Bird

January 6, 2014
Director of the Marr Sound Archives Haddix (co-author of Kansas City Jazz: From Ragtime to Bebop) methodically follows Charlie Parker from his start playing with "more enthusiasm than talent" in Kansas City clubs, to his peak as one of the preeminent forces in bebop, and then his early death at age 34. In his short career Parker played withâand rivaledâmany of the mid-century jazz greats: He mentored by Count Basie, absorbed Art Tatum's technique while busing tables at Jimmy's Chicken Shack where Tatum would perform. Parker and played with and eventually competed against Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis, among and others. Music was Parker's compulsion, but he also developed an addiction to heroin at an early age, and he needed the needle as badly as the tunes, between these loves, the ladies in his life rarely fared well. Haddix provides a valuable sense of the cross-pollination that occurred in jazz during the â40s and â50s, as players brought new musical ideas from coast to coast, or even just block to block. He also manages to keep straight who played what with who and when, a remarkable feat in itself. The book's meticulous approach is also it's weakness, as it sometimes fails to capture the spontaneity of Parker's music, something thrilling enough that people would sometimes forget the transgressions of the addict in the hope of hearing more of the musician. 12 b&w photos.

September 1, 2013
This short biography by Kansas Citybased Haddix is an attempt to separate the life from the considerable legend of jazz innovator and bebop pioneer Charlie Yardbird Parker. Haddix's fine introduction recapitulates the complexities and contradictions in the protean Parker and suggests the overwhelming task the author has set for himselfa task also being tackled by notable jazz critic Stanley Crouch, whose Kansas City Lightning, the first of a two-volume biography of Parker, also appears in October. Haddix has done prodigious research, drawing on the copious jazz literature as well as previously published conversations with Parker's former associates and friends, but seems to have initiated rather little interviewing himself in trying to accomplish his ambitious goal. His book is nonetheless, by virtue of its impressive detail, a notable addition to the extensive Music in American Life series and offers a good, brief life story of a sadly brief (if full) life. Though this volume won't command the interest that Crouch's account will, most Charlie Parker devotees will treat the appearance, in the same month, of two books about their idol as a very good thing indeed.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)