Relaxin’ at Camarillo—Charlie Parker
#365Songs: May 9
It might seem hard to believe now, but in the 1940s, jazz was everywhere. It was THE popular music of the day. You’d hear it any place there was music, from saccharine versions in mainstream shows to scorching versions in basement clubs.
Big bands, in particular, ruled the roost. And these bands were LOUD. Make no mistake about it. When these big brass bands got cooking, and dancers got dancing, things were wild. Moshpit-wild. Rave-wild. US Festival-wild.
(Jazz would literally come to rule “the roost” during the years when the famed Royal Roost served as the new thing’s epicenter. In addition to being a lab for the birth of bebop, it was also the venue where Miles Davis debuted the nonet that would usher in the era of cool jazz.)
Out of these big bands began to emerge some mighty singular talents, and their urge toward greater self-expression — combined with the financial, racial, and social realities of being a jazz musician — saw them gravitating toward smaller venues, and smaller combos.
What this afforded was a heightened level of improvisation, freedom, and exploration.
Charlie Parker was the godfather of it all. The artist whose lightning-fast and harmonically sophisticated flights of fancy completely upended not just what jazz could be, but what a jazz musician could become.
As a musician, he was a god. As a human, he was a mess. But he changed the world.
By Parker’s reckoning, his revolution began with a radical reinvention of the otherwise chestnut-level standard, “Cherokee.” In a mere 2+ years, the language of bebop emerged, took hold, and took flight. Bird had arrived.
What should have been an ever-ascending triumph, however, was undercut by the war—which stole away many looming virtuoso musicians—and a union strike over royalties that led to a dearth of recording. The result was that bebop remained largely a local phenomenon until 1945, when Parker took the likes of Miles Davis and Max Roach into a studio under the auspices of the Savoy label and just about instantly changed modern music forever.
The tunes they recorded at that session would go on to become staples of not just bebop, but jazz in general. Over the ensuing decades, jazz would grow, expand, morph, and change. Cool jazz. Soul jazz. Hard bop. Jazz fusion. Jazz rock. No matter the evolutions, Parker’s songs traveled along at the head of the pack, continuing to lead the way.
That said, they weren’t necessarily “songs” in the conventional sense of the term. More often than not, they were either harmonic reimaginings of existing chord progressions (Rhythm Changes/I Got Rhythm being the classic example), or short original melodies (or “heads”) that could be sprung from into wider improvisations.
And there was one other category of song — the blues.
And in 1946, Charlie Parker brought it all to bear on one particular new song — his harmonic imagination, his improvisational virtuosity, and his deep feel for the blues — that would stand as both a creative high point, and the beginning of the end.
“Relaxin’ at Camarillo” was so-named (against Parker’s will, purportedly) because the tune was inspired by Parker’s 6 months in Camarillo State Hospital — a mental institution.
He came out clean and heroin-free, and took a West Coast combo (Howard McGhee, Dodo Marmarosa, Wardell Gray, Barney Kessell, Red Callender, and Don Lamond) into the studio for the Dial label, and immediately made history.
Sadly, Parker would be dead in less than a decade.
His short life has been endlessly chronicled, and his influence is indisputable. Honestly, I’m hard-pressed to think of more than a small handful of other modern artists who so radically altered an artistic landscape — particularly in their own lifetimes.
Parker never got the help he really needed, nor the opportunities. I don’t say that to make excuses. He was largely the architect of his own demise. But at the same time, the 1940s in America were a very different time. There were no teaching jobs for him. No MacArthur Genius Grants. Nor was there any meaningful mental health and well-being support. Certainly not for a black man who played jazz.
Against all those odds and more, he created something magical. And he showed the world — and generations of artists who would subsequently stand on his shoulders — what it meant to be an artist.
The word “creator” gets thrown around all over the place these days, and its gag-inducing misuse and misapplication has all but obliterated any meaningful distinctions between “create” and “creative.”
But make no mistake about it. Charlie Parker was an actual creator.
Just as the biblical god of Genesis brought forth form from the void, so, too, did Parker. But in his case, the void was one in which individual black artists were not allowed to sound the notes of freedom and individual expression. Were not allowed to stand tall as they explored, imagined, ascended, and attained. Were not allowed to be fully formed beautiful, creative talents.
Parker’s accomplishment was to throw the cold, hard reality of his beautiful, creative talent right into the face of a grimacing world with the playful brilliance of a fully-formed genius, and then stroll away with a the slightest hint of a smile on his face. As if he knew just a little bit more about things than the rest of us. Which he did.
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