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Kansas City Lightning: The Rise and Times of Charlie Parker
Kansas City Lightning: The Rise and Times of Charlie Parker is the first installment in the long-awaited portrait of one of the most talented and influential musicians of the twentieth century, from Stanley Crouch, one of the foremost authorities on jazz and culture in America.
Throughout his life, Charlie Parker personified the tortured American artist: a revolutionary performer who used his alto saxophone to create a new music known as bebop even as he wrestled with a drug addiction that would lead to his death at the age of thirty-four.
Drawing on interviews with peers, collaborators, and family members, Kansas City Lightning recreates Parker’s Depression-era childhood; his early days navigating the Kansas City nightlife, inspired by lions like Lester Young and Count Basie; and on to New York, where he began to transcend the music he had mastered. Crouch reveals an ambitious young man torn between music and drugs, between his domineering mother and his impressionable young wife, whose teenage romance with Charlie lies at the bittersweet heart of this story.
With the wisdom of a jazz scholar, the cultural insights of an acclaimed social critic, and the narrative skill of a literary novelist, Stanley Crouch illuminates this American master as never before.
Throughout his life, Charlie Parker personified the tortured American artist: a revolutionary performer who used his alto saxophone to create a new music known as bebop even as he wrestled with a drug addiction that would lead to his death at the age of thirty-four.
Drawing on interviews with peers, collaborators, and family members, Kansas City Lightning recreates Parker’s Depression-era childhood; his early days navigating the Kansas City nightlife, inspired by lions like Lester Young and Count Basie; and on to New York, where he began to transcend the music he had mastered. Crouch reveals an ambitious young man torn between music and drugs, between his domineering mother and his impressionable young wife, whose teenage romance with Charlie lies at the bittersweet heart of this story.
With the wisdom of a jazz scholar, the cultural insights of an acclaimed social critic, and the narrative skill of a literary novelist, Stanley Crouch illuminates this American master as never before.
384 pages, Hardcover
First published September 24, 2013
141 people are currently reading
1759 people want to read
About the author
Stanley Crouch
33 books55 followersStanley Lawrence Crouch was an American poet, music journalist & jazz critic, biographer, novelist, educator and cultural commentator. He was also both a civil rights activist and a musician as a young man.
Born and raised in Los Angeles, California, Stanley Crouch attended Thomas Jefferson High School, graduating in 1963. He continued his education at area junior colleges and became active in the civil rights movement, working with the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). He gained a reputation as a talented young poet, and in 1968 became poet-in-residence at Pitzer College (Claremont, California); he then taught theatre and literature at Pomona College (Claremont, California). In 1969, a recording of him reading several of his poems was released as an LP by Flying Dutchman Records. This was followed by his first book, a collection of his poems published in 1972 by the Richard W. Baron Publishing Co.
During the early 1970s, Mr. Crouch also pursued a parallel career as a musician, playing the drums in a progressive jazz group called Black Music Infinity, which he had formed with saxophonist & clarinetist David Murray, and which also featured saxophonist Arthur Blythe. In 1975, Mr. Crouch & Mr. Murray moved from California to New York City, where they lived above an East Village jazz club called the Tin Palace. Mr. Crouch functioned as the club's booking agent for a while, and he both chronicled and participated in the thriving avant-garde jazz scene in New York at that time, along with musicians such as Henry Threadgill, James Blood Ulmer and Olu Dara, among many others. There were also a number of other poets, as well as photographers, painters and other visual artists actively involved in that milieu. By the end of the 1970s, however, Mr. Crouch had for the most part given up the drums, and his role as a musician, to concentrate on writing.
In 1980 Mr. Crouch joined the staff of the Village Voice, where for the next several years he further honed his craft as a writer. He was honored with a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1982. In 1987 he became an artistic consultant for the Jazz at Lincoln Center program, along with Wynton Marsalis, for whom he had become a friend and intellectual mentor. After leaving the Village Voice in 1988, Crouch published 'Notes of a Hanging Judge: Essays and Reviews, 1979-1989', which was selected by The Encyclopædia Britannica Yearbook as the best book of essays published in 1990. He received a Whiting Award in 1991, which was followed in 1993 by a MacArthur Foundation "genius" grant and the Jean Stein Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Mr. Crouch continued to write for newspapers and magazines in addition to writing books. He wrote a column for the New York Daily News, and eventually became a syndicated columnist. He also appeared in several documentary films and was a frequent guest on television programs. His first novel, 'Don't the Moon Look Lonesome' was published in 2000, and 'Kansas City Lightning: The Rise and Times of Charlie Parker', his biography of the revered jazz musician, in 2013.
In addition to his writing on music and the arts generally, Mr. Crouch was one of the most incisive writers and socio-cultural commentators on race relations in the U.S., which was a frequent topic of his articles and books. In 2003 he was fired from the magazine 'JazzTimes' after an article he had written on racism in the music business had caused a somewhat overblown and ridiculous controversy. Probably not coincidentally, he was selected in 2005 as one of the inaugural fellows by the Fletcher Foundation, which awards annual fellowships to people working on issues of race and civil rights. Mr. Crouch was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2009. In 2016, he was awarded the Windham–Campbell Literature Prize for non-fiction, and he was named an NEA Jazz Master in 2019.
Born and raised in Los Angeles, California, Stanley Crouch attended Thomas Jefferson High School, graduating in 1963. He continued his education at area junior colleges and became active in the civil rights movement, working with the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). He gained a reputation as a talented young poet, and in 1968 became poet-in-residence at Pitzer College (Claremont, California); he then taught theatre and literature at Pomona College (Claremont, California). In 1969, a recording of him reading several of his poems was released as an LP by Flying Dutchman Records. This was followed by his first book, a collection of his poems published in 1972 by the Richard W. Baron Publishing Co.
During the early 1970s, Mr. Crouch also pursued a parallel career as a musician, playing the drums in a progressive jazz group called Black Music Infinity, which he had formed with saxophonist & clarinetist David Murray, and which also featured saxophonist Arthur Blythe. In 1975, Mr. Crouch & Mr. Murray moved from California to New York City, where they lived above an East Village jazz club called the Tin Palace. Mr. Crouch functioned as the club's booking agent for a while, and he both chronicled and participated in the thriving avant-garde jazz scene in New York at that time, along with musicians such as Henry Threadgill, James Blood Ulmer and Olu Dara, among many others. There were also a number of other poets, as well as photographers, painters and other visual artists actively involved in that milieu. By the end of the 1970s, however, Mr. Crouch had for the most part given up the drums, and his role as a musician, to concentrate on writing.
In 1980 Mr. Crouch joined the staff of the Village Voice, where for the next several years he further honed his craft as a writer. He was honored with a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1982. In 1987 he became an artistic consultant for the Jazz at Lincoln Center program, along with Wynton Marsalis, for whom he had become a friend and intellectual mentor. After leaving the Village Voice in 1988, Crouch published 'Notes of a Hanging Judge: Essays and Reviews, 1979-1989', which was selected by The Encyclopædia Britannica Yearbook as the best book of essays published in 1990. He received a Whiting Award in 1991, which was followed in 1993 by a MacArthur Foundation "genius" grant and the Jean Stein Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Mr. Crouch continued to write for newspapers and magazines in addition to writing books. He wrote a column for the New York Daily News, and eventually became a syndicated columnist. He also appeared in several documentary films and was a frequent guest on television programs. His first novel, 'Don't the Moon Look Lonesome' was published in 2000, and 'Kansas City Lightning: The Rise and Times of Charlie Parker', his biography of the revered jazz musician, in 2013.
In addition to his writing on music and the arts generally, Mr. Crouch was one of the most incisive writers and socio-cultural commentators on race relations in the U.S., which was a frequent topic of his articles and books. In 2003 he was fired from the magazine 'JazzTimes' after an article he had written on racism in the music business had caused a somewhat overblown and ridiculous controversy. Probably not coincidentally, he was selected in 2005 as one of the inaugural fellows by the Fletcher Foundation, which awards annual fellowships to people working on issues of race and civil rights. Mr. Crouch was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2009. In 2016, he was awarded the Windham–Campbell Literature Prize for non-fiction, and he was named an NEA Jazz Master in 2019.
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January 17, 2014
Super book about one of my ultimate favorite jazz musicians.
"What he gave the horn, it gave back. What it gave him, he never forgot."
