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"I know how frustrating it is for me, as long as I've been playing, when I'm not
able to play. I want to play twenty-six hours a day, even though I know I need
sleep. I don't want to go near music when I can't play it. I sit there and the
palms of my hands are perspiring. It's a real feeling of frustration. And when
the young kids don't get a chance to play, that's one of the things that
happens. And so, one of the things that got kids into dope was to get
something to bolster their courage." - Jo Jones
"you know there's quite a number of things wrong with me. I go to this
heart specialist, you know, give him a hundred dollars for the relief of my
heart. He treats me, don't do no good; my heart is still messed up. I go to
this ulcer man, give him seventy-five dollars to cool my ulcers out; it don't
do no good. There's a little cat in a dark alley around the corner. I give him
five dollars for a bag of sh*t; my ulcer's gone, my heart trouble gone,
everything gone, all my ailments gone." - Charlie Parker speaking to Walter
Bishop.
If an activity could be considered an addiction, then there is little doubt that
Charlie Parker's main addiction was playing saxophone. More than anything,
Charlie's first and last love was playing the instrument he picked up in earnest
at 13 years old. It may be because this addiction was so intense, that his other addictions became so extreme. As
the Jo Jones quote above implies, it was the 'down time' that would have caused Charlie the most problems. There
would seem to be a precarious balance between these two states for Charlie and this may have caused both turmoil
and brilliance in his life and perhaps this helps to explain why Charlie Parker remains such an enigma.
This balance between the sublime and the desperate, between genius
and the suicidal is critical in understanding the brilliant and the
desolate aspects of Charlie's life. It was an uneasy equilibrium, where
satisfaction was juxtaposed with frustration. The genius could not live
with the everyday. Commentators are fascinated by both sides of
Charlie's character and many books have been written about the
genius of his music and his personal eccentricities, but critics rarely
comment upon the musical obsession that nurtured both sides of his
character. However, there are numerous statements that plainly
reveal Charlie's obsession with the saxophone and music.
Jay McShann: "There's one thing he wanted to do, he didn't worry
about anything else, as long as he could play that horn. He loved that horn. There's no question about it."

Gene Ramey. "The Jay McShann band, in which Bird and I worked
together for so long, was the only band I've ever known that seemed
to spend all its spare time jamming or rehearsing. We used to jam on
trains and buses; and as soon as we got into a town, we'd try to find
somebody's house where we could hold a session. All this was inspired
by Bird, because the new ideas he was bringing to the band made
everybody anxious to play"
Buster Smith: "He always had that horn. 'This is my baby. This is my
baby, and I'm gonna stay with this baby.' And he'd sleep with the horn
on the pillow. Every night"
Buddy Jones: "I was told that the reason Charlie got so far so fast on his horn was that he practised almost
twenty-fours hours a day. It has been said that no one ever passed his house and did not hear the sound of him
playing. Charlie never slept. I once shared a room with him and never saw him in bed. He just would become
unconscious after a while for a short bit."
Buddy Colette: "He told me that when he was playing in the Jay
McShann band, he could never get enough playing in, even though he
had his solos, he'd walk outside the club in the snow in Kansas City
wearing whatever he happened to have on and practice to the sound
of the band still playing inside the club.[]It's difficult to move your
fingers when the temperature is below freezing, but that's what he
did, walk outside when Fats Navarro or someone was playing and
noodle on the choruses".
In Collette's memory of Charlie, he describes the 'turmoil' of Bird not
having a place to play. Collette also mentions that when Charlie was on
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the West Coast, he couldn't practice where he was staying so he went
out into a local park and practised.
"so he blew in South Park at 52nd and San Pedro. He'd be up all night, then take a nap, get up and go out to the
park and blow his alto. The people playing football and baseball in the park had no idea who he was or what he was
playing."
Similarly, in his youth, Charlie would spend nights in either Paseo or Swope Park in Kansas City playing in the open.
"Effergee Ware, a guitarist, coached a whole group of us, teaching us cycles, chords, and progressions. We would sit
in the park, practising all night", remembered Gene Ramey. Buddy Collette also suggested that the moniker,
'yardbird' stemmed from this time, as Charlie would wake up early, (or most probably had been out all night), and go
to the park to practice: a dawn chorus.
