In doing so, he became an object of worship for the intellectual crowd, a haunting and mysterious figure whose music contained an endlessly impenetrable message with meaning available only to those who claimed the advanced aesthetic ability to understand it. From the public perspective, he disconnected jazz from danceable rhythms, an unforgivable sin at a time when swing ruled the airwaves and jazz was virtually synonymous with dance. Ian Anderson, “From a Deadbeat to an Old Greaser”Ĭharlie Parker is one of the most divisive and controversial figures in jazz history, and jazz could not have survived without him. Left the young brood to go on living without them. Of the heroes who were too wise for their own good Of Charlie Parker, Jack Kerouac, René Magritte, to name a few I.Īnd tired young sax-players sold their instruments of torture When bombs were banned every sunday and The Shadows played F.
Made of dummies (with no mummies or daddies to reject them). Where blonde assistants fully fashioned a world You won’t remember the long nights-coffee bars and black tights
