Music+Career

__Charlie Parker's Music Career__

He was a profound muscician. He played jazz and bebop. He played along with Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington. Charlie Parker started his career off in New York City. He was an outstanding jazz saxaphonist and composer. He was about 16 years old when he started playing proffesional jazz. He practiced about 15 hours a day for almost 4 years. He worked for 9 dollars a week as a dish washer. While listening to the pianist at the resturant he worked at he discovered that he was using high speed arpeggios and sophisticated use of harmony. Once he left the dinner, he left to go to a band. He was in a duo band with Dizzy Gillespie, one of the best trumpet and cornet players of all time. The time he was in the band is not documented because of the Strike of 1942-1943 by the American Federation of Musicians. On his spare time he joined a group that played in clubs in Harlem. (Harlem was the national capital of African American Jazz, Blues and Swing) The group consisted of Dizzy Gillespie on trumpet, Thelonious Monk on piano, Charlie Christian on guitar and Kenny Clarke on drums. They then got kicked out by white people and then moved they played at venues on 52nd street including the Three Duces and The Onyx. While Charlie was in New York City he learned a lot from a music teacher by the name of Maury Deutsch.

Charlie Parker invented the music category of Bebop. The main way to play bebop is to use extended intervals, such as ninths, elevenths and thirteenths. Once Parker discovered this he also realized that the twelve tones of the chromatic scale can each be quickly led melodically to any key, breaking some of the confines of simpler jazz soloing. Bebop was not liked by many, many jazz musicians. Charlie Parker had a really hard time trying to get people to play this type of music. It was about 2 years later it was just starting to get anounced on the radio. It contained very limited radio space and was not played in many local areas. Much of Bebop's early development was not captured for prosperity. It was very hard for Bebop musicians to gain popularity and to find gigs because people did not want to hear that style of music, they were just not interested at all in it. Many Bebop musicians later got it to be reconized and it was soon a very popular style of music. There is not much to learn about Bebop but it soon became a very popular style of music thanks to Charlie Parker.

Charlie Parker was one of the most talented musicians that has ever lived. He was an outstanding jazz saxaphonist and developed many, many techniques to the music. The techniques he had come up with are still used excesively today in many music pieces. Charlie played with a Conn 6M "Lady Face" alto sax with highly distinctive underslung octave key, a model that he was known to have used. Charlie Parker will always go down in history for his music succession.