All language subtitles for JAZZ - 08 - Risk (1945-1955)

[salt peanuts Playing]

Man: I was on
a troop ship coming home
from Bremerhaven, Germany

to New York harbor
in 1946.

And I suddenly heard this song
over the ship's radio.

And it was frenetic
and exciting and fast
and furious and brilliant,

and I almost bumped my head
jumping off my bunk.

So, I ran up to
the control room

and said to the guy,
"what was that?"

He said, "what?"

I said, "that last song
you just played--

the one you just played.

He said, "I don't know."
I said, "where is it?"

He said, "it's down there
on the floor."

I looked down there
on the floor.

The floor's covered
in records.

I said, "come on,
what color was the label?"

He said, "it's a red label."

So, I begin to sort out,
and I'd come across red labels,

and I would ask him,
"was it this one?"

And he'd say, "no."

Finally, I found it.
It was a music craft label.

And it was called Salt peanuts,

and it was Charlie Parker
and dizzy Gillespie.

And I gave him $30, and I said,
"play this for the next hour."

[Salt peanuts Continues]

♪♪ Salt peanuts
salt peanuts ♪♪

Narrator:
After the second world war,

america achieved a level of
growth and prosperity

unimaginable just
a few years earlier.

But the cold war
and its nuclear threat

lurked always in the background,

and the human race found
itself haunted by the spectre
of instant annihilation.

Millions of white Americans
began to move to brand-new,
safe suburbs.

The cities--and the people
of the inner cities--

were left to fend
for themselves.

There was a growing frustration
in the black community

as young men returned once again
from defending freedom abroad

to confront discrimination
at home,

while a new plague,
narcotics, swept through
black neighborhoods,

dimming hopes
and destroying lives.

Jazz music would
reflect it all.

Jazz had always involved risk.

To create art on the spot--

to step forward
and express oneself--

had always meant taking
enormous chances.

But now,
for some young musicians,

the time seemed right
for freeing jazz

from what they considered
the tyranny of popular taste,

building a new musical world
in which only their virtuoso
talents would matter.

The new music--that had been
incubating during the war--

was intricate, fast-paced,
and filled with danger...

A perfect mirror of
the complicated world
from which it sprang.

The singular genius
whose startling innovations came
to epitomize the new music

was Charlie Parker.

But those innovations came
at a great cost.

The jazz audience shrank
as young people--

both black and white--

found other forms of music
to dance to.

And a generation of aspiring
young musicians

would have to come to terms
with Parker's twin legacies:

The terrible addiction that
threatened to ruin their lives

even as it was destroying his

and the musical
accomplishments for which
he would never be forgotten.

Charlie Parker, to me,
was a golden cleaver

that could cut to the bone
and release forces

that we didn't know
were there.

He would ride the horses of
extreme danger,

even if they pulled him apart.

And his anguish as a man,
as a black man,

was all folded into his
relationship to the saxophone.

[All of me Playing]

♪♪ All of me ♪♪

♪♪ why not take all of me ♪♪

♪♪ can't you see ♪♪

♪♪ I'm no good without you ♪

Narrator:
The end of world war ii marked
the beginning of the end

for the swing bands.

Sinatra: ♪♪ I want to lose them♪

Narrator: Tastes had changed.

Instrumentalists were forced
to retreat to the background

as popular singers
took center stage,

and young people flocked
to see and hear them,

including the skinny
young baritone from
Tommy dorsey's orchestra,

frank Sinatra.

Sinatra: ♪♪ ...Go on, dear,
without you ♪♪

♪♪ you took the part
that once was my heart ♪♪

♪♪ so why not
take all of me? ♪♪

The big bands struggled
to survive.

Duke Ellington and count basie
managed to stay on the road,

but by Christmas of 1946,

8 of their best-known rivals
would announce that they were
at least temporarily leaving it,

including Harry James,
Stan kenton, Benny Carter,
Tommy dorsey, Woody Herman--

even the "king of swing"
Benny Goodman.

[Groovin' high Playing]

Great jazz soloists abandoned
dreams of heading up big bands
of their own,

formed small groups instead,
and retreated to nightclubs--

places too small for dancing.

All kinds of jazz were being
played at the war's end,

in clubs from 52nd street
in Manhattan

to central Avenue
in Los Angeles.

But whatever the style,
the jam session had
become the model--

freewheeling,
competitive, demanding--

the kind of jazz
musicians had always played
to entertain themselves

after the squares had gone home.

The swing era was over.

Jazz had moved on.

And here and there
across the country,

in small clubs
and on obscure record labels,

the new and risk-filled
music was finally beginning
to be heard.

It was called bebop.

The melodies that
they were playing had been
altered drastically,

and the chords underneath
those melodies had been
altered drastically.

For example,
they used songs like...

♪♪ Whispering da da deed a
love you, da da da Dee da ♪♪

♪♪ wha da da Dee Dee da da da ♪♪

Popular songs, like Whispering,

but the way Charlie Parker would
rephrase these songs, it became,

♪♪ da dup, da dup, badoo be doo
be ooby doodley oo day dup ♪♪

♪♪ du bup da bup,
be dooby doo whey bup... ♪♪

It was so exciting,
so inventive, so creative,
so artistic

that your soul just swelled up
with the possibilities

for what you could do with it,

with whatever limited
aspect you had.

Man: They played
very, very fast.

They had great technique,
great ideas.

They ran their lines
through the chord changes

differently than anybody else.

Prior to them,
it was Roy eldridge,

Coleman Hawkins, you know,
that type of thing.

This was a complete left-hand
turn with the music.

It was wonderful.

When I heard this thing,
I said it was for me.

I'm connected.

And I got connected.

[Dizzy atmosphere Playing]

Narrator: Bebop was
as much evolutionary

as it was revolutionary.

It had grown out of after-hour
wartime jam sessions

at places like minton's
playhouse in Harlem,

among musicians schooled
in swing music:

Coleman Hawkins,

Charlie Christian,

Kenny Clarke,

and the eccentric genius of
the piano--thelonious monk.

In bop, the old steady rhythm
of the dance band

was broken up
by new ways of drumming.

The rhythm section was freer now
to interact with the horns.

Musicians used unexpected
intervals that created
dissonant sounds.

Classical musicians once called
them "the devil's interval."

Boppers called them
"flatted fifths."

"Bebop emerged
from the war years

and it reflected those times,"

said the trumpeter
dizzy Gillespie,

who would become bop's
finest teacher and most
articulate champion.

"It might have looked and
sounded like bedlam," he said,

"but it wasn't."

The man who spoke the language
of bebop most eloquently

was Charlie Parker--bird.

Hendricks: He was a genius.

He could discuss any subject
you'd bring up.

Nuclear physics...

The quantum theory...

You know, anything,
god that guy was amazing.

His favorite composer
was stravinsky

and his favorite work was
Le sacre de printemps.

he loved that.

He was a real intellectual.

Huge mind.

This big.

[Dewey square Playing]

Narrator: On the bandstand,
Parker risked everything,

furiously pouring out
fresh ideas as if his very
life depended on it,

shocking everyone who heard him

with his speed, his fire,
his ferocious concentration.

Charlie Parker,
his sound, his music,

to me, when I first heard him,
the first night,

was the pied Piper of Hamlin.

I would have followed him
anywhere, you know?

Over the cliff, wherever.

