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Gibson’s arrangement of ‘Blue Skies.’ We dropped some thunder on them. It was like a prizefighter, looking to shake you up, let you know it’s going to be your ass very soon .” Millinder is out front, hair perfectly in place, tuxedo tails swinging with the beat, his handsome band playing that well-rehearsed music with a hard but unruffled edge.
    Then those ragamuffins start sauntering back up to the bandstand next to theirs, looking unimpressed, readying themselves to play. Millinder doesn’t care how they look ; he knows his band is whipping them in grand style.
    When his set is over, Millinder heads downstairs to the dressing room. After a little while, his valet comes running in.
    â€œLucky, you better get up there and listen to them western dogs.”
    â€œ Out! ” Millinder orders.
    Back upstairs, Count Basie has stopped by to cheer on the Kansas City team. He leans over the piano, with a cigar between his teeth, a cold look in his eyes. “It’s about time to blow these motherfuckers out of here,” he tells McShann. “It’s about time to get them up off that bandstand. Put them in the books , baby. Make ’em dig for something.”
    â€œI’m ready,” McShann answers.
    â€œAnything you want, anything you need?”
    â€œWell, Base, how about a couple of hits?”
    â€œYou will have them,” Basie mutters through his cigar, then leaves for liquor.
    McShann puts blues singer Walter Brown on them, then contrasts him with the blind balladeer Al Hibbler, who perhaps sings “Skylark.” Piggy Minor kicks off “Dexter Blues” with a growl strong enough to scare the entire Millinder brass section to death. Then, when the band is oiled up and the crowd is starting to go crazy—when you can smell excitement coming out of ’em—McShann unleashes the hot man on the audience, making it clear that there’s hell to tell the captain.
    Clap hands, here comes Charlie.
    When Charlie Parker stands up, lean, hair glinting from the fusion of grease and light, he has been playing the saxophone for seven years. He started playing clubs in 1935, but he didn’t get serious until the following year, when Chu Berry came through Kansas City and pushed his foot through the bell of his tenor and up the butts of the roughest men in town—Lester Young, Herschel Evans, Ben Webster, and Jack Washington. From the spring to the fall of that year, Parker transformed himself from an incompetent into a real player. Kansas City bandleader Oliver Todd, who had fired Parker for his fumbling performance some months earlier, said, “When I heard him come back from a summer off somewhere, I witnessed a true miracle. He could play. Tears almost came to my eyes when I heard him then.”
    Over the next five years, Parker worked at a style that he was still developing that night at the Savoy: a new music built with the brass of the saxophone’s body, conjured with such poise that his fingers barely rose from the keys.
    BEFORE SUNRISE , the news was on the streets: a fresh bunch of Kansas City musicians was in town, and Lucky Millinder was taking a beating. It was a familiar kind of tale, part of the excitement of living in Harlem. Somebody would show up with a new way of doing it, or would do the classic stuff with such heat it felt brand-new. “It was a shock to everybody, because we had been holding our own with the other bands,” said Panama Francis.
    The next morning, McShann had a visitor at the Woodside: Lucky Millinder himself.
    â€œC’mere, you little son of a bitch. I want you to go with me this morning so we can sit down and talk.”
    Over drinks and food, Millinder told McShann, “You know, you dirty sumbitches run us out of there last night.”
    â€œOh, no,” McShann demurred, “you know better than that.”
    â€œYes, you did. I was going to send you back to the sticks, but you