This is the second time Charlie Parker has been featured at Sometimes Saintly Nicks's Wednesday Coffeehouse. Back on a Wednesday in August of 2008 Mr. Parker was featured along with Jack Kerouac reading poetry -- or was that prose?
Back in 2008, the majority of Charlie's music here was audio only, taken from Sometimes Saintly Nick's CD collection. Today, we forego the listening for videos from YOUTUBE.
Why not grab a cup of joe and
enjoy!
Sessions:
Charlie and Dizzy:
The Bird:
Confirmation:
I've Got Rhythm:
These last clips relate to the Bird's untimely death and how his generation remembers him:
Charlie Parker's death in 1965 was one of jazz's greatest tragedies.
From Clint Eastwood's film, Bird
Jack Kerouac remenbering Charlie Parker (accompanied by Steve Allen)
That's it for this Coffeehouse. Stick around if you want, or you may want to visit past Nick's Coffeehouse posts:
Welcome to the coffeehouse! Today we feature jazz pianist, Theolonious Sphere Monk, and the foremost comedian of the Beat Generation, Lenny Bruce.
Robin D. G. Kelley, Professor of Anthropology, AfricanAmerican Studies, and Jazz Studies at ColumbiaUniversity, says of Theo Monk:
Today Thelonious Monk is widely accepted as a genuine master of American music. His compositions constitute the core of jazz repertory and are performed by artists from many different genres. He is the subject of award winning documentaries, biographies and scholarly studies, prime time television tributes, and he even has an Institute created in his name. The Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz was created to promote jazz education and to train and encourage new generations of musicians. It is a fitting tribute to an artist who was always willing to share his musical knowledge with others but expected originality in return.
Lenny Bruce, like Theolonious Monk, was a trendsetter. He brought onto the stage a kind of humor that not been shared in public since before the Victorian age. David Skover writes:
Lenny Bruce's words had the power to provoke laughter and debate—as well as shock and outrage. It was the force of his voice that would place him on the wrong side of the law in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago and New York…
Lenny committed his life to telling the truth. But the truth he told infuriated those in power, and authorities in the largest, most progressive cities in the country worked effortlessy to put him in jail. To them, Lenny's words were filthy and depraved. But to his friends—the hip, the discontented, the fringe—his words were not only sharp and hilarious, they were a light in the dark to the repressed society of the early 1960's.
Please don’t be concerned about Lenny’s poem below, Psycopathia Sexualis; it is very tame.
We begin with a jazz set featuring Theolonious Monk. So grab a cuppa joe and jive to the beat.
Theolonious Monk: April in Paris
Theolonious Monk: Introspection
Before Monk’s second set, allow me to introduce the foremost comedian of the Beat Generation, Mr. Lenny Bruce.
Welcome to Nick’s Wednesday (evening) Coffeehouse! Tonight we feature the music of Charlie “Yardbird” Parker, who was perhaps the finest musician who ever wailed an alto sax. Charlie is introduced by the spokesperson of the Beat generation: Jack Kerouac.
So, be hip and dig the wailing ax of Charlie Parker.
Charlie Parker
Jack Kerouac: Remembering Charlie Parker
Charlie Parker: Now’s the Times
Charlie Parker: The Bird
Charlie Parker: Just Friends
Charlie Parker: Lover Man
All the audios at Nick’s Coffeehouse come from my own collection.
The Beat Generation was born out of post-war disillusionment and restlessness. They were a generation of young people struggling to come to terms with the chaos and uncertainties that were a part of their upbringing. Their movement, if it can accurately be called that, manifested itself in literature and poetry, which threw off the traditional, classical format to become a character in and of itself. The Beats attempted to express themselves in a way that was extremely personal and extremely in-your-face. They addressed issues that were taboo at the time, most notably homosexuality and drug use, writing largely for and to each other, sharing life experiences and crying out against an establishment that harbored little space for individuality and protest. ~ Amanda Erickson, The Beat Generation
Before the so-called folk music renaissance found folks sitting in coffee houses and listening to old and new folk songs, there were the Beats. I’ve blogged about the Beat Generation several times because I am enamored with certain aspects of it, such as their pacific response to the absurdities of life.
The coffee house experience of the Beats primarily centered around writers reading their own poetry or prose, occasionally accompanied by music from a single bongo drum to a jazz band. Jazz and bebop were the music of the Beats and one will find numerous references and even allegories regarding especially jazz in Beat writings. For example, listen to improvisers Del Close and John Brent attempting to explain Hip, the supposed language of the Beats:
Basic Hip ~ Del Close and John Brent
Moving on and into the Coffee House, one often found quite a scene (a word that also had a unique hip meaning). Jack Kerouac describes a gathering of beats for a poetry reading in a San Farancisco hipster club. (A note about Kerouac’s writing: most of it was autobiolgraphical—Jack wrote about what he experienced. In the selection below, the fictional names Jack has given his characters are followed [ ] by their real names)
The other poets were either hornrimmed intellectual hepcats with wild black hair like Alvah Goldbook [Allen Ginsberg], or delicate pale handsome poets like Ike O'Shay [Michael McClure] (in a suit), or outof-this-world genteel-looking Renaissance Italians like Francis DaPavia [Philip Lamantia] (who looks like a young priest), or bow-tied wild-haired old anarchist fuds like Rheinhold Cacoethes [Kenneth Rexroth], or big fat bespectacled quiet booboos like Warren Coughlin [Philip Whalen]. And all the other hopeful poets were standing around, in various costumes, worn-at-the-sleeves corduroy jackets, scuffly shoes, books sticking out of their pockets. ~ Jack Kerouac, The Dharma Bums
Besides the reading of poetry and prose, as I wrote above, there was also music. Therefore, let us begin this visit to the Coffee House with jazz singer Carmen McRaesinging Coffee Time, a song that perhaps should begin every visit to a coffee house:
Coffee Time ~ Carmen McRae
Moving on, allow me to introduce two of the most famous Beat writers, Jack Kerouac, and poet Allen Ginsberg.
These last clips relate to the Bird's untimely death and how his generation remembers him:
