Existing comment:
Charlie Parker, 1920-1955
Born Kansas City, Kansas
Saxophonist Charlie "Bird" Parker was a pioneer of mid-twentieth-century jazz and later the bebop movement. Even as a youngster Parker devoted many hours daily to practicing the saxophone and participated in jam sessions in Kansas City, Missouri's, popular nightclubs along Twelfth Street. By 1935 he had become a full-time musician and started developing an improvisational style that was instrumental in transforming jazz. Parker's deconstruction of traditional melodies allowed him to accelerate and lengthen the individual lines of his solos. His musical experimentation and mastery made him a sought-after performer across the United States and Europe, including France, Spain, and Sweden.
Photojournalist Dennis Stock captured this portrait of Parker during a 1950 jam session. The photograph was published in Stock's Jazz Street (1960), five years after Parker succumbed to the effects of drug and alcohol abuse at the age of thirty-four.
Dennis Stock, 1950 |