Charlie Parker I: "Hot House"

By: Bernard Chazelle

America has produced many geniuses, none greater than Charlie (Bird) Parker. Nobody plays bebop today, just as no one speaks Latin, but Bird and his associates wrote the grammar of modern jazz. What you hear today in any jazz club is what bebop begat, its progeny.

Downbeat Magazine, a prominent jazz publication with a long, storied, racist tradition, awarded Bird and Dizzy Gillespie their annual trophies for 1951.

"You boys got anything more to say?"

Funny the "boys" have yet to utter a single word when they are asked if they have more to say. Ain't too sure how people talked in the 50s but I bet Isaac Stern was never addressed as "You boy" by a conductor at Carnegie Hall. This relentless lack of respect literally killed Charlie Parker, who shared with the likes of Mozart and Proust the inner certainty that he was a genius, yet one never satisfied with his work. Like Mozart, he was blessed with a phenomenal musical memory. He would read a long, complex score only once and memorize every chord change. The only musician on earth Charlie Parker could not outplay was his idol and mentor, Art Tatum.

"Hot House" is based on a Cole Porter chord progression. (Many bebop tunes were inspired by Broadway musicals.) It adheres to the classical format of the genre. First, you've got the unison head (0:50-1:28): a signature bebop device that (IMHO) must have been invented to dull your mind before the amazing solo hits you on the head! (Mozart himself was no stranger to these borderline-manipulative games of contrast.) Note how the pianist, Dick Hyman, completes Diz's unresolved ending at 2:50. That's a beautiful jazz tradition that you rarely (never?) see in classical music.

Beginning at 3:30, the drummer and the horns "trade fours" (ie, they all take turns playing 4 bars). Jazz was always terribly competitive. Ruthlessly so. Bird, no precocious prodigy, paid his dues the hard way. Basie's drummer, Jo Jones, nearly decapitated him after he'd screwed up a double-timing transition. "I'll be back," muttered Bird to himself, "I'll teach these cats." He did. As they say in the Midwest, if you can make it in Kansas City, you can make it anywhere.

Behind the magic chemistry between Bird and Diz lay an intense rivalry. Next to the self-indulgent, irresponsible genius that was Bird, Dizzy Gillespie was the calm, mature leader (as well as a nonpareil virtuoso). Trading fours in bebop was always understood as a dialogue... or a wrestling match. Pay attention closely and you'll see how each musician responds to the previous one, or even to the one before that. There is a hot unmoderated debate going on, of the kind you won't see in this election season.

The drummer, Charlie Smith, borrows techniques pioneered by Kenny Clarke and Max Roach. He uses the ride and hi-hat (the cymbaly thingies) to mark the tempo while the bass drum is used for accents (eg, dropping "bombs") and his snare (the little table in front of him) "chatters" along. Bebop's use of chord substitutions was a radical departure from the swing era, but never forget that the true revolution in bebop was rhythmic, not harmonic.

Around the time this video was recorded, Bird's daughter, Pree, was born. Two years later, she was dead of pneumonia. Her death sent him into a tailspin from which he never recovered. One botched suicide attempt and many shots of Scotch and heroin later, Charlie Parker died at the New York home of Baroness Pannonica de Koenigswarter (an amazing woman I hope to blog about some day). He was 34.

— Bernard Chazelle