The ultimate reading day for me includes the following: rain (which we get a lot of down here in the south), a cup or two or three of strong black coffee (no pods -- I love freshly ground) and most important, the jazz music playing in the background. One of my favorite musicians is Charlie Parker, about whom this book was written. I have been wanting to read a biography about Parker for a long time; when Kansas City Lightning was published last year, I scooped it up. But here's the thing: this is less of a biography than I thought it would be. At first I was disappointed, but I kept flipping back to the book cover with its subtitle "The Rise and Times of Charlie Parker," and came to terms with the fact that a standard biography was not the author's intention. I say that up front so that if you start reading and Parker disappears for long periods of book space, don't despair and keep going. The end product as a whole is informative and frankly, quite a ride, one not solely for the jazz lover. It also speaks to African-American culture of the time, and expands out into a look at blues, swing and jazz in the context of a wider American culture.
Starting out at New York's Savoy Ballroom, the "Madison Square Garden of the battles of the bands", the story takes you back in time to the Kansas City and the origins of Parker's eventual rise to fame. It was a place where musicians held court at 18th Street and Vine, where the blues morphed into a new form of jazz. The book is filled with the people, music, culture etc that influenced Parker, often related via interview by people who were there who had a connection with him. There are also times where the author goes off on serious but informative tangents and not just in the world of music: he spends time talking about the Buffalo Soldiers, the impact of D.W.Griffith's "Birth of a Nation," which portrayed African American men as the white man's worst enemies vis-a-vis white women; there is a also a brief history of minstrelsy which eventually serious African-American musicians refused to be a part of; the rise and downfall of boxer Jack Johnson and his later betrayal of Joe Louis among many others. But it's when he's into the music and the musicians that the writing shines; the descriptions of after-hours jam sessions where musicians were free to be themselves are amazing. Even though there are a number of gaps in Parker's personal life story here (as the author notes, it's largely because so much of his early years remain undocumented), the beauty of this book lies in the world surrounding Parker and how it influenced his near fanatic drive to create something new, something already inside him needing to come out.
While sometimes the writing meanders, when he's ready to bring Parker back into the scene, he's in tight control. Some of these parts are reimagined, while others are based on personal memories and research. At the same time, he lets the reader know when discrepancies arise -- for example, stories told by Parker's first wife Rebecca don't always mesh with the eyewitness accounts of her sister. But while in places the writing might strike an off-key note (for me there were a few, especially when he equates "Charlie's curiosity about narcotics" to his affection for Sherlock Holmes mysteries) taken as a whole, the book has a cool flow to it, filled with vivid jargon in a style that is truly his own.
Reader response has been generally favorable toward this book; after perusing several professional reviews, the same is true on that level as well. I also discovered that Kansas City Lightning is just one of a two-volume set, so I'll sit tight and eagerly anticipate the next book. In the meantime, I can very highly recommend this book, especially to fans of jazz and of Charlie Parker, but also to anyone who is into African-American history. A definite no-miss.
"What he gave the horn, it gave back. What it gave him, he never forgot."
The ultimate reading day for me includes the following: rain (which we get a lot of down here in the south), a cup or two or three of strong black coffee (no pods -- I love freshly ground) and most important, the jazz music playing in the background. One of my favorite musicians is Charlie Parker, about whom this book was written. I have been wanting to read a biography about Parker for a long time; when Kansas City Lightning was published last year, I scooped it up. But here's the thing: this is less of a biography than I thought it would be. At first I was disappointed, but I kept flipping back to the book cover with its subtitle "The Rise and Times of Charlie Parker," and came to terms with the fact that a standard biography was not the author's intention. I say that up front so that if you start reading and Parker disappears for long periods of book space, don't despair and keep going. The end product as a whole is informative and frankly, quite a ride, one not solely for the jazz lover. It also speaks to African-American culture of the time, and expands out into a look at blues, swing and jazz in the context of a wider American culture.
Starting out at New York's Savoy Ballroom, the "Madison Square Garden of the battles of the bands", the story takes you back in time to the Kansas City and the origins of Parker's eventual rise to fame. It was a place where musicians held court at 18th Street and Vine, where the blues morphed into a new form of jazz. The book is filled with the people, music, culture etc that influenced Parker, often related via interview by people who were there who had a connection with him. There are also times where the author goes off on serious but informative tangents and not just in the world of music: he spends time talking about the Buffalo Soldiers, the impact of D.W.Griffith's "Birth of a Nation," which portrayed African American men as the white man's worst enemies vis-a-vis white women; there is a also a brief history of minstrelsy which eventually serious African-American musicians refused to be a part of; the rise and downfall of boxer Jack Johnson and his later betrayal of Joe Louis among many others. But it's when he's into the music and the musicians that the writing shines; the descriptions of after-hours jam sessions where musicians were free to be themselves are amazing. Even though there are a number of gaps in Parker's personal life story here (as the author notes, it's largely because so much of his early years remain undocumented), the beauty of this book lies in the world surrounding Parker and how it influenced his near fanatic drive to create something new, something already inside him needing to come out.
While sometimes the writing meanders, when he's ready to bring Parker back into the scene, he's in tight control. Some of these parts are reimagined, while others are based on personal memories and research. At the same time, he lets the reader know when discrepancies arise -- for example, stories told by Parker's first wife Rebecca don't always mesh with the eyewitness accounts of her sister. But while in places the writing might strike an off-key note (for me there were a few, especially when he equates "Charlie's curiosity about narcotics" to his affection for Sherlock Holmes mysteries) taken as a whole, the book has a cool flow to it, filled with vivid jargon in a style that is truly his own.
Reader response has been generally favorable toward this book; after perusing several professional reviews, the same is true on that level as well. I also discovered that Kansas City Lightning is just one of a two-volume set, so I'll sit tight and eagerly anticipate the next book. In the meantime, I can very highly recommend this book, especially to fans of jazz and of Charlie Parker, but also to anyone who is into African-American history. A definite no-miss.
November 14, 2016
I honestly get annoyed by Crouch sometimes (especially his dismissiveness here: https://youtu.be/jAtaxon9t5g) and his overbearing editorial influence on Ken Burn's Jazz TV show (https://wordpress.com/post/mfinocchia...) but when he is writing about music he loves and musicians he respects, he is hard to beat. Bird is such a huge figure for jazz music and his origins and flaws are described in detail here in this excellent biography. The subtitle leads one to believe that there will be a second volume...I sure hope so because this one was excellent!
September 20, 2014
Here's a telling thing that showcases in miniature what's nutty about this book: about 2/3 of the way through, Crouch mentions that one step in Charlie Parker's development as a serious (obsessive, really) saxophonist is that he began customizing his metal mouthpieces and shaving down his reed -- and Crouch then goes on to explain, in passing, what a reed is.
You've got to wonder: why? Who on earth does he imagine would pick up a biography of jazz's greatest sax player (and arguably it's greatest player period) and not understand what a reed is? And if the thinks that's his audience, why get 2/3 of the way through the book before providing a remedial discussion of the instrument Parker played (and had been playing, at that point, for at least 100 pages)? Why include that info?
And then you realize the answer is, "hey, why not?"
That's the spirit of this whole book, a biography of Parker up through a watershed appearance with Jay McShann's band at the Savoy in early 1942 (I assume a second volume is planned). Crouch has spent years -- decades -- talking with the men and women who knew Parker and are still around, and those conversations form the backbone of his research. This heavy reliance on reminiscences (which is bolstered to a great extent by jazz musicians' memoirs -- reminiscence in another form) gives Crouch a conversational style that's so informal and so removed from any careful, scholarly, traditional biographic narrative voice that he could have started the whole book with "Once upon a time..." and it wouldn't have been out of place. That same impulse -- plus, I suspect, a paucity of information about Parker's early life -- leads to an endless series of digressions, and digressions from the digressions, until you're scarcely surprised at anything that gets a couple of paragraphs, as long as it's tenuously related to jazz, Kansas City, or race. Birth of a Nation? It's in there, though I can't remember why. Buffalo soldiers? Sure! The migration of prehistoric Asiatic peoples to North America? Of course! And since he's digressing anyway, there's no need to support or even explain some of his wilder assertions -- that European artists feared urban life, that the blues was an industrial art form at heart, that Parker could plausibly be called part Asian because he was part Native American (and we know where they came from -- see above). Digressions periodically give way to free association -- Parker hops a train for Chicago, which leads to a meditation on the place of the railroad in the American psyche, which leads to a paragraph on the Underground Railroad because why the hell not. It's a crazy quilt, perhaps designed to structurally emulate a jazz piece -- spinning further and further away from its ostensible theme before returning -- but more often sounding like a gigantic Grandpa Simpson anecdote. Not that that's a bad thing -- Grandpa Simpson has no bigger fan than I -- but it makes for a really strange read.
