Bird: The Life and Music of Charlie Parker

4. Bebop [Includes Image Plates A-J]

58 • chapter 3 weekend,butonMondayhewashighagain.TheownerofthetheatertoldJay togetridofhim,andthenextdayParkerwasonhiswaybacktoNewYork.”38 Charlie hitched a ride with the Andy Kirk band, which happened to be in Detroit. Charlie briefly rejoined the McShann band when it returned to New York but left in December 1942, when Earl “Fatha” Hines raided the McShann band, taking Charlie and two other band members. Hines, a veteran bandleader, informed McShann that he intended to “make a man” out of Charlie. Hines had no idea what he was getting himself into. chapter 4 Bebop Afew months after Charlie joined the Earl Hines band, Jay McShann ran into Hines at a jam session on Fifty-Second Street. Hines begged McShann to take Charlie back. McShann chuckled, “He [Hines] threw up his handswhenhesawmeandsaid,‘That’stheworstmanIevermetinmylife! He owes everybody money. Come get him!’ Earl had bought Bird a saxophoneworthfourtofivehundreddollars ,andBirdreallyhadhimcryingthe blues!”1 Charlie had already pawned the new horn. Duringhislongcareer,stretchingbackbeforethedawnofjazz,Hineshad nevermetanyonequitelikeCharlie.HinesgrewupinasuburbofPittsburgh. As a child, he studied classical piano and memorized show tunes while attending theatrical productions and films. He began playing professionally as a teenager, accompanying Lois Deppe, a popular baritone. Dapper, with angular features highlighted by a finely etched mustache, Hines made his recording debut for the Gennett label in 1923 with Deppe’s Serenaders. In 1925, Hines moved to Chicago and joined the Carroll Dickerson Orchestra for a forty-two week tour of the Pantages vaudeville circuit that ranged up the West Coast to Canada. Louis Armstrong joined the band 60 • chapter 4 when it returned to Chicago for an engagement at the famed Sunset Club. ArmstronghadbeenfreelancingaroundChicagowhilemakinghisgroundbreakingHotFiveandHotSevenrecordingsfortheOKehlabel ,featuringhis wife Lil Hardin Armstrong on piano. Hines and Armstrong became close friends while working together at the Sunset. Armstrong admired Hines’s “trumpet style,” distinguished by offbeat accents, octaves, and tremolo. In 1928, Armstrong reorganized the Hot Five band and replaced Lil with Hines. Armstrong and Hines made a number of recordings for the OKeh label,includingabrilliantlyexecutedduet,“Weatherbird.”Hinesmorethan held his own against Armstrong in their tricky musical back and forth. On his twenty-fifth birthday, Hines launched his career as a bandleader at Al Capone’s Grand Terrace Café, one of Chicago’s brightest nightspots. Capone lavished $100 tips on the young pianist. The band spent winters at the Grand Terrace and toured nationally during the summer months. The all-star revue at the Grand Terrace featured leading dancers, comedians, and entertainers. Nightly broadcasts from the Grand Terrace over the NBC Network established Hines’s reputation nationally. He became known as “Fatha” after the radio announcer began heralding the band with “Here comes Fatha Hines, leading his band out of the deep forest with his little children.”2 The nickname stuck, and Hines, although still a young man, became known as “Fatha.” HineslefttheGrandTerracein1938,afteradisputeovermoneywiththe manager, Ed Fox. Despite his long tenure at the Grand Terrace and broadcastsoveranationalnetwork ,HinesearnedlessmoneythanDukeEllington, Jimmy Lunceford, and other top bandleaders. When Hines left the Grand Terrace, half of the band stayed behind out of loyalty to Fox. HinesandmusicdirectorBuddJohnsonrebuiltandupdatedthebandby recruiting young, progressive musicians. Vocalist Billy Eckstine joined the band in Detroit. Eckstine, who hailed from Pittsburgh, modeled his style after Paul Robeson. A strikingly handsome baritone with precise diction, Eckstinefavoredballadsbutgainedfameasabluesstylist.Whileaudiences on the East Coast swooned at Eckstine’s ballads, fans in the South clamored for the blues in the style of Big Joe Turner. Eckstine, who disdained the blues, hastily sketched out the lyric to “Jelly, Jelly,” a risqué, orchestral expression of the blues that became the big hit of 1941. The next year, he Bebop • 61 scoredanotherhitwith“StormyMondayBlues.”Offstage,Eckstinehelped Hinesscoutyoungtalent,bringingDizzyGillespie,CharlieParker,andother modernists into the band. In November 1942, Eckstine convinced Gillespie to join the band. Gillespie had been dividing his time between leading the house band at the Downbeat Club in Philadelphia, where his mother lived, and sitting in at jam sessions in Harlem, where his wife Lorraine worked and maintained theirapartment.EckstineandotherbandmembersluredGillespieintothe bandbypromisingthatCharliewouldsoonjointheband.TheytoldCharlie the same thing about Gillespie. JustbeforeChristmas,EckstineconvincedHinestohireCharlie.Eckstine recalled how Charlie came to the band: There used to be a joint in New York, a late night spot on 138th [sic] called Clarke Monroe’s Uptown House, where the guys all jammed. . . . Bird used to go down there and blow every night, and he just played gorgeous. Now by this time I was with Earl Hines, who was starting out with his new band. BuddJohnsonandmyselfgotthisbandtogetherforhimanditwasallyoung guys—Scoops Carry, Franz Jackson, Shorty McConnell, Little Benny Harris , and guys like that. We sold Hines on...