Charlie Parker • Bird in Kansas City

Given saxophonist Charlie Parker’s renown, you might think his career was extremely well documented, In fact, although he was already a known quantity by about 1940, it wasn’t until the late 1940’s that Parker (aka “Yardbird” or “Bird”) began to consistently commercially record. Adding to that documentation were the recordings done in the late 1940s by the fanatical Bird acolyte Dean Benedetti. Benedetti stashed his recording equipment where he could, including under stages, usually turning his machine on when Parker played and shutting it off when his solo ended. Amateur jazz recordist Jerry Newman did make vital 1941 recordings documenting musicians like Thelonius Monk, Dizzy Gillespie, and Kenny Clarke birthing Bebop at Minton’s Playhouse, but Newman didn’t care for Parker’s playing and didn’t record him. This dearth of recordings in the early 1940s makes it hard to trace the evolution of Bird’s playing and complicates trying to understand how Bebop developed. The Musicians Union recording strike from August 1942 to November 1944 had a lot to do with it (The strike resumed in 1948 but lasted less than a year). WWII also put the squeeze on recording. People wanted to hear more patriotic and escapist tunes—and the government put pressure on the music and film industries to make this happen. I would conjecture that this was not particularly fertile soil fo