Charlie Parker
Charlie Parker, (1920-55). US jazz saxophonist, band-leader, and composer, nicknamed Bird. Charlie Parker left school at 14 to immerse himself in the emerging Kansas i City jazz scene. Over the next ten years he featured in various ensembles, including the Earl Hines big band, in which he played alongside the trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie. After moving to New York in the 1940s he worked as a freelance musician and led small bebop groups of his own. By the age of 25 he had become legendary as an improviser of extraordinary skill and fluency, With Gillespie, Miles Davis, and Thelonius Monk he was one of a handful of figures who revolutionized jazz in the immediate post-war years. An alcoholic and a heroin addict, he suffered from mental instability and died of his excesses at the early age of 34. His well-known compositions include `Ornithology’ and `Now’s the Time’.