There are many references in available literature stating how Charlie would sit in with any band or group of
musicians, wherever and whenever there was an opportunity. There are many recordings of him playing in hotel
rooms and at private parties, and there are many stories of being booked in one club and walking down the street
and playing again in another one. He would play every chance he got, day or night, however, as Jo Jones' quote
above suggests, it was when he was not playing that caused the musician the most frustration. As Jones suggests,
this inclined the young musician to seek a way of relieving the ache of yearning to play. The obvious obsession
Charlie had for playing would have created a tremendous pressure on him when not playing and therefore should be
seen as the major cause of his experimentation with drugs and ultimate addiction.
Of course this is, in part, a simplified notion of what caused Charlie to
use drugs. There are numerous causes of drug addiction; social,
psychological, physical reasons, and any or all of these almost certainly
also influenced him. But there are certain events in any life that can, in
retrospect, be seen as turning points.
Commentators have suggested that the car accident at Halloween in
1936 may have been such a turning point. Left in bed using prescribed
morphine to kill the pain, (he also had a pillow full of marijuana!)
would not only been in great discomfort, but he would also have been
unable to play the saxophone. In Carl Woideck's book, Charlie Parker:
His Music and Life, the author transcribes a telephone call to Rebecca
where she talks about this period of his life:
"But he saw the doctor in the third month [of recuperation], in Kansas,
and he told him - well, this was after, he didn't but I learned it
afterwards - he had to take the heroin to ease the pain of his spine and
his ribs. That's what he had to take. So, he didn't use it until July, 1937He [the doctor] said, [..], Charlie has to
take the heroin to kill the pain from his ribs and his spine".
The doctor obviously hasn't had much experience of addiction as he also advised her to feed Charlie lots of greasy
food? Whether or not this is a turning point for Charlie is unclear, but the accident is almost certainly significant and
probably taught Charlie how to use drugs intravenously.
His father's alcoholism may also be a contributory factor in Charlie's own alcoholism? Among other things, Charlie
used alcohol to help him deal with the heroin withdrawal symptoms and several times during his life, either by
choice or by circumstance, Charlie stopped taking heroin and substituted alcohol or any other number of narcotics in
an attempt to remove the 'monkey' from his back.
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In an interview in 1981, Chan stated:
"A lot of the time Bird was sick, he wasn't in good health. When he would fall asleep on the stand it wasn't because
he was drugged or drunk, it was because he had insomnia. He would stay up for days at a time without sleeping at
all; then when he would sleep he would sleep."
She also has a rather provacative theory about drug use. "If he'd used heroin, those last five years, and not whiskey,
he might be alive today. I was furious, when he died there was a column in the newspaper in New York, by Bob
Sylvester, who said, you know: "Dead of Drugs". And I wrote to them, I said, "Dead of alcohol, not drugs." If he had
been using drugs, he wouldn't be dead, because the only hardship on the body with drugs is having to spend eight
hours a day looking for your next shot. If it had been legalised, as it was in England, a lot of guys might be alive
today. Wardell Gray, Fats Navarro - if it had been given medically instead of by pushers on the street."
Heroin has always been thought of as the main reason Charlie Parker died at such an early age. Heroin addiction
amongst jazz musicians did become a problem in the period of Charlie's life and there is a suggestion that he set an
example that others followed in an attempt to scale the musical heights he reached. In Gidden's video, Roy Porter
says:
"During that time, heroin was the thing. And if Bird got high, all musicians and fans figured that was the thing to
do."
However, the use of narcotics before Charlie became addicted was widespread, and one can imagine that in
Pendergast's Kansas City anything was available from a wide variety of sources. As Doris said, "Let's not let anyone
kid about that. He didn't invent addiction - everything he did has been done many times before, even the
destruction."
At his death, Charlie looked far older than his meagre 34
years and it is famously recorded that the doctor
attending the corpse, estimated the body to be that of a
53 year-old man, sometimes older, depending on whom
you read. Heroin poisoned his body, but so did the alcohol
and various other narcotics that keep him where he
wanted to be mentally and physically. But Charlie also
chain-smoked Camel cigarettes and used copious amounts
of marijuana when younger. (Current medical research
suggests that use of marijuana at a young age can cause
schizophrenia later in life, and medical records from
Belleview Hospital in New York confirm he displayed
'latent' or 'undifferentiated schizophrenia'). His weight fluctuated suggesting poor dietary habits and medical records
indicate that he was also treated for syphilis at least once during the last ten years of his life. He had a peptic ulcer,
which bled on occasion, and later suffered from pneumonia more than once. It is obvious that all these elements
contributed to Charlie's early death, but most critics focus mainly on the heroin and alcohol.
