Charles Parker Jr.
Arts & Music • Historical Archive • 🇺🇸 United States • 7 views

Charles Parker Jr. 🇺🇸

Charlie Parker (Known as "Bird / Yardbird / Co-Creator of Bebop")
Jazz Alto Saxophonist, Composer, Co-Founder of Bebop
Born 29 August 1920 🇺🇸 Kansas City (Kansas), United States
Passed Away 12 March 1955 New York City, United States
Lifespan 34 years old
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Notice / Correction
"Music is your own experience, your thoughts, your wisdom. If you don't live it, it won't come out of your horn. They teach you there's a boundary line to music. But, man, there's no boundary line to art."

Archival Overview

Legendary alto saxophonist and co-inventor of Bebop with Dizzy Gillespie, whose blistering tempos, chromatic substitutions, and soaring improvisational logic revolutionized 20th-century music.

Biographical Record

Charles 'Yardbird' Parker Jr. (1920–1955) grew up in Kansas City listening to Count Basie and Lester Young. In December 1939, jamming in a Harlem chili house over the chord changes to 'Cherokee', Parker experienced a breakthrough: 'I found that by using the higher intervals of a chord as a melody line and backing them with appropriately related changes, I could play the thing I'd been hearing.'

Alongside trumpet virtuoso Dizzy Gillespie, pianist Thelonious Monk, and drummer Kenny Clarke at Minton's Playhouse, Parker birthed Bebop. Playing at blinding tempos with breathtaking rhythmic asymmetry, complex flatted fifths, and chromatic substitutions on standards like Ko-Ko, Ornithology, and Yardbird Suite, Parker transformed jazz forever from dance music into high art. The legendary New York jazz club Birdland was named in his honor.

Key Life Milestones

26 November 1945 CE

The Historic Savoy 'Ko-Ko' Recording Session

Recorded Ko-Ko with Miles Davis and Max Roach, officially introducing the bebop revolution to vinyl.

15 May 1953 CE

The Quintet: Jazz at Massey Hall in Toronto

Performed in Toronto with Dizzy Gillespie, Bud Powell, Charles Mingus, and Max Roach in 'The Greatest Jazz Concert Ever'.

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Final Resting Place

Perpetual Memorial
Lincoln Cemetery (Charlie Parker Memorial Grave)
New York City, United States
GPS: 39.0728, -94.5028
View on Memory Atlas
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