Parker, Charlie (Charles Christopher), known as Bird 1920-55
US alto and tenor saxophonist, bandleader and composer, the most influential performer in post-1940s modern jazz

Charlie Parker was born in Kansas City. He learnt to play baritone horn and alto saxophone while at school, frequenting the clubs and halls where jazz was played, and left school at 14 to practise and find casual work. In 1939 he went to New York, living by menial jobs but working out rhythmic and harmonic ideas which would form the basis of the bebop style. He worked from 1940 to 1942 with the Jay McShann Band, then joined the Earl Hines Band where he began an important musical association with trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie, another of the young adherents to the new jazz idiom. Both joined Billy Eckstine's orchestra in 1944, but the following year Parker led the first of his influential bebop quintets, with Gillespie on trumpet.

The harmonic and rhythmic advances of their music were rightly perceived as a major sea-change in jazz. Bebop was seen as a revolutionary style, although in retrospect it can be understood as more an evolution from the work of swing-era giants like Lester Young, Coleman Hawkins and Charlie Christian. His influence was not confined to saxophonists, but spread to players on every instrument. Despite addiction to heroin and alcohol and recurring mental illness, he continued to lead and record with the style-setting small groups of modern jazz, using trumpeters such as Miles Davis and Red Rodney, and pianists like Al Haig and Duke Jordan. He made two European tours (1949, 1950), which strengthened the development of modern jazz on the Continent and in Britain. His style was fully developed by the end of the 1940s, and although he worked with strings for a time in the 1950s, he made no further major changes before his early death, hastened by the abuse of his lifelong addiction. His influence on the development of jazz cannot be overestimated, and many of his compositions, such as 'Now's The Time' and 'Ornithology', have become standard jazz works.

Discography: His major recorded works fall into three distinct segments, collected as The Complete Savoy Sessions (1944-48), Charlie Parker On Dial (1946-47), and Bird: The Complete Charlie Parker On Verve (1946-54). Numerous live recordings are also extant, including the legendary The Complete Dean Benedetti Recordings, issued in 1990. Bibliography: Ross Russell's flawed biography Bird Lives! (1972) has still to be fully superseded. Clint Eastwood's film Bird (1988) presented an entertaining but sanitized version of his life.