CHARLIE PARKER - HIS MUSIC AND LIFE - THE MICHIGAN AMERICAN MUSIC SERIES

Charlie Parker didn't invent jazz. He didn't even reinvent it; jazz simply transformed from big band swing into a fierce new sound called bebop, which just so happened to be cast in Parker's image. It's the Kansas City saxophonist's virtuosity that fans often consider bebop's greatest victory. The latest contribution to the University of Michigan's American Music Series fails to dispel Bird's enormous myth or transport that myth into the realm of hard fact. Perhaps Woideck's opening biographical sketch is so desultory and insecure because Parker, a womanizer and heroin addict for most of his adult life, never proved too dependable. Also, while there are frequent references to the considerable endnotes, it would have been helpful if the many important first-person quotations regarding Parker's life and career were explicitly credited. Although the year-by-year analyses and solo transcriptions that comprise the remainder of this study do go on to demonstrate an understanding of Parker's technical developments that is clearer than most such academic analyses, this volume is not likely to appeal to lay fans.