I was working on 52nd street
with different people:

Ben Webster,
Coleman Hawkins.

And this guy walks down,
he's got one blue shoe,
one green shoe.

Rumpled, he's got his horn
in a paper bag

with rubber bands
and cellophane on it,

and there he is, Charlie Parker.

His hair standing straight up.

He was doing
a Don King back then.

Well, I says,
"I can't believe this...

"This guy looks terrible.

Can he play? What?" You know.

And he sat in
and within four bars,

I just fell
in love with this guy,
the music, you know.

And he looked back at me,
you know, with that big grin,

with that gold tooth,
and we were just like that.

From that moment on,
we were together.

We moved in together,
we got a room together,

and we were together
a couple of years,
we lived together.

Narrator: Off the bandstand,

Parker's private life was
also filled with risk--

he had been addicted to heroin
since the age of 17.

Man: Charlie Parker was
a man who could never
outrun his appetites.

His appetites always outran him.

So, his appetites were kind of

like a wagon that

that dragged him down the street
at different velocities.

If they dragged him slowly,
he didn't get too cut up.

If they dragged him quickly,
he got badly hurt.

[Boperation Playing]

Narrator: In December of 1945,
Charlie Parker, dizzy Gillespie,

and a group of musicians
including the drummer Stan levey

set out for California.

Gillespie had been invited
to put together a group

to play the new music
at a Hollywood nightclub
called Billy berg's.

Gillespie was reluctant
to bring along the often
unreliable Parker,

and from the start
the trip was a disaster.

Levey: When we left Chicago
to go to California
was the long trip,

through the desert,
and he got desperately ill--

I mean really, really ill.

You had to stop
for water in the desert.

And I look out the window,
and I see this spot out there
carrying, like, a little grip,

and I'm saying,
"what the hell is that?"

And I look closer--
it's Charles Parker.

Narrator: Parker had
wandered off into the desert
in search of a fix.

Levey: Dizzy turned to me,
he says, "what's that?"

And I said, "I think
it's your saxophone player."

So he said, "go get him."

So I ran out real quick
and grabbed him and I says,

"where are you going?"

He says, "I...I got to get
something out here somewhere."

I says, "there's nothing there."

And I helped him back
into the train.

Well, needless to say,

he was so sick when
we got to union station

it was a mess, you know.

[Moose the mooche Playing]

Narrator: When the group,
including the strung-out Parker,

finally reached Los Angeles,

young west coast musicians,

who had already begun
to experiment with the same

sorts of sounds Gillespie
and Parker were playing,

flocked to Billy berg's.

Howard mcghee, Charles mingus,
and Dexter Gordon

were among those dazzled
by their sound.

But most jazz fans seemed
baffled by their music.

It struck a good many listeners

as frantic, nervous, chaotic,
and the audience dwindled away.

Hendricks: They were trying
to say to the audience,

look, lift yourselves
up to where we are.

We're not
that far out there, you know.

We're just a little more hip
than the average person,

so come on, get hip, you know,
dig this, dig this.

Take that wax out of your ears.

When an art form
is created,

the question is
how do you come to it?

Not how does it come to you?

Like, Beethoven's music is
not going to come to you...

Or the art of Picasso
won't come to you...

Or Shakespeare,
you have to go to it.

And when you go to it,
you get the benefits of it.

Narrator: It took Charlie Parker
weeks to locate a steady source
for heroin in Los Angeles--

the proprietor of
a shoe-shine stand known
as "moose the mooche."

Parker was so grateful,
he named a tune in his
new dealer's honor.

On the Eve of the band's
return to New York,

Parker sold his plane ticket
for heroin and disappeared,

and Gillespie--
who had once called Parker

"the other half of
my heartbeat"--

left for home without him.

Parker was now stranded
in Los Angeles
without a steady job.

He managed to record several
sides on his own

for dial records--
a small specialty label--

and signed a document giving
one half his earnings

to moose the mooche
in exchange for heroin.

When "the mooche" was arrested,

Parker began drinking as much
as a quart of whiskey a day

to compensate for
the heroin he craved.

Soon he was living in
an empty garage,

with only his overcoat
as bedding.

Man: He's going through
withdrawal symptoms.

He's a heroin addict
who doesn't really have a home,

who's intentionally
cut himself off

from the one place where
he feels he can maneuver
in society on equal footing,

which would be New York City.

His main colleague,
dizzy Gillespie,

is off doing completely
different things in his career

and is not
in full contact with bird--

if in any contact--
and bird is in trouble.

[Lover man Playing]

Narrator: On July 29, 1946,

he turned up so drunk
for a recording session

the record producer had
to hold him up in front of
the microphone.

A doctor gave him
six tablets of phenobarbital
to bring him around,

and he managed to stumble
through single takes of Bebop
And Lover man.

Parker himself later said
the recording should be

"stomped into the ground,"

but the producer
released it anyway--

and some of Parker's
admirers dutifully
committed it to memory,

note for tortured note.

The night of
the recording session,
he completely fell apart:

He wandered naked into
the lobby of his hotel

and later
fell asleep while smoking
and set his bed ablaze.

The firemen had to shake him
violently to wake him,

and when he resisted,
the police beat him
and threw him in jail.

Charlie Parker was committed to
camarillo state mental hospital.

There, the man who had helped
launch a musical revolution

spent the next six months
tending a lettuce patch,

putting on weight,
and playing his saxophone
in the hospital band.

Now, let me
lay a question on you.

Shoot.

How long was Cain
mad with his brother?

As long as he was Abel.

You dig me, Jack.
You dig me.

You better dig
this next number.

Oh, take it.

♪♪ Oh bop da bap ♪♪

♪♪ bop bop ♪♪

♪♪ oh bop da bap ♪♪

♪♪ ooh da bop ♪♪

Narrator:
After dizzy Gillespie got back
to New York from California,

he put together
his own big band,

in part to show the world
that bebop could be

every bit as entertaining
and dance-able as swing music.

♪♪ Oh bop da bap ♪♪

Man: He was the guy
most responsible

for the dissemination of bop.

Charlie Parker was as important
as he was in terms of

what was actually happening
in the music,

but the person who was
the mentor and from whom

other people learned
was dizzy.

♪♪ Oh bop da bap ♪♪

Crouch: The thing about dizzy
that was so important

was that he was both
an extraordinary intellectual,

and he was a guy
who had this real love of life
and great sense of humor,

and the unfortunate thing
for him in the over arch
of his career was that,

the fact that he seemed
to have so much fun

and tell so many jokes
and dance on stage and all that

caused people to not really
realize that he had been

the central organizing figure
in the bebop era.

[Manteca Playing]

♪♪ Manteca ♪♪

♪♪ manteca ♪♪

Narrator: Dizzy Gillespie became
the public face of bebop--

everything about him provided
colorful copy:

His dark-rimmed glasses,
his berets,

the cheeks that puffed
so alarmingly when he played.

Gillespie broke
all kinds of conventions.

One of his trombonists was
a woman, melba liston,

whom he hired simply because
he loved her sound

and found the arrangements
she wrote as challenging
as his own.

Then, he added an extraordinary
conga player from Cuba

named chano pozo to the band.

With tunes like Cubana be,
Cubana bop And Manteca,

Gillespie helped revive
the link between jazz

and the infectious rhythms
of the Caribbean

that New Orleans musicians
had first incorporated when
the music was born.

Levey: He shared
everything he knew.

