Home » Jazz Articles » Charlie Parker
Jazz Articles about Charlie Parker
Various Artists: The Birth of Bop
by Richard J Salvucci
Someone famously called jazz the sound of surprise, but all too often, what is on offer is the dull hum of routine. Or something like that. This historic reissue is, however, anything but routine. This is not the first time that Teddy Reig's Savoy sides have been reissued (was he also the mysterious Buck Ram listed as producing one track?), but Craft Recordings took a lot of trouble to produce this very fine selection. If a listener were, ...
Continue ReadingBebop, Beats, and the Drive of Beat Literature
by Arthur R George
"Mulberry-eyed girls in black stockings, Smelling vaguely of mint jelly and last night's bongo drummer... fling their arrow legs / To the heavens / Losing their doubts in the beat" of San Francisco nights, announced poet Bob Kaufman's “Bagel Shop Jazz." (Solitudes Crowded with Loneliness, New Directions Publishing, 1965; Collected Poems of Bob Kaufman, City Lights, 2019) “Angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night,.. floating across the tops of cities ...
Continue ReadingCharlie Parker: Remastered Highlights From His Peak Years
by Chris May
Charlie Parker's recorded legacy has been repackaged, reissued, reshuffled and refried so often that newbies and connoisseurs alike are spoilt for choice. Parker's oeuvre has not been meaningfully remixed, however, due to the technical constraints attached to late 1930s through early 1950s recordings--but much of it has been remastered, sometimes with excellent results. Not one of the remastered collections released since digitization, however, delivers the splendiferous sonics of four Celebrating Bird At 100 discs released by the Swiss-based ezz-thetics label ...
Continue ReadingGuido Michelone: Il Jazz e le idee
by Emmanuel Di Tommaso
Il Jazz e le idee Guido Michelone 297 pagine ISBN: 978-88-6231-714-6 Arcana Edizioni 2020 In che modo la musica jazz si relaziona al mondo? Com'è interrelata alle altre musiche ed espressioni artistiche? Che relazioni ha con le idee intese come fenomeni umani? E, più specificamente, che cos'è esattamente un'idea? Ad un primo sguardo, queste potrebbero sembrare domande filosofiche nel senso più astratto del termine. In realtà, ne Il Jazz e le idee, Guido ...
Continue ReadingCharlie Parker: Be Bop Live
by Mark Corroto
The name of the record label is ezz-thetics, which was also a composition by George Russell and an album of the same name (which featured Eric Dolphy) released by Riverside Records in 1961. Maybe a better moniker for the label is “Lest We Forget." Not that we could ever abandon Charlie Parker, but today when streaming services replace CDs and LPs, which also replaced 78s and live radio broadcasts (the streaming service of its day), Parker has the possibility of ...
Continue ReadingCharlie Parker Quintets: Be Bop Live
by Stefano Merighi
Benvenuti a uno dei convegni di bellezza più eccitanti che il jazz abbia mai prodotto. Royal Roost, New York City, dicembre 1948-febbraio 1949, due mesi in cui Charlie “Bird" Parker teneva il cartellone nel club della Quarantasettesima, sconvolgendo il pubblico con alcune tra le sue esibizioni più brillanti. Il bop era già linguaggio assimilato ormai, ma l'eccezionalità di quelle serate confermava Parker come punta di diamante di tutta la cultura africana-americana, al di là delle correnti jazzistiche.Questo doppio ...
Continue ReadingChasin' the Bird: Charlie Parker in California
by Douglas Groothuis
Chasin' the Bird: Charlie Parker in California David Chisholm: writing drawing and lettering; Peter Markowski: colors 144 Pages ISBN: 978-1940878386 (13) Z2 Comics 2020 History remembers (and misremembers) the greats of human achievement. They are celebrated, critiqued, deemed over-rated, deemed under-rated, interpreted, and reinterpreted through myriad forms of expression, such as books, articles, films, poems, and plays. Charlie Parker (aka Bird), the alto saxophonist and composer, is one such great as a pioneer ...
Continue Reading
