Chuck Haddix’s Charlie Parker bio captures Bird

“Bird is like Mozart,” Chuck Haddix says of Charlie Parker. “He changed everything in music. There’s music before Charlie Parker, and there’s music after Charlie Parker.”

The Kansas City, Kansas-born saxophonist, Haddix adds, “influenced everyone from Moondog to the Red Hot Chili Peppers and inspired writers, sculptors, playwrights, filmmakers and choreographers. Jack Kerouac spoke about how he wanted to be a jazz poet, blowing hundreds of choruses in an afternoon. Bird appears in The Subterraneans, looks into Kerouac’s eyes and asks, ‘Are you the great writer you think yourself to be?'”

What Parker hasn’t inspired before, says Haddix — who runs the University of Missouri-Kansas City’s Marr Sound Archives and broadcasts a gleeful eight hours of jazz and blues every weekend on KCUR 89.3 — is a biography that’s true to the facts. “A lot of what’s been written about him has been inaccurate or has taken a novelistic approach,” he says.

Bird: The Life and Music of Charlie Parker, which the University of Illinois Press issued this past fall, addresses that void. Haddix spent the better part of a decade working on the book (following up Kansas City Jazz: From Ragtime to Bebop — A History, the essential 2005 volume he co-wrote with Frank Driggs), distilling deep research and his own interviews with Parker’s contemporaries into a fast-moving, musically astute primer. It also offers a satisfying glimpse into local history — KC as both segregation battleground and jazz playground.

“He lived the first 21 years of his life in KC and only lived to be 34,” Haddix says. “He was playing bebop in Kansas City — locals called it ‘crazy music.’ He and Dizzy Gillespie deserve credit for bringing it to a larger audience. He was fully formed and playing bebop by 1941, when he left KC.”

In advance of Haddix’s Kansas City Public Library talk this weekend, he answered a few questions by phone from his office at the Marr Archives.

The Pitch: What’s Parker’s legacy, here and beyond?

Haddix: Jazz is improvisation, and his gift was, he was a great improviser. Most of his songs are based on chord changes in popular songs. One of his signatures is quoting popular songs. He’s a culmination of previous musical traditions, of the whole tradition. He began his career in 1935 as a 15-year-old, when Bennie Moten and Count Basie were still around [KC]. The late-night contests, the improvising in clubs — that’s what really shaped him. He was a rising star locally, as a member of Jay McShann’s band and Buster Smith’s band.

John Tumino’s son Bob donated John’s collection [the John B. Tumino Collection, outlined on the Marr website], and I came across an acetate disc marked “February 6, 1941: Jay McShann, with Joe Coleman on vocals.” I knew Bird was in the group at this time. I put the needle in the groove and heard Bird just take wing on “I’m Getting Sentimental Over You.” I played it at a conference last fall, and it blew the audience away.

Is that streaming on the Marr Web page?

I haven’t streamed it yet. It’s a previously unknown recording, and I’m working out the licensing and the rights.

How did your listening evolve as you worked on the book?

The first time I heard Charlie Parker, I went to the bookstore at UMKC and bought a Bird record. It was the early 1970s, and I didn’t get it. Then the Dial recordings got reissued [in the mid-1970s] and that hit for me. What gave me a deeper understanding of his work was researching the circumstances behind his recording sessions. He lived in the moment, which is probably what made him such a great improviser. He’d go to a recording session and have just a rough sketch of what he wanted to do, and get the other musicians to follow.

What surprised you most as you gathered material and conducted interviews?

The standard story had been that he was born in KCK and moved to 1516 Olive and lived in the African-American community. But he really grew up in a mixed-race, white, middle-class neighborhood, and he went to school in Westport.

Did that make a difference?

I think it had a profound effect on him. He learned how to navigate the white world early on. His bands were integrated at a time when bands weren’t very integrated. He always fronted mixed-race groups. He went to the West Coast and hired Chet Baker, and that angered some people.

Where in KC would you take someone who wanted to understand where Parker came from?

Bird’s grave [in Lincoln Cemetery]. It’s peaceful, humble — you feel a real connection with him.

What’s your next big project?

I want to write about the Coon-Sanders Original Nighthawk Orchestra. They broadcast from the Plantation Grill in the Hotel Muehlebach. Al Capone was a fan. They knew everybody.