He never held back.

A lot of guys are secretive
about what they know

and what they do,

and this chord goes there,
but I'm not going to tell you.

He would give you whatever you
needed to know.

He was just wide open, giving.

But it, he would get back
what he wanted from you.

Narrator: Gillespie struggled
always to make bebop accessible
to everyone,

but for all his showmanship,
his brilliant playing,

and the drive
and precision of his music,

he failed to attract
a wide audience.

"Dancers didn't care whether
we played a flatted fifth or
a ruptured 129th," he said.

"They'd just stand around
the bandstand and gawk."

[Salt peanuts Playing]

Man: I was in the army
for five years,

I came out in 1947,
and I come out of the army

and I hear
♪♪ blll blll ddd ddd ♪♪

I just could not get
accustomed to that.

I said, "well what is this,

what--i mean what's going on,"
you know?

And I hear all
this be-bop music.

I work with dizzy's band--

I formed my own group called
the conjurers.

I worked with dizzy's band
in 1947, dizzy Gillespie's band,
in Washington, D.C.

Jumping at the woodside,
Count basie, and he's got
this drummer up there,

and he's giving me all this
"Chuck a bong pim, chick a pim"

and I'm used to hearing
"chick a chu, chick a chu,
chick a chu."

And he's playing this stuff.

When we finished the act
and I come off,

I said to dizzy--
now can I say these words?--

I said to dizzy, "what the...
Is this you're doing, you know?"

It was different from when
I used to see kids out there
on the floor swinging.

I just could not understand it.

Eventually, I got
to understand the music,

but it was not music
for dancing.

♪♪ Salt peanuts
salt peanuts ♪♪

[Scrapple from the apple
Playing]

By April of 1947, Charlie Parker
was out of the hospital,

at least momentarily
free of heroin,

and back on 52nd street,
playing at the 3 deuces
with his own quintet,

featuring Max roach on drums,
and a gifted young trumpet
player named miles Davis.

Parker discovered that
while he had been away,

a host of younger musicians had
begun to emulate his style.

Everybody wants to play like
Charlie Parker after a while.

Bass players, doom doom doom
doom duh doom be doom doom doom.

The drummers, rah tah n dat tah
oonka oonka du doo de Dee Dee.

Piano players,
doodle oo boodle Dee...

Trumpet players,
diddly doo be doo be doob.

Everybody playing the vocabulary
of Charlie Parker.

Man: As a very young musician,

that's how I wanted
to play, exactly.

I didn't care if someone
said I sounded like him,

that's what I wanted to do.

And that was
all I dreamt of doing.

I didn't want to be original;

I wanted to play
like Charlie Parker.

[Yardbird suite Playing]

Mclean: This week that
he was playing at the Apollo
was perfect for me,

and the only way I could
get to see him would be
not to go to school.

So, a few of my friends and I,

we would leave home
in the morning

and go down in the subway,

but instead of going to
the Bronx to our school,

we would go down
to 125th street,

put our books in one of
those lockers in the subway,

and go get in front of
the theater,

and we would sit
and watch the movie,

and then we would wait until
it was time for the show,

and then the curtain would
come back and there he'd be.

And of course,
we heard all of this great music

that we had heard
on these recordings.

We would enjoy that show,
and then we would get up

and sneak out of
an exit on the side

and run backstage
so we could see bird

when he came out to get
a breath of air.

And he would just say,
"how you guys doing?" You know?

"Aren't you supposed to be
in school today?"

And we'd say, "yeah, bird,
but, like, we came down here
to see you."

He said, "oh. Ok.
Well, you guys be careful."

Narrator: Day after day,
Parker continued to refine

and push and experiment
with the sounds

the critics insisted
on calling "bebop."

Parker himself hated the word:

"It's just music," he said.

"It's trying to play
clean and looking for
the pretty notes."

He was rarely satisfied
with his own work

and embarrassed, too,
by the acolytes

who were now beginning
to follow him from bandstand
to bandstand,

hiding recorders
which they turned on

whenever he stepped
forward to solo...

And clicked off again
the moment he had finished.

Man: When Charlie Parker
came on the scene,

he made such an impression
on the musicians,

he would play a melody wrong,

and if you told one of his
disciples that melody was wrong,

you might get knocked out.

[I'm so lonesome I could cry
Playing]

♪♪ Hear that lonesome
whippoorwill ♪♪

Narrator: His admirers were
sometimes scornful of earlier
jazz and popular music,

but nothing musical was alien
to Charlie Parker.

Man: He used to hang out
at Charlie's tavern,

which was a place jazz musicians
hung out at

in mid-town New York.

They had a juke box.

And along with jazz records,

there were some
country music records.

And that's all
that bird would play.

And the guys didn't know
what to make out of this.

They didn't have the courage
to ask the great man

why he was playing
this awful music,

until finally one of them did.

"Bird, why do you play those
recordings, the country stuff?"

And bird looked at him
and said,

"listen, listen to the stories."

And of course that's true.

[The baseball quaderille
Playing]

Narrator: A friend remembered
leaving Parker transfixed

in a Manhattan snowstorm
late one night,

unable to tear himself away
from the thump and blare of
a salvation army band.

Another friend told
of driving with him
through the countryside

when someone remarked idly
that livestock loved music.

[Chi chi Playing]

Parker asked the driver to stop,

assembled his horn,
stalked into a field,

and gravely played several
choruses to a bewildered cow.

Mclean: One day,
I came home from school
and my mother said to me,

she said,
"you will never, you're not
going to believe this,

but I got a phone call
from Charlie Parker today."

And I said, "what?"

I was very excited, you know,

I said, "well, what did he say?"

She said, "well, he wants you
to come down

"to this place called
chateau gardens tonight

"and wear a blue suit,
shirt and tie,

and play for him
until he gets there."

And began to practice
and get ready for
this big night for me.

[Confirmation Playing]

When the curtain went back--

the people were very
disappointed, I might add...

[Laughing]

They looked up there
and saw me up there.

And so I began to play
through the tunes that I knew

like Confirmation
And Now's the time

and A night in tunisia
And Don't blame me,

the things that bird played.

Then I looked and saw
this crowd surge to the back,
and I saw bird come in.

I saw a saxophone case
up in the air.

The people were
so close around him

that he was holding
his saxophone case
over his head.

And then, they followed him
all the way to the stage.

He took out his horn
and walked out there,

and he said, "play one with me,"
and we did one together,

and then he told me
to go sit down.

You know, played
the rest of the night.

[Confirmation Continues]

♪♪ I'm gonna fill my love ♪♪

♪♪ with lots of air ♪♪

♪♪ and blow in
Mr. Louis Armstrong ♪♪

♪♪ in his old rockin' chair ♪♪

Narrator: On may 15, 1947,

exactly one month after

Jackie Robinson broke the color
line in major league baseball,

Louis Armstrong appeared
with a small integrated group
at New York's town hall.

Armstrong's old friend
Jack teagarden played trombone.

It was still rare to see blacks
and whites touring together,

and teagarden worried
that his presence might
cause trouble.

Armstrong told him not to worry.

♪♪ Old rockin' chair--
got me, Louis? ♪♪

♪♪ old rockin' chair--
got you, partner ♪♪

♪♪ cane by my side ♪♪

♪♪ and your cane by your side ♪♪

♪♪ fetch me some water, some ♪♪

♪♪ you know you don't
drink water, brother ♪♪

♪♪ but then you're right ♪♪

Narrator: The show was
a triumph.

