Bird Still Influential After 50 Years

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NEW YORK (AFP) - Saxophonist Charlie Parker, who helped invent the modern jazz style of be-bop, was also one of jazz's first existential heroes -- a famously self-destructive genius who died at age 34.

Well before his death 50 years ago, hastened by a lifetime battle with booze and heroin, Parker could claim to be one of the most important innovators in jazz history, one of the few musicians who had changed the music forever.

But his turbulent personal life, coupled with his quest to find a new sound for jazz, turned him into a wider symbol of the modern artist at war with his demons -- and with the artistic conventions of his time.

Born an only child in August 1920, Parker grew up in Kansas City and started playing alto saxophone at age 13, cutting his teeth with older musicians when that city was still one of the hotbeds of jazz in the United States.

In 1939, Parker first came to New York and it was there, by his own account, that he got bored playing the traditional "sweet" harmonies that were already established as jazz's foundation.

"I kept thinking there's bound to be something else," Parker said. "I could hear it sometimes, but I couldn't play it."

At one jam session, however, Parker found himself breaking with tradition and improvising on the higher notes of the chords to a song -- a technical change that spawned the revolution of be-bop.

The music sounded harsh at first but as the style was refined -- thanks also to be-bop's other great innovator, trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie -- its complex sound and frenetic speed became the new standard in modern jazz.

Parker and Gillespie brought be-bop to Hollywood for an extended nightclub engagement in December 1945, puzzling older musicians but opening the ears of the emerging generation.

Yet when it came time to fly back to New York, Parker did not show up for the plane and by mid-1946 he was in a California hospital for a long-term stay, battling a nervous breakdown and addictions to heroin and alcohol.

He returned to New York the next year and by 1951 Parker -- whose nickname "Bird," some said, came from his love of chicken -- had become virtually a household name.

Compositions like "Ko-Ko" and "Scrapple From The Apple," and his edgy, lightning-speed improvisations, helped bring a modernity to jazz that had already touched other arts such as painting nearly a half-century before.

In his solos, he quoted snippets from Bizet and Prokofiev, and paid homage to Stravinsky. He dreamt of collaborating with French composer Edgar Varese -- it never happened -- and discussed music with Jean-Paul Sartre.

The Parker faithful tried to record every note he played, and his performances are still studied today as marvels in harmonic and melodic invention, a revolutionary new sound that captured the spirit of a new era.

Both his music and his life were cited as inspiration by filmmakers (like Clint Eastwood, who directed the bio-pic "Bird"), writers and fellow musicians as diverse as Donald Fagen (from rock group Steely Dan) and Bob Dylan.

Not everyone approved, and British poet Philip Larkin -- also one of the finest jazz critics of his day -- blamed Parker as much as Picasso for bringing ugliness into modern art.

But Larkin's voice was in the minority. Asked about jazz history, trumpet legend Miles Davis said it could be summed up in only four words: "Louis Armstrong, Charlie Parker."

Though Parker's music gradually found an ever-wider audience, in part thanks to a commercial experiment in which he played with an orchestral string section, the man himself could not seem to conquer his inner torment.

Often he would pass out on stage and have to be awakened when it was time for a solo, and the New York city narcotics squad in 1951 got his cabaret license revoked, effectively banning him from performing in nightclubs.

With work scarce, Parker continued to spiral downwards and he twice tried to commit suicide in 1954. He committed himself to a psychiatric hospital later that year.

His last performance came on March 5, 1955 at Birdland, a New York club that had been re-named in his honour. Parker died one week later -- and legend has it that the doctor who tended to him thought he was about 60 years old.