Gloomy Tunes: Charlie Parker

Since Charlie Parker is our Dead of the Day, a couple of our favorite Parker recordings:

We open with one of Parker’s signature songs, “Ko-Ko.” Based around the changes of a “Cherokee,” this recording features Dizzy Gillespie on trumpet, Sadik Hakim on piano, Curley Russell on bass, and Max Roach on drums. In Parker’s solo, you can hear a new music being born.More than once it threatens to break free of the changes, but Parker retains control and sculpts a thing of great beauty. Next is the louché swing of “A Night in Tunisia.” It’s a Dizzy Gillespie composition, but playing trumpet on this recording is a young Miles Davis.  It’s followed by “Laura,” from the controversial “Parker With Strings” collection. We can understand why some have a problem with the strings—they can get a little oleaginous—but on David Raskin’s theme from Otto Preminger’s noirish tale of unrequited love and murder, they come together to produce one of the most urgently romantic music Parker ever recorded. We conclude with a live recording of Parker, along with Davis, Russell, Roach, and the under-appreciated Tadd Dameron on piano, performing Thelonious Monk’s “52nd Street Theme” at the Royal Roost, introduced by Symphony Sid, a New York radio personality.

Steven Mirkin

Steven Mirkin’s diverse career has taken him from politics to pop culture to high art, offering him a front row seat to some of the most fascinating events and personalities of our time: writing speeches, fundraising appeals and campaign materials for Ed Koch, John Heinz and independent presidential candidate John B. Anderson; chronicling the punk/new wave scenes in New York and London; interviewing musicians such as Elton John, John Lydon and Buck Owens; profiling modern masters Julian Schnabel, Paul Schrader and Jonathan Safran Foer; and writing for TV shows including 21, The Chamber, Let's Make A Deal, and Rock Star: INXS.