Did I enjoy reading it? I suppose I did; I like being told a good story and have the patience to listen to someone digress to the point of rambling (those who live in glass houses...). Did I learn things about Charlie Parker? I'd imagine so, with the caveat that Crouch takes old memories at face value and spends a lot of time imagining and asserting rather than demonstrating or verifying (especially the inner thoughts and emotions of Parker and those around him). So maybe more like 2.5 stars. But in the end it's less a book for jazz buffs or students of Parker than for fans of Stanley Crouch. I suspect that's a more rarefied audience.
You've got to wonder: why? Who on earth does he imagine would pick up a biography of jazz's greatest sax player (and arguably it's greatest player period) and not understand what a reed is? And if the thinks that's his audience, why get 2/3 of the way through the book before providing a remedial discussion of the instrument Parker played (and had been playing, at that point, for at least 100 pages)? Why include that info?
And then you realize the answer is, "hey, why not?"
That's the spirit of this whole book, a biography of Parker up through a watershed appearance with Jay McShann's band at the Savoy in early 1942 (I assume a second volume is planned). Crouch has spent years -- decades -- talking with the men and women who knew Parker and are still around, and those conversations form the backbone of his research. This heavy reliance on reminiscences (which is bolstered to a great extent by jazz musicians' memoirs -- reminiscence in another form) gives Crouch a conversational style that's so informal and so removed from any careful, scholarly, traditional biographic narrative voice that he could have started the whole book with "Once upon a time..." and it wouldn't have been out of place. That same impulse -- plus, I suspect, a paucity of information about Parker's early life -- leads to an endless series of digressions, and digressions from the digressions, until you're scarcely surprised at anything that gets a couple of paragraphs, as long as it's tenuously related to jazz, Kansas City, or race. Birth of a Nation? It's in there, though I can't remember why. Buffalo soldiers? Sure! The migration of prehistoric Asiatic peoples to North America? Of course! And since he's digressing anyway, there's no need to support or even explain some of his wilder assertions -- that European artists feared urban life, that the blues was an industrial art form at heart, that Parker could plausibly be called part Asian because he was part Native American (and we know where they came from -- see above). Digressions periodically give way to free association -- Parker hops a train for Chicago, which leads to a meditation on the place of the railroad in the American psyche, which leads to a paragraph on the Underground Railroad because why the hell not. It's a crazy quilt, perhaps designed to structurally emulate a jazz piece -- spinning further and further away from its ostensible theme before returning -- but more often sounding like a gigantic Grandpa Simpson anecdote. Not that that's a bad thing -- Grandpa Simpson has no bigger fan than I -- but it makes for a really strange read.
Did I enjoy reading it? I suppose I did; I like being told a good story and have the patience to listen to someone digress to the point of rambling (those who live in glass houses...). Did I learn things about Charlie Parker? I'd imagine so, with the caveat that Crouch takes old memories at face value and spends a lot of time imagining and asserting rather than demonstrating or verifying (especially the inner thoughts and emotions of Parker and those around him). So maybe more like 2.5 stars. But in the end it's less a book for jazz buffs or students of Parker than for fans of Stanley Crouch. I suspect that's a more rarefied audience.
November 29, 2013
Kansas City Lightning not only takes us inside Charlie Parker's life, but into the world of jazz, circa 1930's and 40's. Stanley Crouch's ending is a surprise because he stops in the middle, just as Parker is hitting it big in NYC. At first I felt a little cheated. Hey, this is only half a bio. Then I realized I knew all I really needed to know if I were looking to find out about about Bird, the musician and the man. The rest is more of the same. The same what? Check it out.
Crouch opens the book as Charlie arrives in New York with the Jay McShann band for their booking at the Savoy. Their big chance. They're hicks, these guys from Kansas City, trying to do battle with established Harlem bands in the cutthroat world of 1930-40 musical wars. Plenty before them had gone down, returning to KC with their stomachs empty and their tails between their legs. Crouch places this event in musical, historical, and racial context. Joe Louis, Louis Armstrong, Pearl Harbor are all important to how the Savoy got there and to what goes on inside. Sometimes it seems like he's leaving Parker out of it. But he's not. Just as the music always returns to the melody no matter how far the improvisation appears to wander, Crouch's subject is always Bird, every moment.
From New York, we go to Kansas City and Charlie's upbringing in a fatherless household by a doting mother. His tutelage under great musicians of his time both in the segregated school system and on the streets. We hear of his romance with first wife Rebecca (Beckerie) in her own words. "My eye fell on him . . . and I knew there was gonna be trouble. I knew I was in love with him." And trouble there was. Clear as she was about what might lie ahead, she can't help herself any more than Charlie can help shooting up his heroin. Parker is no kind of husband and father and really doesn't want to be. He plays at it occasionally, but he brings Beckerie crabs, leaves love letters lying around, and even puts a pistol to her head. All Parker's really good for is music, and sometimes he isn't even good for that--missing gigs, pawning his sax for drugs, falling asleep on the bandstand. There are those who recognize his talent, but believe God made a mistake giving it to Bird--a little like Salieri's attitude toward Mozart in Amadeus. But those folks are not God, and beneath all Parker's apparent deficiencies is a drive toward perfection, toward creating with his horn what he hears in his head. He seeks out mentors--probably Buster Smith is the most prominent--who are educated in music, who can take him through the theory he needs in order to understand the mysteries of the scales and chords and other harmonic complexities necessary to give his improvisations the power he yearns for.
Day and night, often going with little or no sleep, Parker works his horn and his mind. Natural talent? You bet. But ultimately what he accomplished came as much from intense study and practice as talent. And all that made it impossible for him to fit into in everyday world. But on the bandstand? Different story, And unlike Gary Giddins in his bio of Louis Armstrong (Satchmo) Crouch never lets his feeling for his material get bogged down in technical jargon, though he doesn't shy away from that either when necessary. Instead, he helps us feel the pulse.
With the Jay McShann Orchestra shouting behind him, Parker--a great ballroom dancer himself, whose high-arched feet force him to move from his heels--choreographs his improvised melodies through the saxophone. Feinting, running, pivoting, crooning, he is inspired by the dancers and inspires them in turn, instigating them to fresh steps.
And thus, in passage after passage, does this superb writer paint for all of us an intense portrait of the triumph and tragedy of the gift to the world that is Charlie Parker.
Crouch opens the book as Charlie arrives in New York with the Jay McShann band for their booking at the Savoy. Their big chance. They're hicks, these guys from Kansas City, trying to do battle with established Harlem bands in the cutthroat world of 1930-40 musical wars. Plenty before them had gone down, returning to KC with their stomachs empty and their tails between their legs. Crouch places this event in musical, historical, and racial context. Joe Louis, Louis Armstrong, Pearl Harbor are all important to how the Savoy got there and to what goes on inside. Sometimes it seems like he's leaving Parker out of it. But he's not. Just as the music always returns to the melody no matter how far the improvisation appears to wander, Crouch's subject is always Bird, every moment.
From New York, we go to Kansas City and Charlie's upbringing in a fatherless household by a doting mother. His tutelage under great musicians of his time both in the segregated school system and on the streets. We hear of his romance with first wife Rebecca (Beckerie) in her own words. "My eye fell on him . . . and I knew there was gonna be trouble. I knew I was in love with him." And trouble there was. Clear as she was about what might lie ahead, she can't help herself any more than Charlie can help shooting up his heroin. Parker is no kind of husband and father and really doesn't want to be. He plays at it occasionally, but he brings Beckerie crabs, leaves love letters lying around, and even puts a pistol to her head. All Parker's really good for is music, and sometimes he isn't even good for that--missing gigs, pawning his sax for drugs, falling asleep on the bandstand. There are those who recognize his talent, but believe God made a mistake giving it to Bird--a little like Salieri's attitude toward Mozart in Amadeus. But those folks are not God, and beneath all Parker's apparent deficiencies is a drive toward perfection, toward creating with his horn what he hears in his head. He seeks out mentors--probably Buster Smith is the most prominent--who are educated in music, who can take him through the theory he needs in order to understand the mysteries of the scales and chords and other harmonic complexities necessary to give his improvisations the power he yearns for.
Day and night, often going with little or no sleep, Parker works his horn and his mind. Natural talent? You bet. But ultimately what he accomplished came as much from intense study and practice as talent. And all that made it impossible for him to fit into in everyday world. But on the bandstand? Different story, And unlike Gary Giddins in his bio of Louis Armstrong (Satchmo) Crouch never lets his feeling for his material get bogged down in technical jargon, though he doesn't shy away from that either when necessary. Instead, he helps us feel the pulse.
