CHARLIE PARKER

PARKER, Charlie (1920-1955).

Two rare concert handbills for Birdland, New York, early 1950s: the first for 'George Shearing and his Quintette', July 1952, signed on the reverse in blue ballpoint pen ‘Regards:- Charlie Parker’, additionally signed by Tyree Glenn, Kai Winding, Terry Gibbs, and Zoot Sims; the second for the debut appearance of Charlie Parker and Strings, from 6 July 1950, with support from Stan Getz. Billboard reviewed the show on 22 July 1950: ‘The new show at Birdland is up to here in saxophones. The feature is alto saxist Charlie Parker backed by a hybrid but eminently pleasant ork… The arrangements are formal, polite, and unpretentious, calculated to furnish the virtuosos altoist with a rich-textured but unobtrusive backdrop for his sax flights. His playing, for the most part, is much simpler, restrained, and observant of the written melodies than has been his wont. It is a new phase for Parker, who having established himself as the master of the most intricate and inventive saxophone playing ever, now goes completely and ultimately cool, relying on simplicity and purity of expression and utter chasteness of tone and attack. The fans ate it up, but it’s fair to guess that Parker will have to expand and vary his programme if he hopes to sustain audience interest after the novelty wears off.’

Birdland, named in honour of sometime headliner Charlie “Yardbird” Parker, was opened on 15 December 1949 at the corner of Broadway and 52nd Street in Manhattan. ‘When the owners of Birdland contemplated the idea of naming the club after a practicing jazz musician,’ writes Ross Russell, ‘there had been no one else to consider. Big names of the past no longer held any box office allure. Of the contemporaries none, not even Dizzy Gillespie, possessed Parker’s charisma, or could lend the weight necessary to launch a club that would in fact be the “Jazz Corner of the World” for decades.’ Interviewed by Robyn Flans for Modern Drummer in 1982, Charlie Watts spoke of his love for Birdland ‘When I had the honour to go to New York, that was it! All I wanted to do was go to Birdland and I was lucky enough to get there before it closed and that was it for me. I still walk down 52nd Street. I know it’s not the same anymore, but I do it. It’s just something that really meant something to me as a kid, listening to Charlie Parker, and to think that he lived there and walked down that street and played there.’ Russell, Bird Lives! 275. Watts, cited in Modern Drummer, August 1982.

The first printed in blue on thin tan paper stock, 265 x 153 mm; the second printed in black on light tan paper stock, 191 x 138 mm. Provenance: The Norman R. Saks Collection (Vail, pl.131).