Exactly when Charlie start using drugs, or when he started using intravenously
is recorded and perhaps it really isn't important in the overall view of his life.
However, it doesn't help when critics and commentators alter statements such
as these variations of a famous Parker quote;
"I began dissipating as early as 1932, when a friend of the family introduced
me to heroin. I woke up one morning very soon after that, feeling terribly
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sick and not knowing why. The panic was on."
And this version:
"I began dissipating as early as 1932, when I was only twelve years old; three
years later a friend of the family introduced me to heroin. I woke up one
morning very soon after that, feeling terribly sick and not knowing why. The
panic was one".
Although Charlie may have occasionally been guilty of hyperbole, this is probably one occasion where the
misreporting of dates lay firmly at the hands of critics with a vested interest in making the memory of Charlie as
interesting, and therefore as profitable as possible. However, in another interview with Downbeat magazine in 1949,
he says:
"He told us that while he was still a young boy in Kansas City he was offered some (dope) in a men's room by a
stranger when he hardly knew what is was."
In another interview, Charlie recounted his first hard drug experience to bassist William 'Buddy' Jones, who met
Parker in Kansas City around 1942:
"Getting high for the first time at fifteen, Bird told me what he felt. He pulled out $1.30, which was all he had and
was worth more in those days and he said, 'Do you mean there's something like this in this world? How much of it
will this buy?'"
Tutty Clarkin said, "When I first knew Charlie, he was getting high on nutmegFrom nutmeg Bird went to
Benzedrine inhalers. He's break them open and soak the in wine. Then he smoked tea and finally got hooked on
heroin"
The dancer, Baby Lawrence claimed to be the person who first turned Charlie on to junk. From George Wein's book,
Myself Among Others:
"Someone noted how Charlie Parker's habit has led an entire generation of musicians to heroin. At that moment,
Baby Lawrence proudly chimed in: "And I was the one who turned on Charlie Parker!" He explained that he had
introduced Bird to junk in Kansas City, years before [] There's no way of knowing whether this story is true. Baby
Lawrence believed it to be, wearing the dubious distinction like a badge of honour."
It is obvious that the real truth of exactly when Charlie began using
drugs may never be known. There have been attempts to pin point
the age when Charlie's drug use began, but some are not entirely
convincing. His first wife, Rebecca states that he could not have
been using intravenous drugs at high school because regular blood
tests were carried out for venereal disease and pregnancy. If Parker
were using intravenous narcotics at this time, they would have been discovered. Rebecca isn't clear about the age a
student could be before qualifying for theses tests, but it is probably unlikely that any school authority would
sanction tests for venereal diseases or pregnancy on students under the age of 15, the age Charlie was when he left
school. Rebecca was also two years senior to Charlie, so she would have been seventeen when she graduated,
probably a more acceptable age for the blood tests. Also, by the time Charlie was the same age as Rebecca when
she graduated, he would have been out of school for two years, and beyond the jurisdiction of the school
authorities. Therefore, using these high school tests as a basis to argue that Charlie wasn't using heroine at school
less than convincing. Also, rather pedantically, if Charlie were already using intravenous drugs, then the track marks
in the arm of a student would probably be visible and a would hardly go unnoticed.
In Gidden's book, Rebecca states the date when Charlie first started using intravenously. She describes the scene of a
17-year-old Charlie injecting himself, and the shock she felt seeing him do this for the first time. However, the scene
she relates does not describe a novice drug-taker. The scene she depicts is of someone who knows what they are
doing, who can carry out the ritual quickly and without mess. Why he wanted her to see him perform this rite is not
clear, but this scene only reveals that Charlie was using intravenously by this time, yet it does not indicate a start
date. What this scene does clearly suggest is that Rebecca had little knowledge of Charlie's activities, and this also
refers to her lack of knowledge of Charlie's musical development. Charlie was away a lot and the habit that he
appears to be presenting to her for the first time is an act he had obviously been practising previously.
