Charlie Parker

Charlie Parker

Charlie Parker

Introduction

The paper discusses about Charlie Parker in a holistic context. It attempts to provide an insight into the life of Charlie Parker and his biography. The paper also discusses Charlie Parker as an extraordinarily talented American in the field of music.

Discussion

Birth and Childhood

Charlie Parker was born in Kansas City in the year 1920. His father was an artist of vaudeville and his mother was a nurse. Charlie Parker had an older brother who worked as a postal employee at the Kansas City post office. The young Charlie played tenor horn in the brass band in high school (Woideck, 2003).

Entering the World of Music

Parker made his debut in Kansas City in 1937 with the orchestras of Lawrence Keyes, Harlan Leonard and Jay McShann, and with it arrives on the scene in New York in 1941. At that time he had already begun to develop his personal style that starting from roots swing and blues brings the African-American music characterized by a unique development and improvisational daring harmonic substitutions and greater attention to the rhythm. This style, later influenced many musicians to learn a real language that later became known as Be Bop (Koch, 1999).

By the year 1947, Parker moved permanently to New York and began working with the best musicians on the scene, especially with his alter-ego, trumpeters Dizzy Gillespie. The group of Parker and Gillespie performs primarily on the premises on Fifty Road including the Three Deuces and The Onyx. In the 1949 session that brings together the stars of the label Metronome, Parker confronts the excellent scores of Lennie Tristano (Victory Ball) and Pete Rugolo (Overtime), as well as with the best soloists of the period (Koch, 1999).

In the year 1949, followed several recordings with strings, oboe and harp, which were published under the title “Charlie Parker ...