With the Jay McShann Orchestra shouting behind him, Parker--a great ballroom dancer himself, whose high-arched feet force him to move from his heels--choreographs his improvised melodies through the saxophone. Feinting, running, pivoting, crooning, he is inspired by the dancers and inspires them in turn, instigating them to fresh steps.
And thus, in passage after passage, does this superb writer paint for all of us an intense portrait of the triumph and tragedy of the gift to the world that is Charlie Parker.
December 9, 2013
This book both fascinates and frustrates. It's fascinating in that context is richly provided and Bird is thoroughly situated in the era of his time. The Kansas City of Bird's time is thoroughly unpacked so that the reader gets a full understanding of the environment that Bird was navigating.
We follow young Charlie through his very early years and his entry into high school. He commented apparently that he entered high school as a freshman and left as a freshman. He marries at 16, clearly not ready to support a wife. While Charlie is coming of age, the story of the times is highlighted in brilliant prose by Crouch.
Charlie's interest in music and his budding genius is clearly illustrated by Crouch through his examination of the music of Kansas City and the club music battles. It was a time where you could be pulled off the bandstand if you couldn't swing with the best of them. So, if you wanted to be a major player, studious practice was necessary. And Charlie definitely wanted to be a player. And Crouch does a great job of making that clear
So what is frustrating? The book only deals with Charlie Parker's early years. In fact at its' conclusion Charlie is only 20 years old and has not yet made his mark on the world of music for which he would be remembered. I know there is another volume planned and I eagerly await it's' publication.
Although there is a premature end to this volume it is a fine representation of the early Charlie Parker and I would recommend it to all those who love jazz music.
We follow young Charlie through his very early years and his entry into high school. He commented apparently that he entered high school as a freshman and left as a freshman. He marries at 16, clearly not ready to support a wife. While Charlie is coming of age, the story of the times is highlighted in brilliant prose by Crouch.
Charlie's interest in music and his budding genius is clearly illustrated by Crouch through his examination of the music of Kansas City and the club music battles. It was a time where you could be pulled off the bandstand if you couldn't swing with the best of them. So, if you wanted to be a major player, studious practice was necessary. And Charlie definitely wanted to be a player. And Crouch does a great job of making that clear
So what is frustrating? The book only deals with Charlie Parker's early years. In fact at its' conclusion Charlie is only 20 years old and has not yet made his mark on the world of music for which he would be remembered. I know there is another volume planned and I eagerly await it's' publication.
Although there is a premature end to this volume it is a fine representation of the early Charlie Parker and I would recommend it to all those who love jazz music.
April 1, 2021
This is the best book on jazz I have ever read. And that’s only part of what makes it so extraordinary a work.
To begin with, I’m not sure any writer other than James Baldwin has let me hear jazz so clearly just from reading about it. Crouch has an ability to mix colloquial description with music theory, never sounding too technical nor too unsophisticated but navigating between those extremes. He can talk about “bursts” of sound alongside harmonics and broken chords, and I feel as if I’m following it at every turn. I don’t always know what everything means, but I never feel lost.
That prose reminds me of listening to jazz. I hear sounds I can’t always follow, but – once you come to trust the musicians – the trick is to hold on until it resolves into something you can follow.
Toward the end, Crouch delivers the line, “Jazz is finally the triumph of art over chaos,” and that becomes prelude to a longer description of what it means for a great jazz musician to improvise instant by instant.
And, in one of my favorite early moments, he describes Charlie Parker’s tone as “pitiless.” Now that I have heard that word for it, I can’t unhear it. And I feel more able to understand that remarkable music because of it.
As if that consistent excellence of prose weren’t enough – as if it weren’t enough that Crouch has sent me back to listen to Jay McShann, Chu Berry, Count Basie, and others with a fresh ear – this book also serves as a brilliant history of jazz.
I know the conventional story, and I know that it looks different depending on where you stand. I first discovered a sense of jazz when I was visiting New Orleans, so the Dixieland story up through early Louis Armstrong has at times seemed central. As a longtime Chicagoan, I’m aware of the early- mid-career Armstrong and of people like Benny Goodman and Lionel Hampton who helped integrate the sound earlier than elsewhere. And, from certain classes and listening around, I know of the New York experience as the birthplace of the big bands – Ellington’s and Fletcher Henderson’s in particularly – and then the crucible of be-bop.
Crouch takes us to Kansas City, and it’s a thrilling trip. He describes how that particular school of jazz pulled in from country music. Rooted in a tradition of dance music, and put into hyperdrive through a culture of live dueling with a may-the-best-band-win mentality, McShann, Benny Moten, and others created a big-band sound that became the perfect eventual incubator for the soloists who would develop bop. Coalescing under Count Basie, they reinvigorated the New York scene in the mid to late 1930s.
That’s great stuff, and I feel out of breath realizing how much ground Crouch covers in so slim a space. I’d heard it before, but I hadn’t “heard” it. Crouch makes that happen, and it seems almost incidental to the overall project. Like the jazz musicians he admires, he has the capacity to go on riffs, to talk of one musical, cultural or historical digression after another, without losing the overall thrust. He can give a brilliant capsule account of boxer Jack Johnson’s career, and it fits. The work is familiar, but it’s also fresh. It’s great cultural history and criticism, yet, again, it’s only part of the whole.
Above all, this is a biography, and it’s a striking one.
I knew the outline of Charlie Parker’s life and career. I read Miles Davis’s autobiography not long ago, and he writes there of the awe he felt as a young man following Parker around the streets of New York. In that four to five year period, Parker reinvented jazz, perhaps all of music, and then flamed out in a haze of heroin and booze.
In a sense, everyone knows that part of the story – at least everyone likely to pick up a book like this. With that in mind Crouch minimizes the heights of Parker’s career and focuses instead on its beginnings. The subtitle here is “the rise and times of Charlie Parker,” and this lives up to that.
Parker’s life story – richly illustrated with anecdotes from his first wife and several others who knew him in those years – serves as the scaffold from which Crouch writes about jazz, creativity, and American culture. He breaks down the “melody” of Parker’s life and improvises on it.
As a result of this, I hear Parker in new ways, and that’s the ultimate currency for a book like this. That it does so much else beautifully is bonus, and it makes me hunger to read more of Crouch’s work.
To begin with, I’m not sure any writer other than James Baldwin has let me hear jazz so clearly just from reading about it. Crouch has an ability to mix colloquial description with music theory, never sounding too technical nor too unsophisticated but navigating between those extremes. He can talk about “bursts” of sound alongside harmonics and broken chords, and I feel as if I’m following it at every turn. I don’t always know what everything means, but I never feel lost.
That prose reminds me of listening to jazz. I hear sounds I can’t always follow, but – once you come to trust the musicians – the trick is to hold on until it resolves into something you can follow.
Toward the end, Crouch delivers the line, “Jazz is finally the triumph of art over chaos,” and that becomes prelude to a longer description of what it means for a great jazz musician to improvise instant by instant.
And, in one of my favorite early moments, he describes Charlie Parker’s tone as “pitiless.” Now that I have heard that word for it, I can’t unhear it. And I feel more able to understand that remarkable music because of it.
As if that consistent excellence of prose weren’t enough – as if it weren’t enough that Crouch has sent me back to listen to Jay McShann, Chu Berry, Count Basie, and others with a fresh ear – this book also serves as a brilliant history of jazz.
I know the conventional story, and I know that it looks different depending on where you stand. I first discovered a sense of jazz when I was visiting New Orleans, so the Dixieland story up through early Louis Armstrong has at times seemed central. As a longtime Chicagoan, I’m aware of the early- mid-career Armstrong and of people like Benny Goodman and Lionel Hampton who helped integrate the sound earlier than elsewhere. And, from certain classes and listening around, I know of the New York experience as the birthplace of the big bands – Ellington’s and Fletcher Henderson’s in particularly – and then the crucible of be-bop.
Crouch takes us to Kansas City, and it’s a thrilling trip. He describes how that particular school of jazz pulled in from country music. Rooted in a tradition of dance music, and put into hyperdrive through a culture of live dueling with a may-the-best-band-win mentality, McShann, Benny Moten, and others created a big-band sound that became the perfect eventual incubator for the soloists who would develop bop. Coalescing under Count Basie, they reinvigorated the New York scene in the mid to late 1930s.
That’s great stuff, and I feel out of breath realizing how much ground Crouch covers in so slim a space. I’d heard it before, but I hadn’t “heard” it. Crouch makes that happen, and it seems almost incidental to the overall project. Like the jazz musicians he admires, he has the capacity to go on riffs, to talk of one musical, cultural or historical digression after another, without losing the overall thrust. He can give a brilliant capsule account of boxer Jack Johnson’s career, and it fits. The work is familiar, but it’s also fresh. It’s great cultural history and criticism, yet, again, it’s only part of the whole.
