In its second year, the Charlie Parker Celebration continues an overdue reconciliation
June 28, the day after his band played Arrowhead Stadium, Rolling Stones drummer Charlie Watts spent more than three hours touring the American Jazz Museum. A fan since his teen years, he has long collected Charlie Parker memorabilia (a Christmas card that the jazzman once sent his wife, for instance), and he paused to regard Parker’s plastic saxophone, one of the museum’s most prized holdings. Watts recalled aloud when the old Grafton was last up for auction: September 1994, when the museum won it for $144,500.
Charlie “Bird” Parker drove jazz into a modern era, liberating the music and influencing generations of musicians across multiple genres. Yet, despite the statue in the 18th and Vine District — Bird’s head, rendered at an overpowering scale — Kansas City has often ignored its most important musical son. His New York home has long since been renovated and declared a National Historic Landmark. His home in Kansas City, at 1516 Olive, was torn down by the city in the 1980s to make way for a new industrial building.
Since 1993, New York has celebrated Parker with an annual festival spanning two city parks. KC’s fractured jazz community didn’t pull together an equivalent effort until last year — an event successful enough to replicate this month.
Kansas City’s second Charlie Parker Celebration starts August 20, honoring Bird with 10 days of shows across 15 venues, accompanied by panel discussions and music-student boot camps. Author Chuck Haddix, who published a Parker biography in 2013, reprises his bus tour of Kansas City sites associated with Parker (an event that sold out last year). The festival culminates with a 21-sax salute at Parker’s gravesite in Lincoln Cemetery August 29 — what would have been the man’s 95th birthday — followed by a free “chicken feed” (Bird loved chicken) at the Bruce R. Watkins Cultural Heritage Center.
Trumpeter Clay Jenkins, who has toured with the Stan Kenton and Count Basie orchestras and plays in the renowned Clayton-Hamilton Jazz Orchestra, is this year’s artist in residence, slated to sit in with local groups throughout the event. Among the highlights: Jenkins with saxophonist Steve Lambert at the Broadway Kansas City August 22, with the Foundation 627 Big Band at Green Lady Lounge August 23, with trumpeter Hermon Mehari at the Majestic August 26, with trombonist Ryan Heinlein and the Kansas City Bone Company at Westport Coffee House August 27, and with bassist Bob Bowman at the Blue Room August 29.
Parker artifacts owned by Norman R. Saks (Watts isn’t the only Parker collector out there) will be on display at the American Jazz Museum. These objects include arrangements of some of Parker’s best-known compositions, such as “Bird Feathers” and “Klactoveedsedstene,” and programs from his shows. Celebration co-chairman Brian Johnston, who also serves on the museum board, describes Saks as “the premier collector of Charlie Parker in the world” and adds that his collection of playbills, contracts, records and autograph sheets, among many other pieces, has been donated to the University of Missouri–Kansas City’s Marr Sound Archives (where Haddix is sound archivist) and LaBudde Special Collections, at the school’s Miller Nichols Library.
Shawnee Mission South graduate Paul Lovelace, a New York resident for the past 20 years, returns to town for the festival to begin preliminary filming of a proposed documentary on Parker. Lovelace, whose résumé includes a film about music journalist Robert Christgau, envisions a project that follows contemporary musicians, in order to show, he says, “not just Charlie Parker’s history but where his legacy has led.”
A CD illustrative of just that legacy, by KC jazz musicians young and less young, was recorded to herald this year’s celebration, but it’s not yet ready for release. To Bird With Love brought into the studio trumpeters Hermon Mehari and Stan Kessler, saxophonists Charles Perkins and Rich Wheeler, trombonist Ryan Heinlein, pianist Eddie Moore, bassists Bill McKemy and Karl McComas-Reichl, drummer Matt Leifer, and vibraphonist (and former jazz museum CEO) Greg Carroll. Johnston explained that the album was delayed “because we have to get approvals and rights on some of the music.” He adds: “We tried like heck to get it done for the celebration but tabled it.”
One factor that may have complicated the project: Carroll’s ouster as the museum’s leader. (He also is Johnston’s co-chairman on this year’s Parker event.) Museum board members are unified in saying Carroll resigned (and joined, as well, in saying almost nothing else about his departure). Last week, the museum named former Sprint executive Ralph Reid as interim CEO. A search firm has been hired to help identify a replacement.
Kansas City’s Charlie Parker Celebration grew out of the group KC Jazz ALIVE — the last word an acronym for “Awareness, Listening, Ideas, Voice and Exposure” — a collaboration established in 2013 among most of the metro’s numerous jazz organizations. President Jon McGraw, who also represents UMKC Jazz Friends, says, “The major jazz groups have a responsibility to build the jazz scene in Kansas City.”
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The celebration was one of KC Jazz ALIVE’s first ideas. Johnston recalls, “Within five minutes, we said we want to do a Charlie Parker celebration in 2014.” The initial plan, McGraw says, was a simple “let’s try it.” A thematic umbrella was opened over already scheduled club dates, with educational events, the bus tour and the graveside salute added.
The American Jazz Museum played a key role from the start. “Greg [Carroll] said the museum wants to do this, too,” McGraw says. “Their mission is to support jazz, and this took it to another level.” For the 2014 event, “the American Jazz Museum was a strong financial supporter.” This time, McGraw says, “funding is diversified.”
To that end, organizers brought the area’s jazz-club owners together early in the planning. As museum board chairman C.S. “Trey” Runnion explains, “It’s essential that all of the players have an equal seat.” It was the first time that most had been in the same room with all their peers. They discussed common issues, compared their different business philosophies, and talked about ways that they might help one another. And they started planning the 2015 celebration in earnest.
Kim Parker, Charlie Parker’s daughter, traveled to Kansas City last summer for an unrelated ceremony, unveiling a medallion honoring Parker that’s embedded in the museum sidewalk. She then stayed for the first celebration. This year she could have attended New York’s Charlie Parker Jazz Festival, which overlaps some with KC’s. She served on that event’s board for six years. Instead, she’s returning here. In the past, she says, “I was aware of various groups and factions who wanted to guard their memories.” But in 2014, she was “astonished by how everyone came together.”
Not quite everyone, though.
The Mutual Musicians Foundation, one of the city’s signature jazz institutions, is participating in neither KC Jazz ALIVE nor the celebration. The foundation was the black musicians’ union hall until 1970, when Kansas City’s black and white unions merged. Today it stands as a National Historic Landmark, one of three in the area (the Liberty Memorial and the Harry S. Truman home in Independence are the other two), and its jam sessions, still lasting until 5 a.m. on weekend nights, remain a living embodiment of local jazz lore. Anita Dixon, the foundation’s vice president, did not answer The Pitch‘s interview requests for this story.
And one of the area’s most revered jazz venues, Take Five Coffee + Bar, in Overland Park, a coffee shop built around a 26-foot stage, closed last week, citing irreconcilable differences with its Corbin Park landlord. Two of the Parker celebration shows had been booked at Take Five.
Still, this year’s event is shaping up to be a major draw — and its planners mean to keep growing it. Without revealing details, McGraw says the celebration is on a five-year expansion plan.
Sixty years after Charlie Parker died at age 34, the place where he spent half his years, on his way to changing music worldwide, is finally recognizing its son. Bird’s hometown is ready for him again.
Larry Kopitnik edits Jam Magazine and publishes kcjazzlark.com.