It led to the formation
of Louis Armstrong
and his all-stars.

They would continue
to perform for nearly
a quarter of a century.

For millions of people
who either didn't like

or hadn't heard of
Charlie Parker and bebop,

Louis Armstrong's brand of music
was the very definition of jazz.

♪♪ Now, old rockin' chair--
get into it ♪♪

♪♪ now rockin' chair
get into it ♪♪

♪♪ and judgment day ♪♪

♪♪ oh, judgment day ♪♪

♪♪ yeah, sittin'
in your rockin' chair ♪♪

[When the saints go marching in
Playing]

Narrator: Two years later,
Armstrong was chosen to be

the king of the zulu social aid
and pleasure club,

the oldest
African-American organization

in the annual mardi gras parade
in New Orleans.

Armstrong:
♪♪ now, when the saints... ♪♪

Narrator: As a proud son
of the city,

Armstrong felt honored
to be king.

It had been, he said,
his "lifetime ambition."

♪♪ Yes, I want to be
in that number ♪♪

Man: I'd never seen anything
this beautiful in my life.

Here come the king of the zulus
with the band playing.

[Imitating band]

Sing, you know, Saints
In there,

and they would meet
and drink champagne,

and it was this
beautiful thing, you know.

Narrator: But to many
younger African-Americans--

increasingly impatient
with segregation

and unaware that the zulus had
been formed in part to mock
white social clubs--

Armstrong in blackface seemed
especially grotesque.

Man: I think he was perceived--

mistakenly, I think
in retrospect--

as an uncle Tom.

He came out, he was grinning.

He had this handkerchief,
he was sweating.

You know, he sang
in this gravelly voice

that at the time
we didn't understand that
he was a great singer,

he just seemed like an old guy
singing with a gravelly voice,

and we were disturbed because
white people loved him so much.

And that made him
very suspect to us.

And he came out
and he sang these tunes that
seemed rather corny to us.

So I think to a new generation,
a post-world war ii generation,

a more militant
African-American community,

he seemed like a throwback.

He seemed like something from
an earlier time.

He seemed like a link
to minstrelsy

that I think that
many of us at that time
were rather ashamed of.

Armstrong and his all-stars
were scheduled to give
a concert in New Orleans,

but when the city fathers
learned that Jack teagarden
was in the band,

they refused to let
the all-stars play.

"I don't care if
I never see that city again,"
Armstrong told a friend.

"Jazz was born there,
and I remember when
it wasn't no crime

for cats of any color
to get together and blow."

Shaw: And that hurt Louis so,
he never--he never forgave.

That's why Louis is not buried
in New Orleans right now,

because the city of
New Orleans would not let us
play the concert

because we had a white man
in the band.

He refused
to be buried in New Orleans.

That hurt him so.

[Klaunstance Playing]

Narrator: In may of 1949,

a delegation of American
musicians landed in Paris

for one of the first
international jazz festivals
ever held.

The best-known musician
was Sidney bechet,

who had been one of the first
to spread New Orleans jazz
around the world.

Charlie Parker had been
invited as well:

The French had been
listening to his obscure
recordings for years.

And to Parker's surprise,
they now hailed him as
a worthy successor

to bechet and Ellington
and Armstrong.

That was probably the one time
where audiences and critics

and the public really greeted
him as a heroic figure.

In New York
and in the United States,

it was mostly within
the musical community.

But he never won any of the big,

you know, the trinkets of
celebrityhood.

He never was on the cover
of any major magazine.

He never recorded
for a major label,

not once in his career.

He was never invited to,
you know, be in films.

He was a musician's musician.

Narrator: When Parker
returned from Europe,

he intentionally tried
to broaden his audience.

He made a series of recordings--
popular love songs--

with a string orchestra.

Though some purists
detested them,

they sold better than any other
records he had ever made.

[Just friends Playing]

Branford marsalis:
A lot of people at the time
hated that record

'cause they're saying
Charlie Parker had sold out.

But what he did was
absolutely revolutionary

because he played these songs,

he played them in a way
that they had never been
played before.

He was still Charlie Parker.

It's not like he sold out his
identity to play these songs,

and he played songs
that people knew, and people
bought these records,

and they loved hearing
Charlie Parker playing
these records.

There's a song called
Just friends,

and, uh...

♪♪ Just friends, lovers no more,
da da da da da duh ♪♪

I mean, if he had just picked up
his horn and played...

[Plays straightforward rendition
of Just friends]

then I think they would
have a point.

And he would come in
and he played this lick...

[Plays "bebop" rendition of
Just friends]

[Charlie Parker playing
Just friends]

when you hear that,
I mean, it's...

It's unbelievable
when you put this record on
for the first time

and you hear this guy floating
across the instrument that way.

Man: This is Christmas morning,

and the bird's got
a little surprise for you
on White Christmas.

[white christmas Playing]

Narrator: In December of 1949,

a new jazz club
dedicated to bebop

opened in New York
just off 52nd street.

It was named birdland--
after the new king of bop--

and Parker appeared regularly
on its bandstand.

His fame was beginning to grow,

and he seemed finally
to have found a little
domestic peace as well.

He had moved in with
a dancer named chan Richardson
and adopted her daughter.

Woman: He had
an incredible life force.

He was above all other facets
of men that I had ever known.

He had a maturity
beyond his years.

In fact, he said to me one day,

"I'm not one of those boys
you're used to."

He had a command.

Narrator: He and chan would have
two children together--

a son, baird,
and a daughter named pree.

But nothing was quite
as it seemed.

Giddins: Parker had multiple
personalities--not a disorder,

but he just had a lot
of personalities.

The time he was in New York at
the peak of his renown,

he was leading three lives.

He had the life of
a jazz musician,

which would be a full-time job
for most people,

perfecting your art and
performing night after night.

He had the job, as it were,
of a junkie,

which is also a full time place
which led him--

a full time job which led him
into, you know, terrible places

where the musician might not
want to be.

And then he led this
middle-class life

as a father and a husband living
in the east village of Manhattan

where he was known by
all of his neighbors as

somebody who always
had a smile on his face
and was friendly.

A lot of people didn't know
who he was or what he did.

But he was liked,
very well liked.

And he managed to play
these three different roles
simultaneously.

Well, he's a con artist.

Charlie could con
your pants off you.

You know, he was that way.

Always on the go.

Like a moving target, you know,
you couldn't get him.

And that intrigued me.

Plus the music, the music.

What came out of his horn
was incredible.

[Don't blame me Playing]

Narrator: On the bandstand,

Parker disciplined
his furious talent.

"More than four choruses,"
he told a young milt Jackson,

"and you're just practicing."

But off the bandstand
he was often out of control,

insatiable,
always wanting more food,

more liquor,
more women, and more drugs.

"This is my home,"
he told a friend

as he rolled up his sleeve
to inject himself.

Levey: A day in the life of
Charlie Parker.

He would play all night
in the club,

then you'd go up to minton's at
9:00 in the morning or whatever

and play there till about noon.

Then you had to get more drugs.

If you could get
a few hours sleep in between,

it would be ok,

but then you had to get
the money for the drugs.

It was a constant
merry-go-round, 24 hours a day.

24 hours a day.

Hocking things, finding money,

getting guys to help you
with money,

a total waste of time.

