[Sam_C]

Hi,

I have an essay coming up that touches on Parker, and a particular bebop phrase. I'm trying to trace its origin.

The only recording I have is of Charlie Parker playing it, at 1.34, on "Chi Chi", from 1953. It can be heard here:

Here it is (in concert). It's a relatively simple little bebop pattern, and it happens in the first two bars.



The only recording I have of Parker playing this phrase is the above recording, but I'm sure it's older than that - my question is, who came up with it? It sounds like something Art Tatum or possibly Bud Powell would have played, but I haven't heard them play it. It could also be a pattern from the Slonimsky book, but I couldn't say.

Any ideas?

Thanks!

 

[derickmont]

Wow that's a tough project. If you get a hunch as to who might have played it, look them up on grooveshark.com because it will most likely have all of their albums

 

[KeithL]

What makes you so sure it wasn't created at the moment that Bird played it?

 

[piwikiwi]

Looks like a simple sequence to me, aren't you over analyzing this?

 

[Agent27]

The first 2 bars are too sequenced for me to believe it was purely spontaneous. Definitely a prepared pattern. Can't say I've run across that lick before. Pretty much any lick that doesn't come from a composed melody would be hard to trace its origin to.

 

[Pete Thomas]

I am quite confident that it's quite likely Bird heard this pattern played by Earl Bostic.

 

[mattashworth]

Carl Woideck discusses this pattern at length in “Charlie Parker: His Music and Life”, pg165-66 in live recordings of “The Street Beat” and “Dizzy Atmosphere” with Fats Navarro (1950) and then pg187-8 in a live recording of “Rocker” (1952). According to Woideck it is in Slonimsky pg81 as pattern #629, however Parker had been recorded playing it live in a JATP version of “After You’ve Gone” in 1946, a year before Slonimsky’s book was published.