Kansas City Lightning Read Online Free PDF Page B

Eldridge—able to have his fun while keeping his professional image shining? Why did his private life have to mess up everybody else’s plans so often? That was the way it was, and it could seem so pitiful sometimes, make you so angry.
    But then there he was, moving across the floor, case in hand.
    McShann stomped off a furious tempo. “This wasn’t one of those slow-trains-through-Arkansas tempos,” recalled Ramey. “This was like that train between Chicago and Milwaukee. I mean fast !”
    The rhythm section lit out. The band came in and played the song’s ensemble chorus, sixty-four bars of a tune notorious for its complex harmony, all those holes you could break your musical legs in. This was one of those times when the griddle was hot and nothing came up except steam. Arrogant and proud of themselves, the rhythm section reared back and pounced on Charlie’s back when he put his horn to his mouth. And his saxophone, in turn, became a flamethrower of rhythm, melody, and harmony. They pushed and drove, chorus after chorus. Then, as professional experience had taught them, they lulled, let him get a little stronger, went back to their basic strategy, and let him dance his hot-footed dance with subtle support. Then they tore into him again, setting fire to his tail.
    The rhythm section had him by the tail, but there was no holding or cornering Bird. Disappearing acts were his specialty. Just when you thought you had him, he’d move, coming up with another idea, one that was as bold as red paint on a white sheet. When the band started throwing up stock riffs behind him, Parker sidestepped the familiar shapes, issuing his responses from deep in left field. “Boy, did that man hate riffs,” said Ramey. “He would do anything to get out of the way. Soon as he knew it was coming, he would duck into silence and come up squawling to kick it in the butt as it went past him.”
    Each chorus was getting hotter; it was clear, from the position of his body and the sound of his horn, that Charlie Parker was not going to give in. All the nights he had worked on it, the flubs, the fumblings, the sore lips, mouth, and tongue, the cramped fingers—they all paid off that afternoon. Suddenly, the man with the headphones was signaling McShann, Don’t stop! Don’t stop! Keep on playing!
    That afternoon, sixteen miles away from Harlem, bassist Chubby Jackson was working at the Adams Theatre in Newark. He was playing with the big band led by Charlie Barnet, who had had a hit with “Cherokee” two years before. While on break, Jackson decided to see if that new band playing opposite Lucky Millinder was showing anything special on the Savoy broadcast. As soon as he turned on the radio, a sound that was almost brutal shot out of the speaker. The song was “Cherokee,” but the sound leading McShann’s version was that of an alto saxophone almost completely devoid of vibrato, notes flying thick as buckshot, slapping chords this way and that, rambling quicker and with more different kinds of rhythms than his band had ever heard from a saxophone. Everybody stopped talking, fiddling with their instruments. Who the hell is this ? Oklahoma trumpeter Howard McGhee, who was there that afternoon, chuckled at the memory: every musician standing there with his mouth open knew where he was going that night.
    Back in the Savoy, the few people in the audience started moving up toward the bandstand as this saxophone player leaned forward, sweating like a waterfall, delivering his message as though he were on a mountaintop. Even Charlie Buchanan ambled up there, caught by the sound, the fury, the determination, the swing that had the radio man jumping. Parker, completely sparked, ran through the changes like a dose of Epsom salts, unwilling or unable to repeat himself.
    Stretched out like that, with the rhythm section after his scalp and the cyclical traps of the harmonies ever before