A complete waste of time.

If he had put
that time into his music,
into his writing,

think what would have
come out of it, you know?

He tried to kick many times
while he was with me.

Sometimes very successfully.

But he told me once, you know,

you can get it out of
your body

but you can't get
it out of your brain.

Man: Heroin was our badge...

The thing that made us different
from the rest of the world.

It was the thing that said,
"we know. You don't know."

It was the thing that gave us
membership in a unique club,

and for this membership we gave
up everything else in the world:

Every ambition...

Every desire...

Everything.

It ruined most of the people.

Red Rodney.

Narrator: "Jazz was born
in a whiskey barrel,"
said Artie Shaw,

"grew up on marijuana,
and is about to expire
on heroin."

Marijuana had always been
a part of jazz.

Louis Armstrong smoked it
almost every day.

But heroin was different--

"drastic stuff,"
Armstrong called it.

And soon it seemed
to be everywhere,

dumped into black neighborhoods
by organized crime.

Heroin's effect was devastating.

Mclean: It came on the scene
like a tidal wave.

I mean, it just appeared
after world war ii.

I began to notice guys
in my neighborhood nodding
on the corner, you know,

and so we all began to find out
that this is what--

they were nodding because
they were taking this...

This thing called "horse."

We called it horse at that time.

[Bebop Playing]

Man: Jazz was a very risky music
when you were playing it well.

It's a music which is demanding.

Where people are sometimes
very, very, very severe...

Are very...
They have a lot of...

They look for
a certain kind of urgency.

They risk their life.

They risk their life.

It's a music where people are
living on a tightrope.

So, they want sometimes
to forget that.

They want to fight against that.

They want to be even higher than
the tightrope.

When you have that type of
extreme relationship to the
world that's around you,

it's very difficult
not to need stimulation.

And when
you're playing music, jazz,

you could lose track of time.

You're just playing.

The world that you're in
is perfect.

Well, now, as soon as
that music is over,

that, too, is over.

But that dope is
always there for you,

and the dope is going to make
you maintain that high.

The dope is there to tell you,
"it's all right, man."

Narrator: It was always risky
business to try and match

Charlie Parker's dazzling
technique, his frantic tempos,
and his overflowing ideas,

but now worshipful musicians
began to emulate his addiction
as well as his music,

in the hope that by sharing it
they could somehow share
his genius, too.

"Bird was like fire,"
the pianist John Lewis
remembered.

"You couldn't get too close."

Mclean: A lot of guys in
my community that idolized
and worshipped Charlie Parker

began to experiment with
this drug, including myself.

I had
18 years of addiction.

That's why I can speak about it,

and I'm a family man,
and I'm a musician,

so my life wasn't that different
from bird's, you know.

But it has to do with
who your wife is

and who your family is

and if they can tolerate
what goes on,

and it's terrible, you know.

I mean, I had my mom
and my family

and my wife and my children,

and then, I also had
this gorilla on my back.

[The hymn Playing]

Narrator: One by one,
many of the most gifted
musicians in jazz

would be lost for a time
to narcotics:

Stan levey,

Gerry mulligan,

art blakey,

John Coltrane,

Dexter Gordon,

Sonny stitt,

Anita o'day,

tadd dameron,

red Rodney,

Chet baker,

Sonny rollins,

art pepper,

fats navarro,

and 8 the 16 men
in Woody Herman's band.

The tenor saxophonist Stan getz
tried to support his habit

by holding up a drugstore,

spent six months in jail,

and returned
to drugs and alcohol almost
the moment he got out.

Heroin changed the dynamics
of performance.

Wynton marsalis:
Dope really took a lot out of
the development of the music

because the musicians would be
playing in jam sessions

and you don't rehearse for that.

Everybody was high
and they didn't want to spend
that time working on the music.

And then also
the social relationship between
the musicians changed

because a dope addict is trying
to get money all the time,

and they create
this clannish environment

where if you're not a part of
that dope crowd,

they don't want
to hang with you.

And the network of houses
musicians used to stay in
during segregated times,

the houses of black families,

well, they can't do that now
because musicians will come

and they're stealing
from the people,

and they're just having
a negative influence.

And the musicians themselves
become harder and more guarded,

and less--
there's less love to go around

because that dope is sucking
all the love up.

Hey, boy, hey!
What you doin', man?

Hey, what you gonna do?

That ain't the piece
we're supposed to play.

Come on--well, I guess I better
get on in here with him.

Narrator: Louis Jordan loved
playing jazz with an orchestra,

loved singing the blues, too.

But after the big band craze
died away and the bop era began,

"jazzmen played mostly for
themselves," he said.

"I wanted to play for the
people...Not just hep cats."

He did just that,

taking the simplest,
most crowd-pleasing
aspects of swing

and producing
hit after novelty hit.

"With my little band," he said,

"I did everything they did
with a big band.

"I made the blues jump."

♪♪ Walkin' with my baby
she got great big feet ♪♪

♪♪ she's long, lean, and lanky,
and ain't had nothin' to eat ♪♪

♪♪ but she's my baby ♪♪

♪♪ and I love her just the same♪

♪♪ crazy about that woman
'cause caldonia is her name ♪♪

♪♪ caldonia! Caldonia! ♪♪

♪♪ what make
your big head so hard? ♪♪

♪♪ I love you,
love you just the same ♪♪

♪♪ I'll always love you, baby,
'cause caldonia is your name ♪♪

♪♪ caldonia! Caldonia! ♪♪

♪♪ what make
your big head so hard? ♪♪

Millions of black fans
who had once followed jazz

were now dancing to
a new kind of music.

It was called rhythm and blues.

[Bobplicity Playing]

Narrator: In the Autumn of 1949,

a steady stream of
musicians filed in and out
of an apartment building

next to a Chinese laundry
on west 55th street in
New York City.

In its basement was the one-room
apartment of Gil Evans,

a brilliant freelance arranger.

His door was open
24 hours a day,

and among the men
who stopped by to jam

were some of the most gifted
musicians in jazz--

Gerry mulligan,

Lee konitz,

John Lewis.

Evans' closest collaborator
was the young trumpet player
miles Davis,

an impatient,
relentless innovator,

who, over the next
quarter century,

would continually push
the boundaries of jazz.

He had been born in east
St. Louis, Illinois in 1926,

the son of a well-known dentist
and gentleman farmer.

Dr. Davis raised his son in
the kind of cushioned isolation
few jazz musicians ever knew--

a handsome house
in a white neighborhood,

a cook, a maid,
and a 300-acre farm
with riding horses.

As a boy,
Davis was small and shy

and so good-looking that
classmates called him "pretty"
just to embarrass him.

To win acceptance, he would
adopt an exaggerated toughness

that he never abandoned.

He took up the trumpet
at 13,

and by the time he was 18,
was good enough

to sit in with Charlie Parker
and dizzy Gillespie

when they passed through
St. Louis.

When he first heard Parker,
miles Davis said,

"I decided right then and there
that I had to leave St. Louis
and live in New York,"

and he soon found himself
playing regularly with his idol.

Giddins: Miles--he was
19 years old

when he first was working
with Charlie Parker,

and he had the job
that every trumpet player
would have killed for,

which was to play in
Parker's band.

And he was different.

Most of the serious people,
the musicians recognized
right away

that he had a wonderful lyricism
that was quite unusual,

and he didn't sound like
anybody else.

