Charlie Parker
1939–1944: Development of bebop

In 1939, Parker moved to New York City to pursue his musical career but worked part-time jobs to make a living. Among the more musically significant of these jobs was as a dishwasher for nine dollars a week at Jimmie's Chicken Shack, where pianist Art Tatum performed. Struggling with poverty, Parker went to the home of fellow alto saxophone player, Buster Smith, to ask for help. Smith allowed Parker to live in his apartment for six months and gave him gigs in his band. Parker's playing at these gigs impressed several New York musicians including pianist and bandleader Earl Hines.

While living in New York, Parker achieved his musical breakthrough, developing a new improvisational vocabulary which later came to be known as " bebop ". Playing " Cherokee " in a practice session with guitarist William "Biddy" Fleet, he realized that the 12 semitones of the chromatic scale can lead melodically to any key, breaking some of the confines of simpler jazz soloing. Parker recalled: "I'd been getting bored with the stereotyped changes that were being used all the time at the time, and I kept thinking there's bound to be something else. I could hear it sometimes but I couldn't play it... Well, that night I was working over 'Cherokee' and, as I did, 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. I came alive."

In 1940, he returned to Kansas City to perform with Jay McShann and to attend the funeral of his father, Charles Sr. The younger Parker then spent the summer in McShann's band playing at Fairyland Park for all-white audiences; trumpet player Bernard Anderson introduced him to Dizzy Gillespie. The band also toured nightclubs and other venues of the southwest, as well as Chicago and New York City, and Parker made his professional recording debut with McShann's band that year. When in New York, to experiment with his new musical ideas that went beyond the bounds of McShann's group, Parker joined a group of young musicians who played in after-hours clubs in Harlem venues including Clark Monroe's Uptown House. Fellow musicians at the venues included developing beboppers Gillespie, pianist Thelonious Monk, guitarist Charlie Christian, and drummer Kenny Clarke. A pianist and one of the pioneers of bebop, Mary Lou Williams, offered a further explanation that the after-hours sessions were an opportunity "to challenge the practice of downtown musicians coming uptown and 'stealing' the music."

Parker left McShann's band in 1942 and played for one year with Hines, whose band also included Gillespie. However, this band's performances and therefore Parker's role in them are virtually undocumented due to the strike of 1942–1944 by the American Federation of Musicians, during which time few professional recordings were made. In fact, much of bebop's critical early development was not captured for posterity due to the ban and the new genre gained limited radio exposure as a result. The few recordings in which Parker participated in 1943 took place in Chicago and included a jam session recording with Gillespie and bassist Oscar Pettiford, another session with Billy Eckstine playing trumpet, some informally recorded practice sessions, and a duo with pianist Hazel Scott. Parker's time with Hines' band and his traveling between New York and Chicago enabled him to model his style on, according to his own words, a "combination of the Midwestern beat and the fast New York tempos." Parker began writing compositions thanks to his growing friendship with Gillespie, who began notating Parker's solos as melodies. Among these early Parker compositions were "Koko", " Anthropology ", and " Confirmation ".

Parker left Hines' band and formed a small group with Gillespie, pianist Al Haig, bassist Curley Russell, and drummer Stan Levey. The group stood out from its contemporaries, as it was racially integrated and it lacked a guitarist for rhythmic support. This new format enabled soloists to be freed from harmonic and rhythmic restrictions, and in late 1944 the group secured a gig at the Three Deuces club in New York. The group's name recognition spread along 52nd Street and its style was dubbed "bebop" for the first time. Musicians at other clubs came to hear bebop and reacted negatively to it because, according to bassist Charles Mingus, they saw it as a threat to their existing style of jazz.
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