Black Music Month + For the Birds = Charlie Parker?

Honestly, I find it hard to believe that I wrote all of those Black Music Month 2023 posts and completely ignored two books about "Yardbird" (or "Bird"), Charlie Parker.

But I did.

Chasin' the Bird: Charlie Parker in California by Dave Chisholm with Pete Markowski

Kansas City Lightning: The Rise and Times of Charlie Parker by Stanley Crouch

It would have made sense if I had remembered when I was writing about jazz, but Parker is not so avant-garde that he makes my skin crawl. 

I guess I didn't remember because I had not chosen to read them as part of the planned month.

Back when I was in college, I attended a conversation between Stanley Crouch and Wynton Marsalis, and I spoke to them afterwards. I have been interested in Crouch's work ever since.

The funny part is I think I remember even back then him mentioning researching Parker; did he spend over a decade researching the book? Not impossible.

I believe what happened is that I came across Chisholm's book -- a graphic novel -- by accident, and then decided it was time to read Kansas City Lightning.

From reading the two close together, they give very different views of Parker. 

This is partly inevitable, as they cover very different time periods. Crouch focuses on Parker's early life and musical development, while Chisholm's book focuses on an established musician spending time in California (as the title suggests).

It would not be impossible for similar books about a different person to feel like a natural, connected sequence, but that is not the case with Parker's life. The "Chasin'" may be the most important part of Chisholm's title. 

Using the analogy of the blind men and the elephant, Chisholm focuses on a few different people attending a show. They already know Parker, with various levels of complication in their relationships, and none of them are completely sure that he will show. 

Parker may be unusually hard to know. Whether that is a part of his genius, or his genius is just the reason people tolerate some of his inscrutability is hard to answer. Many of the glimpses we see are fascinating, and not mean-spirited, but also not reliable.

Parker is far from the only jazz player to be like that. He might be the most interesting, but then maybe if we could know more, that would look different again.

I often say that there is always more to know. That is true not just because as I take in more information I am aware of additional holes in my information, but also because reading more than one book on a subject shows different facets and interpretations where apparent conflicts are not automatically invalid. 

The point that becomes clear to me from just these two books is that there isn't always a remedy for what you don't know. Sometimes you can't know.

At least not on this side.