But he had to invent a style

because he didn't
have the virtuosity
of dizzy Gillespie.

So, he started to create
a style that was based more
on timbre and melody.

Play very few notes,
but make them the right notes--

create a sense of mood.

Narrator: Davis was just
23 years old in 1949,

when he began turning up
at Gil Evans' apartment.

He was eager to find
a new showcase

for the distinctive,
introspective style
he was developing.

[Venus demilo Playing]

Wynton marsalis: What miles has
define a sound and a style

that has the more delicate side
of his nature.

Now, he still has that toughness
and that blade up in there,

so his sound is
not weepy or weak.

It has another type of delicacy,

and it has a sentiment
that draws the romance
out of the music

and presents it to people.

His sound is very, very tender
to come out of a man.

Lester young was like that
before him.

Miles has a vulnerability
that he's not afraid

of sharing with people
that are listening to him.

Once he allowed
that vulnerability
to come into his sound,

well, then his sound
became irresistible.

Narrator: Davis and Evans
formed an unconventional
9-piece group

that included both tuba
and French horn.

They played just
two engagements,

but a major label,
capitol records,

invited them into
the studio to record several
of their arrangements.

Capitol eventually released
their tunes

on a long-playing album called
Birth of the cool.

"bird and diz were great,
but they weren't sweet,"
Davis remembered.

"We shook people's ears
a little softer...

Took the music more mainstream."

Wynton marsalis:
Now Birth of the cool Was just

a lot of different musicians
coming together,

a style that's soft
but intense.

That's like the best encounters
that you have out here.

Soft, but intense

and sustained intensity.

I always say that sustained
intensity equals ecstasy.

And that's the hard thing,
to sustain that intensity.

[Moondreams Playing]

Early: It was a kind of
a piercing sort of a sound.

It was piercing and mellow
at the same time,

and I think that
that's what really struck me

about just the loneliness
of the human condition.

And for some reason,

I rather thought that
black people actually

captured that very well
in music,

was this kind of loneliness
in the human condition

that no matter
how much you yearn for community
and yearn for community,

in the end
there is this loneliness,

and there's no way
you can escape it.

And that's to me
what the best jazz,

when you hear a soloist often,

especially in a slow piece
or ballad piece--

that's sort of what
the best jazz, to me,
has always felt like.

Narrator: Like Sidney bechet
and Charlie Parker,

miles Davis had also gone
to Paris in 1949.

"The trip changed the way
I looked at things forever,"
Davis remembered.

"Paris was where I understood
that all white people weren't
the same..."

He met Picasso,

haunted cafes
with Jean-Paul sartre,

had a brief, heady romance with
the singer Juliette greco.

"I'd never felt like that
in my life," he said.

"It was the freedom

of being treated
like a human being,
like someone important."

But that feeling
did not last long.

Man: I think I think miles'
demons started in 1949,

when he went to France
and he was treated so royally,

and he comes back,
and he's treated just like

another black person over here,

just like a little colored boy.

Woman: No one quite knows
what miles Davis' demons were.

Growing up in that very
carefully secluded world,

where you are taught that
you are a privileged creature.

You are at the same time taught
that that is very fragile...

And that it might be snatched
away from you at any moment.

But you are a prince or
a Princess within it.

I think the combination of
entitlement and bigotry--

assault, the assaults of bigotry
and caste prejudice

set something absolutely
poisonous loose.

Also, the need in some way
to turn himself into

his dramatic image
of what a really tough
street negro would be.

If you're brilliant
and miles Davis,

you're going to do it
in a very compelling

but kind of murderous way.

Narrator: Within weeks of
his return from Europe,

unable to shake the feeling
that he belonged back in Paris

and unable to find work,

miles Davis, too,
turned to drugs--

first snorting heroin,

then injecting it
directly into his veins.

To support his habit--

"to feed the beast,"
as he remembered--

he stole from friends,
pawned his horn,

even became a pimp.

Davis was jailed
for possession in Los Angeles

but managed to beat the charge.

Then his own father,
desperate to make him
quit his habit,

had him arrested in
the hope that he would check
into a hospital for treatment.

Davis refused,
cursed his father,

and returned to drugs.

Like Charlie Parker,
he was earning a reputation
for unreliability.

"People started looking
at me another way,

like I was dirty or something,"
he remembered.

"They looked at me
with pity and horror,

Here they are.
This is Charlie Parker...

Thank you.

And the famous
dizzy gillsepie.

Narrator:
In 1952, Charlie Parker
and dizzy Gillespie,

who still loved
to play together,

accepted awards
from Downbeat Magazine

on the new medium
of television.

Wilson: ...Best
alto sax man of 1951.

Congratulations to you.

And, diz, this is
to you from Downbeat

for being one of the top
trumpet men of all time.

Congratulations, diz--
I mean, dizzy--

I got a little
informal there.

You boys got
anything more to say?

Well, Earl,
they say music speaks
louder than words,

so we'd rather voice
our opinion that way.

I think that would
be all right with everybody

if you really want
to do it.

[Playing Hot house]

narrator:
Throughout the live broadcast,

Parker's face
remained impassive,

his fierce eyes
and the movement of
his fingers on the keys

the only outward signs
of the effort required

to yield such brilliant music.

Bebop's influence seemed
to be everywhere now,

altering jazz in ways
even Parker and Gillespie
could not have imagined.

[Playing Get happy]

narrator: Bud Powell,
one of the most influential
musicians of the era,

brought all the intricacies
of bebop to the keyboard.

One pianist said that
Powell even "outbirded bird,"

and "out dizzied dizzy."

[Scatting Lady be good]

narrator: Bebop seemed
unsingable at first,

but Ella Fitzgerald,
who had started her career
recording pop ballads,

embraced it completely.

"Bop musicians have more
to say than any other musicians
playing today," she said.

And bop musicians loved
the way she sounded.

[Fitzgerald continues scatting]

♪♪ I'm just a lonesome
babe in the woods ♪♪

♪♪ oh, lady, lady, lady,
won't you be so good to me? ♪♪

[Scatting]

Narrator: The pianist
John Lewis also loved
Charlie Parker's music,

but loathed the corrupting
influence of his dissipation
and drug-use.

In 1952, he and other former
members of dizzy Gillespie's
bebop big band

formed a group of their own--
the modern jazz quartet.

The quartet rehearsed
meticulously,

often wore tuxedoes on-stage,

refused to banter
with the audience,

preferred the quiet concert hall
to raucous nightclubs.

"A lot of people think jazz
musicians are dope addicts,"

the vibraphonist
milt Jackson said.

"But we've proved it isn't so."

Like his idol Duke Ellington,

John Lewis insisted
that his music be presented
always with dignity.

"I am an American negro,"
he once said.

"I'm proud of it,
and I want to enhance
that position."

[Applause]

[Blue monk Playing]

Wynton marsalis:
Well, now when you get to monk--

he's my favorite musician.

It's like somebody
who's the oldest and most wisest
sage that ever lived,

but somebody who's 5 years old.

Then you have a superior
musical mind

of organization and logic,
a mathematician.

Like of all the bebop musicians,

any musician in jazz,
really to me,

monk's solos
are the most logical.

They are masterpieces of logic.

And extremely consistent,
great composer,

liked to wear those hats,
very funny, you know.

His music is very, very funny,
very extremely syncopated.