Above all, this is a biography, and it’s a striking one.
I knew the outline of Charlie Parker’s life and career. I read Miles Davis’s autobiography not long ago, and he writes there of the awe he felt as a young man following Parker around the streets of New York. In that four to five year period, Parker reinvented jazz, perhaps all of music, and then flamed out in a haze of heroin and booze.
In a sense, everyone knows that part of the story – at least everyone likely to pick up a book like this. With that in mind Crouch minimizes the heights of Parker’s career and focuses instead on its beginnings. The subtitle here is “the rise and times of Charlie Parker,” and this lives up to that.
Parker’s life story – richly illustrated with anecdotes from his first wife and several others who knew him in those years – serves as the scaffold from which Crouch writes about jazz, creativity, and American culture. He breaks down the “melody” of Parker’s life and improvises on it.
As a result of this, I hear Parker in new ways, and that’s the ultimate currency for a book like this. That it does so much else beautifully is bonus, and it makes me hunger to read more of Crouch’s work.
November 12, 2017
The subtitle of this book is accurate, so I guess it is shame on me to expect a full blown biography of Parker. It's not. It's not even really a biography of Parker's rise, although that story is strongly in the mix. Instead, its composed of a scattershot history of jazz and the Kansas City scene, drawing on just about anything that Crouch thinks might be relevant. A lot of this stuff is fascinating on its own, especially things like the glimpse of Lester Young and Count Basie, and even more so with the more extended treatment of lesser known sax player Buster Smith.
Another large part of it is Crouch's imaginings of how things "must have been" or "must have felt like" to Parker. This may even be intelligent extrapolation from things Crouch actually knows. But a good portion of the time it sounds like Crouch is simply making stuff up. That makes me think that there is a very large part of Parker's early days that is basically completely unknown. For example, it appears we don't know how or why he first started using hard drugs, what drugs they were, or who supplied them. Crouch makes some guesses and is upfront about it. In other areas, however, Crouch will delve directly into how Parker "must have felt" about something, and it sounds like bullshit to me.
A decent portion of the book is describing music, and for the most part, Crouch does very well. Then, when he gets into something technical, I have to wonder whether he has no idea what he is talking about, or whether he has deliberately dumbed things down for his readers. So this is a mixed bag, but for the most part I enjoy anyone intelligent and passionate who is talking about music I love.
And then there is more than a heaping helping of race talk. This seems to bear more on the scene itself than it does on Parker. And I understand why its here. But it seems strange to me that he dwells so long on Birth of a Nation and Gone With The Wind, when neither have much, if anything, to do with Parker. He also gives lip service to players paying attention to anyone who could play, regardless of race, and yet I'm left with the impression overall that he deeply feels that Jazz is a black man's field, and whites have no business having anything to do with it.
The rumor is that this is only the first part of a longer biography. If so, I will likely read the next part, but do so with different expectations.
Another large part of it is Crouch's imaginings of how things "must have been" or "must have felt like" to Parker. This may even be intelligent extrapolation from things Crouch actually knows. But a good portion of the time it sounds like Crouch is simply making stuff up. That makes me think that there is a very large part of Parker's early days that is basically completely unknown. For example, it appears we don't know how or why he first started using hard drugs, what drugs they were, or who supplied them. Crouch makes some guesses and is upfront about it. In other areas, however, Crouch will delve directly into how Parker "must have felt" about something, and it sounds like bullshit to me.
A decent portion of the book is describing music, and for the most part, Crouch does very well. Then, when he gets into something technical, I have to wonder whether he has no idea what he is talking about, or whether he has deliberately dumbed things down for his readers. So this is a mixed bag, but for the most part I enjoy anyone intelligent and passionate who is talking about music I love.
And then there is more than a heaping helping of race talk. This seems to bear more on the scene itself than it does on Parker. And I understand why its here. But it seems strange to me that he dwells so long on Birth of a Nation and Gone With The Wind, when neither have much, if anything, to do with Parker. He also gives lip service to players paying attention to anyone who could play, regardless of race, and yet I'm left with the impression overall that he deeply feels that Jazz is a black man's field, and whites have no business having anything to do with it.
The rumor is that this is only the first part of a longer biography. If so, I will likely read the next part, but do so with different expectations.
November 12, 2013
I usually have difficulty reading a long non-fiction book just because of the density and huge amount of information. That said, I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I am a long time jazz lover, and I appreciated reading about which artists emulated others. Although the book is about Charlie Parker, it is also a book about the birth and development of jazz. And, it's about the development and growth of this country, the movement of immigrants and African Americans north from New Orleans to Chicago, the pervasive political corruption in Kansas City, Chicago and New York City. It's about the effects of the Depression on family life, as men abandoned their families to travel on freight trains. It touches on the beginnings of heroin addiction, particularly as it affected musicians. And, I loved the language! Stanley Crouch spent 30 years researching the facts of the book. But he also uses the language of the times, the musicians, and the African Americans in the 20s and 30s. What a rich, relevant, captivating story. And the bonus is that I could follow the movement of jazz through this time period. As Miles Davis once said, "You can tell the history of jazz in four words: Louis Armstrong. Charlie Parker." This book fills in all the betweens.
January 7, 2014
(I recently read an advanced review copy of Kansas City Lightning that I picked up at the Northern California Independent Booksellers Association trade show this fall. I am assuming that there have not been sweeping changes to the final version.)
As a Kansas City native, I found this book totally engrossing and informative. Besides seeing my parents roll their eyes at the mention of the Pendergast "machine" before I was born, I did not really know much about the era that partly nurtured, partly suppressed the jazz artists in the 1920, 30s and 40s. But this book is not limited to views of Charlie Parker's life or just the Kansas City scene. It gives amazing insights into the general lifestyles and mores of the country. Included are places ranging from Oklahoma City to Chicago and New York.
The book also details the lives of a multitude of jazz musicians and demonstrates the author's intimate understanding of the art form. It took stamina, grit and—of course— talent, to get hired on with bands and make a name for yourself. The personalities are engaging. The bygone era depiction is well done. Thanks to Stanley Crouch for such great research and writing.
As a Kansas City native, I found this book totally engrossing and informative. Besides seeing my parents roll their eyes at the mention of the Pendergast "machine" before I was born, I did not really know much about the era that partly nurtured, partly suppressed the jazz artists in the 1920, 30s and 40s. But this book is not limited to views of Charlie Parker's life or just the Kansas City scene. It gives amazing insights into the general lifestyles and mores of the country. Included are places ranging from Oklahoma City to Chicago and New York.
The book also details the lives of a multitude of jazz musicians and demonstrates the author's intimate understanding of the art form. It took stamina, grit and—of course— talent, to get hired on with bands and make a name for yourself. The personalities are engaging. The bygone era depiction is well done. Thanks to Stanley Crouch for such great research and writing.
January 3, 2018
Charlie Parker’s is a story that teaches. He was extreme and it is hard to tell if he was undone by music or by drugs. One thing is clear this man was genius and what is great about this book is that it isn’t JUST Charlie Parker this is the story of Basie, Moten, Young, Fleet, and so many others. The books paints a large and beautiful portrait of a time before mine.
December 11, 2021
It’s perhaps easy when reading or writing about jazz to romanticize its heroes. None more so than Charlie “Bird” Parker and the endless myths that seemingly surround him.
Savant saxophonist, heroin addict, wife abuser, transient, penniless and eventually committed to an insane asylum, dead by 35, all these things are true.
As Crouch rights however, none of these things, or anything in Parker’s life need exaggeration or myth. He was a larger than life personality but none of that in the end can or should overshadow his prodigious talent.
It is perhaps for this reason that Crouch’s “biography” abruptly stops just as he was on the threshold of establishing himself as a force in the eyes of the jazz world. (Apparently Crouch intended to write a second volume but ultimately never did before his own death).
This book in the end is about Charlie Parker but more about the world that produced him. Smoky dance halls, swinging big bands, cutthroat musical battles where people danced while dueling trumpets from rival bands tried to eviscerate each other. A world of Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Lester Young, and yes, Charlie Parker.
There are so many wonderful anecdotes and insights into America in the 1920’s and 30’s and how it produced a genius like Parker.
It’s far from a sympathetic biography, Parker by most accounts was an absent father and subjected the women in his life
to emotional and often physical violence.
He could however also be kind and generous, and was by most accounts a shy and quiet person obsessed solely with his music.
Such an obsession is our gain as we look back at the sublime recordings he left behind but also in a way the seeds of his own destruction driving him to drugs and what one imagines is a kind of intense isolation and loneliness.