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It would probably be safe to say that Charlie's first experience of drugs would have been with marijuana, which was
still legal at the time. However, it carried a stigma, and was considered highly objectionable in most circles. In
1935, the St. Louis Star-Times ran a near hysterical campaign for the criminalisation of marijuana and so successful
were they that the act was passed in 10 days and marijuana was outlawed in Missouri. This probably would have had
little effect in Pendergast's Kansas City, perhaps just adding some cache to the drug. But the writing was on the
wall, and nationwide criminalisation of the drug occurred two years later in 1937, but Missouri was one of the first
states to take a step against narcotics in this way. However, the years prior to the law meant that Charlie had access
to legal marijuana and this is confirmed by Addie; "A girl in town here started Charles on reefer stuff. [] I found
some in his pockets. "What in the world is this stinking stuff?" I said. Charles smiled and said, "Don't destroy any of
that, Mama, it's too good". It is also obvious from this statement that Addie is not only aligning herself with popular
public opinion about marijuana but is also emphasising this by a rather unconvincing disassociation, and pretended
ignorance of the drug. However, Charlie's request to his mother begs the suggestion that she had perhaps destroyed
some inferior 'stuff' previously.
As hard as Addie tries, her chapter in Reisner's book is strewn with references to drugs and their effects. "They
bought a boy into the hospital. They had to tie him down. They put a thick strap acros(s) his chest. The doctor's
didn't know what it was, but I knew what it was and wouldn't tell. I just told them it'll take three days, and then
he'll be alright". Although Addie didn't become a nurse until 1949, one must assume therefore that her experience of
these withdrawal symptoms must have occurred before then.
There is a tendency for the Charlie Parker advocate to underplay the drug aspect of his life and this bias extends to
his family and his biographers, (excluding Ross Russell!). Admirers don't like to think of their hero being a junkie,
panicking about the next fix, injecting junk into his body, etc, etc. Unfortunately, this was probably the case. Yet
the advocates tend to juxtapose this against the music, the technique, the invention, all while there was this
'monkey' clinging to his back. This is part of the enigma of Charlie Parker: his ability to create under adverse
circumstances, a troubled genius. In the recent BBC Radio series, Birdsong by Russell Davis, Peter King states that
in his experience, drug taking does not enhance the musicians ability. No, its a delusion. It really is a delusion.
When I was having problems, the high is just to feel halfway normal again. Its just you couldnt play at all unless
you had your stuff. [] Bird was terribly upset, because Chan told me, about the bad influence he had on so many
young musicians. It really hurt him, and I think that a lot of the reasons he probably destroyed himself was that he
was accused of leading so many other musicians astray, which he never did. He tried to keep it all from them.
There are many stories told by friends and acquaintances that corroborate this. Gerry Mulligan said. "He kept drugs
away from me, but after we'd spent a lot of time together, he injected himself in my presence and said, 'This is
something that I have to do. It's terrible but I'm stuck with it.' It was terrifying to watch my hero doing that. He
made it as revolting as possible, as though it were a lecture on what not to do." Rowland Greenburg has a similar
tale; "he kept talking all the time about drugs. Booze is all right, if you're careful, and if you eat enough. I eat a
lot, all the time. But drugs - taboo!"
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Charlie never advocated the use of drugs at any point in his life. In a famous interview he said:
"Any musician who says he is playing better on tea, the needle, or when he is juiced, is a plain, straight liar. When I
get too much to drink I can't even finger well, let alone play decent ideas. And, in the days when I was on the stuff,
I may have thought I was playing better, but listening to some of the records now, I know I wasn't. Some of these
smart kids who think you have to be completely knocked out to be a good hornman are just plain crazy. It isn't true.
I know, believe me. That way you can miss the most important years of your life, the years of possible creation."
There is no need to repeat all the stories of Charlie's excesses here, as by repeating them is to add an element of
truth to an already debatable catalogue recalled by numerous friends and acquaintances, all of whom derive some
form of reflected fame by recalling their own personal experiences with Charlie. There is no doubt that Charlie
struggled with life during the times when he was not playing music. Towards the end, he probably began to doubt
himself and his abilities, which would also contribute to his difficulty managing his day-to-day existence.
As an aside, in the 1950's the study of addiction was in its infancy. There was one analyst who believed it was the
type of jazz you played that dictated what drugs you took, that if you played traditional jazz you were far less likely
to become addicted to heroin because traditional was 'square' music, and modern jazz was 'hip' and the essence of
being 'hip' was not to be 'square'.
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