Davis: Thelonious monk,
the professor with the hat

who did strange things
with the piano.

He is able to conjure out
of the keys some strange thing,

and then he looks at
what he has done and chuckles

and says to me,
"oh, that's good."

And he tremendously enjoys
his own capacity,

but he doesn't hesitate
to share it with you.

Narrator: No more mysterious
man ever played jazz than
thelonious sphere monk.

And few created
more memorable music.

[Applause]

Born in north Carolina in 1917,

he was raised
on the West Side of New York

and steeped himself
in gospel music

as the teen-aged accompanist
for a traveling evangelist.

By 1941 he had become
the presiding pianist
at minton's playhouse

in the days when bebop
was being born.

Woman: Thelonious monk is
one of the jazz pianists

who came along and just
found the cracks

in the middle of
the diatonic scale,

which is what western music
is based on.

For me, thelonious monk dug
inside of that

and was able to communicate
these smaller intervals
that existed between.

Narrator: He was
a big, reticent man

who played with splayed fingers
in a unique percussive style.

Woman: And those fingers were
so splayed they never curved.

I was always used to pianists
having beautiful curved hands,

but thelonius would
go like this

and wait a minute before
he hit that key,

and I'd say, "oh, my god.
Is he going to make it?"

And there, you know,
it was never a continuity
of flowing music,

but it was straight fingered,

he's thinking,
"I'm going to hit that."

And I used to sit there saying,
"ooh, where's it going to land?

Where's it going to...?"

And it was always right.

He always landed
on the right note.

Narrator: At first,
casual listeners noticed
only monk's eccentricities.

He had his own way of dressing.

He often went for days
without speaking to anyone.

He used his elbows
on the keys from time to time,

and sometimes got up
in mid-performance to dance
in apparent ecstasy.

[Five spot blues Playing]

Narrator:
Blinded by his odd ways

and disconcerted
by the novel sounds he made,

most critics failed to hear
the echoes of the musicians
he most admired:

The master of Harlem stride,
James p. Johnson,

and his greatest influence,
Duke Ellington.

Hentoff: Critics are sometimes
extraordinarily obtuse.

They claim to want
to hear new things,

but new things bother them

because they can't
categorize them.

And monk was really very badly
criticized in Downbeat

and other of the jazz journals.

And that affects
the work you get.

He and Ellington are the two
greatest individual composers

that jazz has ever had.

And if thelonius monk had
a different personality

and had the ability to organize

and the strength to hold
an organization together

the way that Duke Ellington
had that strength,

he would be much more famous
and his music would be
much more well-known.

Narrator:
He rarely played anyone
else's music, he explained,

because he was determined to
create a demand for his own.

Over the years, many of his
tunes became standards:

52nd street theme,
Straight, no chaser,
And 'Round midnight.

thelonious!
Thelonious monk!

Man, some classic monk would
be like Epistrophy...

you know, and then he gets
to the bridge, he says...

It's just monk, you know,
just deeply rooted in the blues.

Soulful, he's a little
♪♪ impto Dee Dee Dee ♪♪

Do the half steps
♪♪ do Dee Dee uh deeop ♪♪

Gives you, then he takes away.

Then he takes you down
into the gutbucket,

♪♪ doondeloodelee Dee Dee do ♪♪

Leave some space,

♪♪ do be do dit dit dit Dee do ♪

Give it to you another way,

♪♪ do do doodle leedo
bee Dee do ♪♪

Back to the original theme,

♪♪ doboo do dit oo dooboo
doo Dee oo ♪♪

That's the two half steps,
♪♪ doo doo Dee Dee ♪♪

That's the same half step,
you know.

It's hard to describe,
really, but...

'Cause monk is just so logical
and beautiful and just pure.

[Epistrophy Playing]

Narrator: In 1951,
New York police found narcotics

in a parked car
in which he and the pianist
bud Powell were sitting.

The drugs actually
belonged to Powell,

and when monk refused
to testify against his friend,

he was denied a cabaret card.

He would not be able to
perform in any New York club
where liquor was served.

He had been in a sense,
banished by both the police,

because he didn't have the card,

and by the critics.

Musicians knew how good he was,
but that didn't help.

Narrator: Monk refused
to consider leaving New York.

Nor would he take a day job.

He stayed at home in his crowded
apartment for six long years,

bent over the keyboard,
working on the music
that was his obsession.

Finally, riverside records
issued an album

of him playing his own
compositions.

This time, the critic
nat hentoff gave it

an enthusiastic review
in Downbeat.

when monk finally obtained
a new cabaret card,

he took a quartet into
a club in the east village
called the five spot.

Big crowds followed,
suddenly eager to hear the man
the critics had once scorned.

Hentoff:
The musicians were lined up
two and three at the bar.

I never was in Chicago

when Louis Armstrong played
with his hot five,

but it must have been
comparable to this.

It was just,
it was exhilarating

'cause you never knew
what was happening,

but you knew whatever
was happening

would never happen again

and you'd remember it for
the rest of your life.

Narrator: Monk had not changed.

He still lapsed
into long silences,

still broke into dance
on the bandstand,

still played tunes so intricate,
one saxophone player remembered,

that when his musicians
got lost,

it was "like falling into
an empty elevator shaft."

It no longer mattered.

After 15 years of obscurity
and refusal to compromise,

thelonious monk was at last
hailed as a giant of jazz.

[Autumn in new york Playing]

♪♪ Autumn in New York ♪♪

♪♪ why does it seem
so inviting? ♪♪

♪♪ Autumn in New York ♪♪

♪♪ it spells the thrill of
first-nighting ♪♪

Early: Without question,
my favorite Billie Holiday song
is Autumn in New York.

holiday: ♪♪ glittering crowds ♪♪

Early: When I hear
her sing that, I'm ready to cry.

Holiday:
♪♪ and canyons of steel ♪♪

Early: It's the most
beautiful rendition of

Autumn in new york
I've ever heard in my life.

Told my wife, "when I die,
I want you to play that."

Her version of
Autumn in new york
Is just beautiful.

Holiday:
♪♪ it's Autumn in New York ♪♪

♪♪ that brings the promise
of new love ♪♪

♪♪ Autumn in New York ♪♪

♪♪ is often mingled with pain ♪♪

Narrator: Like thelonius monk,

Billie Holiday had lost
her cabaret card because of
a narcotics conviction.

For most of the 1950s,
she was barred from singing
in New York City clubs.

But she was still able
to sing in other cities
and on the concert stage.

Her audience grew,

and year after year,
even in the bebop era,

critics named her
the best vocalist in jazz.

♪♪ Autumn in New York ♪♪

Man: She worked at it,
and she would give it all.

She'd get her hand going with
that finger, and she'd just,

when she sang a ballad
you just comped almost,

like you didn't have
to lead her,

you just did something
behind her that you thought
maybe she'd like.

And if she liked it, she'd turn
and grin at you, you know,

and she used to turn
and grin at me and that
made me feel good.

I said, "lady day likes this."

♪♪ Jaded roues
and gay divorcees ♪♪

♪♪ who lunch at the ritz ♪♪

♪♪ will tell you that it's ♪♪

♪♪ divine ♪♪

♪♪ this Autumn in New York ♪♪

♪♪ transforms the slums
into Mayfair ♪♪

Early: Her voice was
already diminished,

but it hadn't diminished
to the point

where she couldn't sing anymore.