There is always the discussion of whether it is possible to separate the artist from the art. I don’t of course have the answer to this.
All I can say is that when I listen to Charlie Parker’s sax in full swing, blazing chords at full speed in a way that few even today can, I’m in awe of the talent, if not the man
Savant saxophonist, heroin addict, wife abuser, transient, penniless and eventually committed to an insane asylum, dead by 35, all these things are true.
As Crouch rights however, none of these things, or anything in Parker’s life need exaggeration or myth. He was a larger than life personality but none of that in the end can or should overshadow his prodigious talent.
It is perhaps for this reason that Crouch’s “biography” abruptly stops just as he was on the threshold of establishing himself as a force in the eyes of the jazz world. (Apparently Crouch intended to write a second volume but ultimately never did before his own death).
This book in the end is about Charlie Parker but more about the world that produced him. Smoky dance halls, swinging big bands, cutthroat musical battles where people danced while dueling trumpets from rival bands tried to eviscerate each other. A world of Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Lester Young, and yes, Charlie Parker.
There are so many wonderful anecdotes and insights into America in the 1920’s and 30’s and how it produced a genius like Parker.
It’s far from a sympathetic biography, Parker by most accounts was an absent father and subjected the women in his life
to emotional and often physical violence.
He could however also be kind and generous, and was by most accounts a shy and quiet person obsessed solely with his music.
Such an obsession is our gain as we look back at the sublime recordings he left behind but also in a way the seeds of his own destruction driving him to drugs and what one imagines is a kind of intense isolation and loneliness.
There is always the discussion of whether it is possible to separate the artist from the art. I don’t of course have the answer to this.
All I can say is that when I listen to Charlie Parker’s sax in full swing, blazing chords at full speed in a way that few even today can, I’m in awe of the talent, if not the man
March 30, 2019
Earlier this month I read Kansas City Lightning, a new biography of the great Charlie Parker by Stanley Crouch.
Right away I decided to review it, because I love Charlie Parker and his music. But the review morphed into something else. Reading Kansas City Lightning became one of those pleasant experiences where one thing links to another – a six degrees of separation sort of thing; it led me into other stuff.
But first: I enjoyed Kansas City Lightning quite a bit. I can’t remember now where I first heard of it, but when I did I immediately requested it via interlibrary loan. I expected a rather straightforward biography. Kansas City Lightning is not straightforward.
Perhaps the first thing to note is that Kansas City Lightning focuses almost exclusively on Parker’s early life. It ends just as he begins to establish himself in New York, where he became the Bird we know and love. I saw no indication that Stanley Crouch intends a second volume. He may, and I hope he does. Crouch performed a great deal of primary research over many years, including interviews with Parker's first wife. He is a jazz authority and an incisive social commentator, and a follow-up would be invaluable. But with several other Charlie Parker biographies already extant, Crouch may think Parker's later life is a well-worn trail.
In any case, my interest in Charlie Parker again on the rise, I picked up copies, via interlibrary loan, of Celebrating Bird by Gary Giddins, and Charlie Parker: His Music and Life, by Carl Woideck. Crouch’s text directed me to both. It is plain that Stanley Crouch has not only researched Charlie Parker extensively; he also shared his research with Giddins and Woideck, both of whom acknowledge this generosity.
If I have any criticism of Kansas City Lightning it’s that Crouch indulges in extended digressions that aren’t always entirely relevant. I didn't mind, though. They provide context, and got me interested in, for example, checking out Jack Johnson, the boxer.
One of these digressions got me looking further into the legendary Buddy Bolden. Crouch discusses him over several pages, and references In Search of Buddy Bolden by Donald Marquis. (This meant another trip to the library.) Bolden was a New Orleans cornetist active in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He is considered among the first, if not the first, to play the style of improvisational music that evolved into jazz. (Of course, Bolden did not play in a vacuum, so such claims are dubious.)
If only we could hear Bolden’s sound! But Bolden ceased playing around 1906. Marquis describes a near-mythic recording by Bolden and his band, said to have been made on one of those old-fashioned cylinders. In 1939, one of Bolden's old sidemen told journalist Charles E. Smith that the recording “had been made before 1898, and Smith ... began an extensive search for it. [His] leads met frustrating dead ends...” By this time Bolden was dead. The cylinder was supposedly made by one Oscar Zahn. A revised edition of the Marquis book reports that in 1999 Marquis got a letter from Zahn’s niece, who wrote that a shed on her property, containing many of her late uncle's old cylinder recordings, was torn down in the early 1960s – the cylinder collection destroyed along with it.
And what about Charlie Parker? Bird lives. Be sure to read Kansas City Lightning.
•
See a slightly longer version of this review, with added links and other fun stuff, here:
http://bluelung.blogspot.com/2014/01/...
Right away I decided to review it, because I love Charlie Parker and his music. But the review morphed into something else. Reading Kansas City Lightning became one of those pleasant experiences where one thing links to another – a six degrees of separation sort of thing; it led me into other stuff.
But first: I enjoyed Kansas City Lightning quite a bit. I can’t remember now where I first heard of it, but when I did I immediately requested it via interlibrary loan. I expected a rather straightforward biography. Kansas City Lightning is not straightforward.
Perhaps the first thing to note is that Kansas City Lightning focuses almost exclusively on Parker’s early life. It ends just as he begins to establish himself in New York, where he became the Bird we know and love. I saw no indication that Stanley Crouch intends a second volume. He may, and I hope he does. Crouch performed a great deal of primary research over many years, including interviews with Parker's first wife. He is a jazz authority and an incisive social commentator, and a follow-up would be invaluable. But with several other Charlie Parker biographies already extant, Crouch may think Parker's later life is a well-worn trail.
In any case, my interest in Charlie Parker again on the rise, I picked up copies, via interlibrary loan, of Celebrating Bird by Gary Giddins, and Charlie Parker: His Music and Life, by Carl Woideck. Crouch’s text directed me to both. It is plain that Stanley Crouch has not only researched Charlie Parker extensively; he also shared his research with Giddins and Woideck, both of whom acknowledge this generosity.
If I have any criticism of Kansas City Lightning it’s that Crouch indulges in extended digressions that aren’t always entirely relevant. I didn't mind, though. They provide context, and got me interested in, for example, checking out Jack Johnson, the boxer.
One of these digressions got me looking further into the legendary Buddy Bolden. Crouch discusses him over several pages, and references In Search of Buddy Bolden by Donald Marquis. (This meant another trip to the library.) Bolden was a New Orleans cornetist active in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He is considered among the first, if not the first, to play the style of improvisational music that evolved into jazz. (Of course, Bolden did not play in a vacuum, so such claims are dubious.)
If only we could hear Bolden’s sound! But Bolden ceased playing around 1906. Marquis describes a near-mythic recording by Bolden and his band, said to have been made on one of those old-fashioned cylinders. In 1939, one of Bolden's old sidemen told journalist Charles E. Smith that the recording “had been made before 1898, and Smith ... began an extensive search for it. [His] leads met frustrating dead ends...” By this time Bolden was dead. The cylinder was supposedly made by one Oscar Zahn. A revised edition of the Marquis book reports that in 1999 Marquis got a letter from Zahn’s niece, who wrote that a shed on her property, containing many of her late uncle's old cylinder recordings, was torn down in the early 1960s – the cylinder collection destroyed along with it.
And what about Charlie Parker? Bird lives. Be sure to read Kansas City Lightning.
•
See a slightly longer version of this review, with added links and other fun stuff, here:
http://bluelung.blogspot.com/2014/01/...
July 2, 2021
Kansas City Lightning: The Rise and Times of Charlie Parker by the late Stanley Crouch is a biography like no other I’ve read. Full disclosure here: I’m a Jazz aficionado; and I adore Bird. So it’s fair to say that as I cracked the cover of this book it was with an open mind and a hopeful heart. I wanted nothing more in this world than to like it. Long story short, I did, and then some.
But back to my original statement: it’s a biography like no other. Much of the book’s appeal has to do the exceptional writing style of Stanley Crouch. Some of his observations are like mini-reveries that soar like, well, like Bird. Observe:
“…at it’s most fundamental level, [jazz] is about victory over chaos, about achieving and maintaining a groove that meets the demands of melodic, harmonic, rhythmic, and timbral inventions in milliseconds.”
OR this:
“Clarity is what he was after, all of the notes coming out right, none getting lost. Charlie was looking for his way to say it…. Young and skinny as he was, with mysterious bags under his eyes and an appearance just short of an unmade bed, he was the biggest force on that bandstand. When he put the saxophone in his mouth, his music seemed to fill quickly with light.”
