kansas City, Claude Williams and James Shan both told me that.

The older musicians, there was no name for it then, and he was really the pioneer.

And the older musicians called it crazy music.

There's a couple of recordings of him performing one called "Honeysuckle Rose", "Body and Soul" that was probably recorded in 1938.

It shows him moving in that direction.

And recently we came across a recording of him playing.

"I'm Getting Sentimental Over You", in February of 1941, where he goes in and out of keys, uses 16th, knows all the tricks of the trade are there in his solo, it was quite a revelation.

(jazz music) (jazz music) (jazz music) - He'd been smoking reefers and drinking for a number of years.

But when he got that taste of heroin he- And heroin was readily available.

A musician called Bud Calvert talked about how he would take Charlie down to Columbus Park, the score is heroin.

Kansas City was wide open, so anything was available.

And I think one of the reasons he left is because he left about the same time the clean up occurred and sources of heroin dried up and also gigs dried up, that's one of the things that drove him out of town.

(jazz music) (jazz music) - Everybody had to get to New York, and I think Monk was a big magnet for these young people.

He provided validation, cover and opportunities and freedom for these young folks to play.

And they formed a community and they shared their ideas.

Miles went there from St. Louis.

A lot of people came from other places to go to New York.

(jazz music) (jazz music) - One of the difficult things about getting to the essence of Charlie Parker is stripping away the myths that's been wrapped around him over the years.

- And it sounds more like monotype a foot in the forest, like a little bit.

You're talking about how he always kept Stravinsky's "Firebird Suite" in his back pocket.

- The house was almost full as Charlie Parker quintet walked onto the band stand, the trumpeter, Red Rodney, recognized Stravinsky.

So he whispered over to Bird, "Hey, Stravinsky's sitting there."

Charlie Parker immediately called, and it's customary that he would do this.

Coco, is built on the car changes a Cherokee.

Back then that was one of the, that's still like a rite of passage song.

Said he played at over 300 beats per minute.

So he's (clapping) (scat singing) I can't even hardly hum it.

(scat singing) Okay, in the middle of this fast song, Charlie Parker, jumps in his solo and he's going at this breakneck speed and then at the beginning of his second chorus, he inserted the opening of Stravinsky's "Firebird Suite".

("Firebird Suite" playing) ("Firebird Suite" playing) How do you do that?

How do you think so fast?

Stravinsky's in the audience.

Immediately Stravinsky started pounding the table and they said, the people that were there, they said that he knocked his drink all over the people sitting next to him.

People were like, you know?

But he was so blown away, he went to hear this jazz musician that he'd been hearing about.

And now to hear him live sitting up there, he's sitting out here and now all of a sudden at this breakneck speed in the middle of his improvisation, he plays one of his compositions, spontaneously.

I don't even know anybody that can do that kind of stuff.

And I've been playing my whole life and I'm over 30.

So it's like, I can do some things and I've known a lot of real good musicians.

I hear the great musicians of our time and I don't have to name people, we know who they are but- And I've been in jam sessions with some of them, but I don't know very many, that's hedging the bet.

I don't know any that could do that.

That I can honestly say, "I bet so-and-so could do that."

And he did this, this is just one story.

There are many stories that Dizzy Gillespie has told, Red Rodney has told, Louis Hayes, Art Blakey, all of his peers have told different things that he did in the middle of a solo in the night that made all of them say, "What?"

(jazz music) (jazz music) (jazz music) - He had an addictive personality and it did him in.

He flew very high for a very short period of time and so his third wife, Doris and his mother, Addie brought him back to Kansas City after the Memorial service in Harlem.

And he was buried here in Lincoln Cemetery.

According to family members, Addie buried him under a tree so he'd always be in the shade and wouldn't be hot during the summer.

And she wanted to be buried next to him too.

I mean, she loved Charlie.

She doted on Charlie and Charlie loved his mother, he called her every Sunday, regardless of where he was.

And so in a lot of ways, it was right that he came back here.

- But here in Kansas City, you go out to his grave, you can't find it.

There's no proper marker at that cemetery, I've been out several times.

There's a tenor saxophone engraved on his grave instead of an alto saxophone, there's no headstone.

If you go to Pere Lachaise, the famous cemetery in Paris, go and look at Chopin's grave site.

It's like a whole, it's not even a memorial, it's literally like a small church itself.

You know what I mean?

But it's just this tiny, but it's so majestic.

And I feel like we don't take advantage of these things in which we could.

We could be better.

(jazz music) (jazz music) (jazz music) - There's music before Charlie Parker, there's music after Charlie Parker.

Like Mozart, he's a transitional figure.

And he not only influenced the subsequent generations of musicians, he influenced writers, he influenced painters, poets, dancers, he influenced all art.

- There would be no Jimmy Hendrix without Charlie Parker.

There's no Donny Hathaway without Charlie Parker.

There's no Basquiat without Charlie Parker, it doesn't exist.

It's clear, like no one would even debate that.

It's hard to get people to really understand this base because I think that once you're in that deep, you realize that there's no isolating him without looking at the broad level in which he reached.

- He's easily the biggest icon from Kansas City.

I mean, when I started traveling, going to Japan and Europe, when I mention I'm from Kansas City, the first thing they say is, "Oh Charlie Parker, Charlie Parker."

- It's like it didn't matter what part of the world I'm at, Charlie Parker, he has reached a level that we all want to attain as artists.

- Hi, my name is Eugene Cantera, I play saxophone.

I love the album, "Charlie Parker plays Cole Porter" so much that I named my son Parker Cole.

- I remember as a young teenager, listening to Charlie Parker particularly his LP "Charlie Parker With Strings" the song, "April in Paris", I was just hooked.

I've listened to that record more than 250 times, just lovely, just lovely.

- Hello from Manchester in the United Kingdom, I am Sam Q, a jazz saxophonist for almost 40 years.

I first got started playing saxophone when I listened to a record called "Scrapple from the Apple" from the great, great Charlie Parker, AKA The Bird.

His skill and dexterity and substitution of codes was immense.

Without Charlie Parker, jazz would not have gone into the modern day era.

He's a pioneer and a great figure in jazz music.

- The first time I knew something about Charlie Parker, was when I started my career in jazz school.

And he was just an experience every time.

I listened to "Lady Bird" but it was more important that Charlie took media radically to "Make it Just So", "Make it Just So" is not just only to play at random notes, it's to speak with an instrument, it's to feel.

(foreign language) (foreign language) Bird lives!

- I don't hear any of those bebop guys and I like all of them.

None of them swung quite like Charlie Parker and that, that's a Kansas City thing.

Yeah I said it.

(laughs) I said it, it's a Kansas City thing.

(laughs) (jazz music) - [Director] I gotta get a picture of you.

(jazz music)