The Birdman

So dig, I wrap up "Hitch-22" and I'm wondering what to read next.

I have built up a nice stockpile of books in the queue. It is comforting to me.

I amused myself with the thought of reading "Fifty Shades of Grey." You know, go from one extreme to the other.

My brain wouldn't accept it. Apparently it is slowly coming down from the intellectual high Christopher Hitchens provided. I read a few passages and realized I am just not ready for that yet.

Picked up "Kansas City Lightening", a biography of Charlie Parker. Good move, Joe.

Apparently this is volume one of what is to be an extensive, two volume biography.

Very tasty.

It is well written and really captures the atmosphere of life in Charlie Parker's time.

I know. I was there.

Actually when you think about it, when you are a music lover, aren't you everywhere at once? Music being the magic that it is, gets into your soul and transforms you into a timeless human being. When I listen to Robert Johnson, it is 1936. When I listen to Mumford & Sons, it is 2014.

Just a thought.

Bands competed like athletes back then. It was all about pride.

The Savoy Ballroom in Harlem was the place to play in New York. It had two stages, so when one band finished, the next band could start up immediately. Keep the people dancing and satisfied. The bands would go back and forth over the course of the night and the audience, through word of mouth, would decide who was King.

The author, Stanley Crouch, describes a duel between the Jay McShann band, featuring Charlie Parker, and the Lucky Millinder Orchestra. The McShann band was from Kansas City and considered to be oakies; Millinder's band were Kings of the Savoy.

The thing went off like a prize fight. Pretty interesting stuff.

Some beautiful descriptions:

"They were also part of an artistic tradition, one that had been eroding stereotypes for years by using music to express emotion in terms that were both brand-new and continually evolving. Though the music was filled with references to inside stuff - a particular person, a street corner, a club, a nickname - the penetration of the rhythm, the swing, the harmony, and the melody made it one with the external world. Once there were physical replies to the music in the form of dance, the beat had such irresistible vigor that it transcended all lines."

"The world had constantly disappointed Charlie Parker. For all the satisfactions of his music, for all the light jokes and deep laughs on the road, he was basically a melancholy and suspicious man, a genius in search of a solution to a blues that wore razors for spurs."

I am forty pages into this book and in love with it deeply.

Ciao, baby.