Peppered with gems like this, Kansas City Lightning feels almost like a guilty pleasure. Yet beneath all the gems there is solid research and a great deal of little-known information about Charlie Parker, the at times awkward but supremely driven young man who grew up on the Missouri side of Kansas City without a father and with a doting sometimes meddling mother. Crouch’s knowledge of jazz is nothing short of encyclopedic. He walks the reader through Parker’s formative years in music and layers it with unflinchingly honest scenes of abuse—self-inflicted and otherwise. And it must be said that the author does not dwell on Bird’s prodigious excesses, which at the time, were merely nascent foreshadows of things to come later in the fluorescent streets of Harlem. Crouch rightly avoids the lure of such tabloid issues, treating Parker’s habits instead as the baggage that they were for a young man seeking to become something more than a mediocre midwestern musician.
The nightlife of Kansas City is front and center throughout much of the book, and it becomes almost a character itself within the pages of Kansas City Lightning. Crouch painstakingly yet painlessly lays out the cultural and musical terrain of the Midwest in the late 30s and 40s. And this terrain is peopled with a multifarious cast of individuals who all share one common desire: to swing and swing hard. Over the course of this book, the reader learns names that are typically not known to most followers of jazz—names like Chu Berry and Tommy Douglas. Names like Bud Smith, Charlie’s first and most important mentor, and Biddy Fleet, who helped Parker “map out the harmonic terrain of bebop.”
By the time I’d turned the final page of this book, I felt as if I’d attended a feast and felt strangely sated but still wanting more. And I had only Mr. Crouch to thank for that. But then, it’s nothing that a second read can’t fix. Time well spent, as far as I’m concerned.
December 26, 2020
Crouch is not someone it’s always easy to agree with. There’s a curmudgeonly confidence in his voice that’s will irritate you if you let it. And I don’t agree with him disparaging the avant-garde in Jazz as it reminds me of my grandfather telling me he didn’t like Stravinsky. For my grandfather classical music ended in 1913. When does jazz end for Crouch? I may not listen to Pierre Boulez or Anthony Braxton but on the rarest occasion, but that doesn’t mean their arms must be severed from the body of their traditions.
And sometimes Crouch’s prose veers into florid prose that heads off-topic. For those who must insist on linear prose, Crouch will drive you crazy. And if this is a historical document, why does the author impose his conclusions about their character into their inner life?
But if you’re willing to let Crouch lead and you follow, take you through the cutting sessions, sexuality and smack, this is a magnificent labor. The history is lively because the prose is stylistically distinct and brilliant. Towards the end of reading this, I wrote down a few expressions he used or created: conspiratorial humanism; informal skull sessions; that rough taskmaster called Chu Berry, whose fast, combative passages argued with and against the chords. What great use of modifiers! He knows how to use adjectives to heighten the orchestration of his language. Near the very end of the book he figures out a way to use the Wright Brothers and Klondike gold in the same paragraph. And this in a book about jazz.
These are just a few examples of the poetic, street-based language Crouch uses here. And the research, wow, remarkable. If he establishes an intimacy with his characters one rarely feels in a biographical document, it’s because he’s settled in with the living and the ghosts of this story for almost 40 years now.
This is not JohnMcPhee writing yet another excellent but emotionally flat story, where the prose is chiseled to its cold edge. A labor of such love should expose emotion in its language. And he does. I look forward to the second and final volume of this story.
And sometimes Crouch’s prose veers into florid prose that heads off-topic. For those who must insist on linear prose, Crouch will drive you crazy. And if this is a historical document, why does the author impose his conclusions about their character into their inner life?
But if you’re willing to let Crouch lead and you follow, take you through the cutting sessions, sexuality and smack, this is a magnificent labor. The history is lively because the prose is stylistically distinct and brilliant. Towards the end of reading this, I wrote down a few expressions he used or created: conspiratorial humanism; informal skull sessions; that rough taskmaster called Chu Berry, whose fast, combative passages argued with and against the chords. What great use of modifiers! He knows how to use adjectives to heighten the orchestration of his language. Near the very end of the book he figures out a way to use the Wright Brothers and Klondike gold in the same paragraph. And this in a book about jazz.
These are just a few examples of the poetic, street-based language Crouch uses here. And the research, wow, remarkable. If he establishes an intimacy with his characters one rarely feels in a biographical document, it’s because he’s settled in with the living and the ghosts of this story for almost 40 years now.
This is not JohnMcPhee writing yet another excellent but emotionally flat story, where the prose is chiseled to its cold edge. A labor of such love should expose emotion in its language. And he does. I look forward to the second and final volume of this story.
August 10, 2014
This was a terrific read in my opinion. It was better than the high expectations I had for it given my respect for the author and experience of his earlier work. There are many good reviews of "Kansas City Lightning" here on Goodreads, so I will just add a couple of points I think are important:
Mr. Crouch is a longtime jazz critic (as well as social critic and historian), but he himself is not a professional musician. He does, however, have some background in and knowledge of musical theory and notation but, this book is written in a way that it can be enjoyed by anyone even if they are neither jazz fans nor in any way versed in the technical aspects of music (although jazz fans and those with any amount of music knowledge will find the experience of reading this book greatly enhanced).
As well, I note that many reviews express some annoyance at what the readers see as long digressions from the thread of biographical facts about Charlie Parker. I respectfully disagree. What others saw as digression, I see as a "two for" or even "three for" bargain as Mr. Crouch turns the need to provide background material on Bird's life and music influences into an opportunity to give the reader an excellent course in jazz appreciation and history, as well as a history of our nation in the period in which jazz developed, from a uniquely Black perspective.
Mr. Crouch is a longtime jazz critic (as well as social critic and historian), but he himself is not a professional musician. He does, however, have some background in and knowledge of musical theory and notation but, this book is written in a way that it can be enjoyed by anyone even if they are neither jazz fans nor in any way versed in the technical aspects of music (although jazz fans and those with any amount of music knowledge will find the experience of reading this book greatly enhanced).
As well, I note that many reviews express some annoyance at what the readers see as long digressions from the thread of biographical facts about Charlie Parker. I respectfully disagree. What others saw as digression, I see as a "two for" or even "three for" bargain as Mr. Crouch turns the need to provide background material on Bird's life and music influences into an opportunity to give the reader an excellent course in jazz appreciation and history, as well as a history of our nation in the period in which jazz developed, from a uniquely Black perspective.
October 1, 2013
All I can say is WOW! If you grew up with jazz and know some of the early players, you will shortly and definitely be engrossed in "Kansas City Lightening" The Rise and Times of Charlie Parker. If you don't know a lot about jazz and how it came about, you will after reading this novel. Stanley Crouch has written a biography that touches your heart and soul.
He takes you through Charlie's life, as a child with his mother in Kansas City, his love of music that makes him determined to be the very best sax player, and someone who can make the people move. And he does this. When Charlie is 13 his mother rents out the top floor of their home to Fanny Ruffin and her children. This is how Charlie meets Rebecca who will be his first wife and love of his life. As his love of music grows you will share his joy and feel his pain from his beginning in Kansas City to the hot clubs of New York. Your right there as Charlie's life unfolds.
Unfortunately another of his loves is heroin, which will be his downfall at the age of 34. This is a incredible book, beautifully written, that makes you feel a part of it. Many thanks to the author, Stanley Crouch for a involving read and Goodreads for letting be a early reader.
He takes you through Charlie's life, as a child with his mother in Kansas City, his love of music that makes him determined to be the very best sax player, and someone who can make the people move. And he does this. When Charlie is 13 his mother rents out the top floor of their home to Fanny Ruffin and her children. This is how Charlie meets Rebecca who will be his first wife and love of his life. As his love of music grows you will share his joy and feel his pain from his beginning in Kansas City to the hot clubs of New York. Your right there as Charlie's life unfolds.
Unfortunately another of his loves is heroin, which will be his downfall at the age of 34. This is a incredible book, beautifully written, that makes you feel a part of it. Many thanks to the author, Stanley Crouch for a involving read and Goodreads for letting be a early reader.
April 17, 2023
I have always admired Stanley Crouch's no-holds-barred commentary, but this is my first time reading one of his books. I am often cautious about starting biographies of musicians and composers. Many include vast discussions of musical theory and structure that far exceed my press-play understanding of music. This is not that kind of book. Crouch tailors his discussion of music structure to the lay reader as he paints a portrait of the forces that shaped Charlie Parker's early years in wide-open 1930s Kansas City, then the hub for western jazz musicians.
