CHASIN’ THE BIRD: The Life and Legacy of Charlie Parker
by Brian Priestley
Equinox £16.99, 242 pages

As the lead architect of modern jazz, Charlie Parker was as innovative musically as Mozart or Beethoven and, argues Brian Priestley in this engrossing examination of the American saxophonist, should be celebrated as such. Yet Parker is remembered as much for his life of excess than for his music - after all, when he died in 1955 he was just 34 but the physical damage was so great that the coroner guessed his age to be 53.

Chasin’ the Bird is a deft and tightly researched account that sets out to explain why Parker was so ahead musically of most of his contemporaries. The early years are illuminated by Priestley’s expert probing of census returns, school reports and contradictory reminiscences.

Parker’s guitarist father, who dabbled in pimping before he was murdered in 1939, played no part in Parker’s musical development; his main influence seeming to have been his absence. Yet Parker’s childhood was not unstable - his mother delivered emotional and financial security, working two jobs and renting out rooms to pay the mortgage on their home. Parker had maternal affection by the bucketful, but little or no supervision.

Central to Parker’s musical development was his place and time of birth, Kansas City in 1920. Kansas flourished as a corrupt, alcohol-fuelled entertainment centre in the middle of the prohibition years. Live music spilled on to the street from every speakeasy and nightclub, starting as early as 10 in the morning. Musical employment was plentiful, if not well paid, and jam sessions were encouraged, so long as they didn’t put off the customers.

Parker got the jazz bug at the age of 12, and immersed himself in the musical hothouse of Kansas City’s gangster-run nightlife. He practised for up to 11 hours a day, poring over classical music manuals and joining in hours of competitive jamming. With a superb ear and memory and a sharp intellect, Parker flowered, and not just as a virtuoso. Through the hours of practice and study, Parker developed a revolutionary approach to jazz rooted in Afro-American traditions.

Priestley paints a compelling portrait of an adolescent armed with rare talent and huge ego, roaming a city that lived from alcohol, drugs, gambling and prostitution.

All this activity was focused ultimately on his devotion to expressing his experiences through improvised jazz music, which continued undisturbed either by the birth of his first son or by the closure of Kansas City’s nightclubs in 1938. He moved to New York where the competitive jazz scene had even higher standards, working as a featured soloist with big bands such as those led by pianist Earl Hines. Parker would often fall asleep between spots yet at a nudge wake to deliver blinding solos.

Parker was at the centre of a group of racially conscious musicians, including pianist Thelonious Monk, trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie and drummer Max Roach, who were refining new musical ideas. By 1945, when he first made a studio recording under his own name, this music had coalesced into a distinct style and acquired a name: be-bop.

For the next 10 years, Parker put creativity before all other relationships, and the order and discipline of his music contrasted with the chaos and abandon of his personal and professional life. Many of Parker’s problems lay in a hostile working environment. The US encouraged the idea of racial integration as part of its war effort, but the deal was off once the war was over.

Some pressures were aggravated by his heroin and alcohol addictions but do not alone explain why he was a terrible husband, a poor bandleader and an untrustworthy friend.

But in a sense this misses the point. Parker is known through his innovative music, still powerful even on technically limited studio and hissy live recordings. It was music that drove promoter Norman Granz to support Parker, even if he had to march him on stage at gunpoint after finding him comatose. It was Parker’s music that inspired fan Dean Benedetti to lug a heavy tape machine into clubs night after night for a year to record Parker live, passing the microphone in through the toilet window if he couldn’t get in. And though Parker was not alone in developing modern jazz, his compositional sense enabled him to assemble the ideas more completely and more clearly than anyone else.

Priestley modestly says that his book is merely an introduction to Parker’s life and legacy, but it intelligently and readably relates the social and personal to his live and recorded career.

Mike Hobart is the FT’s jazz critic.