Chasin' The Bird

"Charlie Parker has been idolized by generations of jazz musicians and fans. Indeed, his spectacular musical abilities - his blinding speed and brilliant improvisational style - made Parker a legend even before his tragic death at age thirty-four." "Now, in Chasin' The Bird, Brian Priestley offers a marvelous biography of this jazz icon, ranging from his child hood in Kansas City to his final harrowing days in New York City. Priestley offers new insight into Parker's career, beginning as a teenager single-mindedly devoted to mastering the saxophone. We follow Parker on his first trip to New York, penniless, washing dishes for $9.00 a week at Jimmy's Chicken Shack, a favorite hangout of the great Art Tatum, whose stunning speed and ingenuity was an influence on the young musician. Priestley sheds light on Parker's collaborations with Dizzy Gillespie, Max Roach, Bud Powell, Mary Lou Williams, and Thelonious Monk, and he illuminates such classic recordings as "Salt peanuts" and "A Night in Tunisia" and his own compositions "Shaw 'Nuff" and "Yardbird Suite"--Music which defined an era. And Priestley also gives us an unflinching look at Parker's dark side - the drug abuse, heavy drinking, and tangled relations with women and the law. He recounts the death of Parker's daughter Pree, who was only two-and-a-half years old, and Parker's own death at thirty four, in such wretched condition that the doctor listed his age as fifty three."--Jacket.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Nonfiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.