Count Basie, Jay McShann, Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young, Ben Webster, to name just a few, got their starts in Kansas City's unique swinging bluesy jazz scene. They, and Parker, would help to usher the transition from structured swing bands to bebop as they carried their styles to bigger markets like New York and Chicago. Crouch's detailed insights into Parker's early years document the creation of a new musical form. This is not a complete biography of Parker. Crouch limits his focus to Parker's early influences and work, ending shortly after his 1939 arrival in New York City.
Count Basie, Jay McShann, Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young, Ben Webster, to name just a few, got their starts in Kansas City's unique swinging bluesy jazz scene. They, and Parker, would help to usher the transition from structured swing bands to bebop as they carried their styles to bigger markets like New York and Chicago. Crouch's detailed insights into Parker's early years document the creation of a new musical form. This is not a complete biography of Parker. Crouch limits his focus to Parker's early influences and work, ending shortly after his 1939 arrival in New York City.
March 6, 2014
With a flair for digression that only Melville could love, Crouch deftly paints pictures of the early factors in the life of Charlie Parker. This book covers Bird's life up to his return to New York with Jay McShann's band (~1939-1940). It is not a dry litany of historical facts, dates, and figures as some might expect. It is more of a fanciful attempt to reveal the environment and climate that contributed to Bird's life and development. Being a lover of Charlie Parker, it is an enjoyable read that I had a hard time putting down. Despite Crouch's solid writing, I did find myself wishing there were more stories about Bird and his playing instead of so much background and back story about everyone and everything but Bird. Nevertheless, it's a good read and full of plenty of information for further research into jazz and into what influenced the great Yardbird. Worth checking out for any fan of Bird.
January 30, 2019
Not merely the story of how a jazz genius scaled the heights but also a thumbnail history of his art, its location in its times, and a dissection of its elements and complexities. Author Stanley Crouch is a wonderful explicator in prose of the sounds, colors, and intentions of jazz and has recovered and uncovered from myriad interviewees over the 32 years of this project a tremendous amount of period, cultural, and musical detail, which - along with little known material on the foundations of Charlie Parker's music - make this book so thrilling an event. One can only hope he's close to publishing the second installment covering the concluding 15 years of the Bird's life. On 19 September 2013, Crouch told the NYT'S Ben Ratliff that the 2nd volume was two years away; we're now into a 5th year without it. Perhaps in 2019? Now's the Time...
November 15, 2013
I was thoroughly disappointed with this book. I expected it to be a typical biography delving deeply into the life of its named personage. However, the author goes on lengthy forays into marginal topics related to Afrrican-American history, the old west, and movies, especial D. W. Griffith. Much of the unique information in the book is taken from taped interviews with childhood family and friends of Parker, so at times, it seems as if the book is more about their lives than Parker's.
If you hoped to feast yourself on facts about Charlie Parker you will starve reading this book. I succumbed in frustration about page 90.
If you hoped to feast yourself on facts about Charlie Parker you will starve reading this book. I succumbed in frustration about page 90.
October 21, 2013
Absolutely loved this book & am hoping its true that there is a part two planned. This is excellent if you want Parker's life & career put into context, and lots of it - Kansas City, the history of jazz, some racial stuff - fantastic and highly recommended. I say I hope there's a 2nd part as this one only goes up to about 1940, so obviously there's a bit more of the story to tell.
May 18, 2020
A biography of Charlie Parker--but not what I was thinking. This was specific to him as a kid and his arch into music legend. It was told via the voices and culture around him--not so much based on direct source material from him. It felt very even keeled to me. No real climax or anti-climax. And it seemed to meander. I had to push to get through it. I found it, honestly, a little boring.
October 8, 2013
Reads like the syncopated rhythm of a Charlie Parker riff. Meet Stanley Crouch on The Halli Casser-Jayne Show, Talk Radio for Fine Minds Wednesday October 9, 3 pm ET Online live @ http://bit.ly/U4EEMd
October 24, 2020
Very colorful biography of Charlie Parker's early days pre-fame. Paints a very detailed portrait. Lots of great primary sources, and used well.
May 11, 2023
I am now reading the biography of Duke Ellington by my friend Terry Teachout and I have seen Terry’s play about Louis Armstrong. This book might have benefitted from being written by Teachout. Both books mention many of the same musicians and Crouch gives some lovely descriptions of the playing by these musicians. However, Terry cites specific examples so that a reader can consult YouTube or one’s CD collection to hear exactly what is being described.
That said, Crouch does an excellent job of telling about the progression of events leading up to Charlie Parker’s meteoric rise in the world of jazz.
As a Kansas Citian, it is great to read about my city’s and specifically Parker’s part in the history of the art of jazz.
That said, Crouch does an excellent job of telling about the progression of events leading up to Charlie Parker’s meteoric rise in the world of jazz.
As a Kansas Citian, it is great to read about my city’s and specifically Parker’s part in the history of the art of jazz.
January 8, 2014
I've been on a kick of jazz musician biographies, Thelonious Monk and Duke Ellington most recently. This is the best and the most readable of the three. It's not bogged down in music theory and minutiae. It's very readable and there's quite a bit about the LIFE of Parker (not just facts and descriptions of music chord changes).
Charlie Parker was an amazing musician and pure genius. He also had demons. When the coroner performed his autopsy (he didn't know who Parker was), he guesstimated him to be in his 50's. He was 34. Such was the life of most jazz musicians. Heroin addicted more of the big names than not. Almost all struggled with drugs or alcohol. There were very few exceptions. Parker was a huge loss. So tragic.
My only complaint with this book, is a lot of it is not about Parker, but those surrounding him. Buddy Bolden, Walter Page, Buster Smith etc...Some of these names were unknown to me (some not), but pages were devoted to them, without any mention of Parker. I will say that I am a jazz fan of the big names, many lesser known I was unfamiliar with. I am by no means a jazz aficionado. I found it hard to be interested in these minor players (only minor in my limited knowledge) without being familiar with their music.
All in all, an excellent biography, especially if you're interested in a complete picture of what was happening in the world of jazz during Parker's time. It is most evident that author Stanley Crouch knows his jazz inside and out.
Charlie Parker was an amazing musician and pure genius. He also had demons. When the coroner performed his autopsy (he didn't know who Parker was), he guesstimated him to be in his 50's. He was 34. Such was the life of most jazz musicians. Heroin addicted more of the big names than not. Almost all struggled with drugs or alcohol. There were very few exceptions. Parker was a huge loss. So tragic.
My only complaint with this book, is a lot of it is not about Parker, but those surrounding him. Buddy Bolden, Walter Page, Buster Smith etc...Some of these names were unknown to me (some not), but pages were devoted to them, without any mention of Parker. I will say that I am a jazz fan of the big names, many lesser known I was unfamiliar with. I am by no means a jazz aficionado. I found it hard to be interested in these minor players (only minor in my limited knowledge) without being familiar with their music.
All in all, an excellent biography, especially if you're interested in a complete picture of what was happening in the world of jazz during Parker's time. It is most evident that author Stanley Crouch knows his jazz inside and out.
March 23, 2017
A fascinating look at Charlie Parker's beginning. I assumed (wrongly) that this would be a full biography of Parker's life, but it stops before he truly hits the big time. It traces his rice in Kansas City, his hoboing to Chicago and then to New York to see the world and prove his worth, and ends with his eventual return to Kansas City. Included are many pictures, interviews with his first wife and a wonderful array of Jazz history and culture so that the reader can gain a better understanding of how Parker created a unique sound all his own while studying the Jazz masters of the day. A wonderfully informative book that makes me wonder if it's the first in a series. I want to know about his rise to fame, not just the beginnings!
August 5, 2013
I won a copy of this book from Goodreads Firstreads. I really enjoyed this book, I knew little about Charlie Parker prior to reading this book, but there's a ton of information here, not only about him but other musicians and the beginnings of Jazz music. There's also some great history about Kansas City in here as well, which I really enjoyed since I recognize many of the places that are mentioned.
October 15, 2016
A compelling and incisive look into the early life of one of the great artists of the 20th century--a visionary of “infinite plasticity”--Kansas City Lightning is also a fascinating survey of the era leading up to Civil Rights, which Crouch portrays as a hotbed of thought and creativity, thanks to icons like King Oliver, Jack Johnson, Duke Ellington, and Joe Lewis.
May 25, 2018
Stanley Crouch is one of my favorite writers on all things Jazz. He has an "edge" to anything he gets involves with whether it be writing or doing a spin on the drums in a Jazz band. The only problem is that Stanley needs to write book two!! He leaves the reader at about 1945......before Parker's epiphany on the chord changes of Cherokee......please Stanley....please
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