Kansas City lightning the rise and times of Charlie Parker
"The first installment in the long-awaited portrait of one of the most talented and influential musicians of the twentieth century. Charlie Parker personified the tortured American artist: a revolutionary performer who used his alto saxophone to create a new music known as bebop even as he wres...
| Main Author: | Crouch, Stanley (Author) |
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| Format: | Books Print Book |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
New York :
Harper,
[2013]
|
| Edition: | First edition. |
| Subjects: |
| Summary: |
"The first installment in the long-awaited portrait of one of the most talented and influential musicians of the twentieth century. Charlie Parker personified the tortured American artist: a revolutionary performer who used his alto saxophone to create a new music known as bebop even as he wrestled with a drug addiction that would lead to his death at 34. With the wisdom of a jazz scholar, the cultural insights of a social critic, and the narrative skill of a novelist, drawing on interviews with peers, collaborators, and family members, Stanley Crouch recreates Parker's Depression-era childhood; his early days navigating the Kansas City nightlife, inspired by lions like Lester Young and Count Basie; and on to New York, where he began to transcend the music he had mastered. Crouch reveals an ambitious young man torn between music and drugs, between his domineering mother and his impressionable young wife, whose teenage romance with Charlie lies at the bittersweet heart of this story.'--From publisher description. |
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| Physical Description: |
365 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm |
| Bibliography: |
Includes bibliographical references (pages 341-344) and index. |
| ISBN: |
0062005596 (hbk.) 9780062005595 (hbk.) |
| Author Notes: |
He moved to New York City in 1975 and worked as a musician and conducted bookings for an avant-garde jazz series at clubs. In 1980, he was hired as a staff writer for the Village Voice. In 1988, he was fired after a fistfight with a fellow writer. He then worked as a syndicated columnist based at the New York Daily News. His anthologies included Noted of a Hanging Judge: Essays and Reviews, 1979-1989; The All-American Skin Game, or, The Decoy of Race: The Long and the Short of It, 1990-1994; Always in Pursuit: Fresh American Perspectives, 1995-1997; and Considering Genius: Writings on Jazz. His fiction included, Don't the Moon Look Lonesome: A Novel in Blues and Swing. He wrote a biography, The Rise and Times of Charlie Parker. In 2016, he was awarded the Windham-Campbell Literary Prize. Stanley Crouch died on September 16, 2020 in New York City at the age of 74. (Bowker Author Biography) |