Bird: The Legend of Charlie Parker - Paperback

by Robert Reisner (Author)

More than to any other musician, the credit for the birth of modern jazz belongs to Charles "Yardbird" Parker--known to his friends and fans simply as "Bird."
Parker's virtuoso technique, melodic genius, and inspired improvisations helped launch a whole new era in jazz, an era that began with bop and culminated in the "cool" or modern jazz of the fifties. His brilliant handling of the alto saxophone inspired a generation of jazz musicians; without him, there would have been no John Coltrane, no Ornette Coleman, no jazz as we know it today.
Parker died in 1955 at the age of thirty-five. He left behind a rich legacy of musical innovation and a legend of self-destructive dissipation that made him a votive hero of the hipsters and the beat generation.

Back Jacket

For this first full-length reminiscence, Reisner interviewed eighty-one of Parker's friends, relatives, and fellow performers. From Charlie Mingus, one of the few real innovators since Bird, and Dizzy Gillespie, whom Parker once called 'the other half of my heart, ' to jazz historian Rudi Blesh and Parker's mother, each remembers Bird in his or her own special way.

Author Biography

The late Robert Reisner was a jazz impresario and former curator-librarian of the Institute of Jazz Studies.