Holiday: ♪♪ you'll need
no castle in Spain ♪♪

She had lived inside
her voice long enough

and experienced so much
that at this point,

her limitations turn out
to make her

the greatest kind of virtuoso.

♪♪ On benches in central park ♪♪

♪♪ greet Autumn in New York ♪♪

♪♪ it's good to live it again ♪♪

[Walking shoes Playing]

Narrator: Hundreds of thousands
of Americans moved to California
after the war,

eager to start new lives in
a new land of opportunity.

They would find a new variation
of jazz there, as well.

Not long after
the baritone saxophone player
Gerry mulligan played on

the Birth of the cool
Sessions with miles Davis,

he got himself a regular Monday
night gig at the haig,

a small nightclub
on Wilshire boulevard
in Los Angeles.

Giddins: Gerry mulligan
put together a quartet with
Chet baker on trumpet,

chico Hamilton on drums,
and Bob whitlock on bass.

And the band was so serene,

and it just sounded like
the pacific ocean,

the waves, you know,

the air wafting over
the west coast,

and young people loved it.

It became very popular
on campuses.

Time Magazine did
a piece about it,

and in no time at all,
there was a new movement,

"cool jazz"
or "west coast" jazz.

[Blue rondo ala turk Playing]

Narrator: The best-known
west coast group was the quartet
headed by Dave brubeck.

He had led an integrated
army band

during the second world war,

then had gone back to school
to study music with the French
composer Darius milhaud.

Man: Darius milhaud said,
"travel the world and keep
your ears open

and use everything
you hear from other cultures,
bring it in to the jazz idiom."

So, when I was in Turkey
and heard Turkish musicians
playing this rhythm,

I said to them,
"what is this rhythm?

One two--one two--one two--
one two three."

Before I finished the bar,

they're all going, yah yah yah--

yah da da da--Don Don Don--
Don da da

and they were playing in 9/8
all improvising,

just like it was American blues.

And I thought, "jeez!
A whole bunch of people
can improvise in nine?

Why don't I learn
how to do that?"

Narrator: Brubeck's career had
very nearly ended in 1951,

when he seriously injured his
neck in a swimming accident.

From then on he was forced to
change his keyboard style,

using driving block chords
instead of single-note passages.

That style would be
perfectly complemented

by the playing of his alto
saxophonist Paul Desmond--

light, lyrical, romantic--

like the sound,
Desmond himself said,
of a dry Martini.

Hentoff: Paul had
this lovely singing kind
of sound on the alto.

I mean, for example, he was
in love with Audrey hepburn--

not that anything ever happened.

But his music was like
she appeared on screen,

this sort of
lightness but yet substance
underneath the appearance.

Just very, very lyrical stuff.

Narrator: Each man made
the other better.

Brubeck: I wanted to do
an album.

It was called Time out.

where we would get into a lot
of different time signatures

that weren't used
in jazz, like...

That's one two--one two--
one two--one two three--

one two--one two--
one two--one two three,

and I asked Paul
to do something in five.

Narrator: At their next
rehearsal, Desmond brought in
several original melodies.

Brubeck: And I looked
at them and I said,

"Paul, if you take
the first theme..."

Which was...

[Plays piano]

And started with a bridge
instead of...

[Plays piano]

So I said, "now, put
that theme first, repeat it,
and then go to the bridge."

That's kind of how Take five
Was born.

[Playing Take five]

narrator: When brubeck released
the album Time out,

it would sell more than
a million copies--

something no other
jazz lp had ever done.

Black as well as white fans
followed the brubeck quartet--

it was named the favorite
group of the readers of
the Pittsburgh courier.

and brubeck never forgot that
when Willie the lion Smith heard

one of his records without being
told who was playing,

Smith said, "he plays like
where the blues was born."

No one understood better
than Dave brubeck himself

the debt he owed to earlier
generations of black musicians.

In November of 1954, he was on
tour with Duke Ellington--

a man he considered
the greatest of American
composers and a friend--

when brubeck's portrait appeared
on the cover of Time.

brubeck: I heard a knock
on my hotel room at 7:00
in the morning

and it was Duke, and he said,

"Dave, you're on the cover
of Time Magazine."

And my heart sank
because I wanted to be
on the cover after Duke.

I didn't want to be
on the cover before Duke

because they were doing
stories on both of us.

The worst thing
that could have happened to me

was that I was there
before Duke,

and he was delivering
the magazine to me,
saying, "here."

Announcer: On trumpet
is dizzy Gillespie.

[Applause and cheers]

Man:
Jazz is america's own.

It is played and listened
to by all peoples--

in Harmony, together.

Pigmentation differences
have no place.

As in genuine democracy,
only performance counts.

Norman granz.

Narrator: Year after year,
Norman granz,

a California-born promoter,

led his integrated all-star
jazz at the philharmonic troupe

all over the country
and overseas, as well.

Some of the greatest names in
jazz were part of his group:

Dizzy Gillespie
and Charlie Parker,

Ella Fitzgerald,

Stan getz,

Max roach,

Oscar Peterson,

gene krupa,

buddy rich,

Coleman Hawkins,

and Lester young.

Granz had two goals in mind:

To broaden
the audience for jazz

and to do so without
compromising equal treatment

for all musicians,
black and white.

Martin Luther King, Jr:
We feel that we are right,

and that we have
a legitimate complaint,

and also we feel that
one of the great glories
of america is

the right to protest
for rights.

Narrator: Throughout the 1950s,

as a nationwide
civil rights movement
began to build momentum,

Norman granz was quietly
fighting for change in
the world of jazz.

If airlines or hotels
or restaurants,

anywhere granz's people played,

dared try to discriminate
against any of them,

he did not hesitate to cancel.

Levey: The guy who really
started to break it up was
Norman granz.

We would tour,

he would just check everybody
into the Hilton hotel.

We'd all show up in the lobby
and they, ahem,

a lot of, you know,
throat-clearing, and he'd say,

"this is our group.
Let's have our rooms."

He was terrific.

Norman really broke
a lot of barriers.

Really great.
We just showed up.

Here we are.

[Out of nowhere Playing]

Man: While Charlie Parker
slowly died

like a man dismembering
himself with a dull razor
on a spotlighted stage,

his public reacted
as though he were doing
much the same thing

as those saxophonists who hoot
and honk and roll on the floor.

In the end he had
no private life...

And his most tragic moments were
drained of human significance.

Ralph Ellison.

Schaap: If you're going to
die at the age of 34,

I'm pretty sure,
you're not positive you're going
to die at the age of 34,

and you may even be
thinking you'll live to be 70
just like the Bible says.

So bird's later career is not
just the end of a short run,

it's an examination
of the future unlived.

He's determined to create
a new revelation in music

that would have the magnitude
of his bebop breakthrough.

And he is on the hunt,
and he's doing well.

And then the rug gets
pulled out from under him.

Narrator: In march of 1954,
Charlie Parker was playing
the oasis club in Hollywood.

He was temporarily
off drugs,

but bloated
and chronically disheveled,

his health undermined by
the vast quantities of alcohol

he was now consuming.

Then, he got a telegram
from chan in New York.

Their two-year-old daughter pree
had died of pneumonia.

Chan Parker: At the time
that pree was born,

she was always ill.

And no doctor could
find out why.

And I had a heart specialist,
a pediatrician,

who discovered she had
an opening in her heart--

and this was before
open-heart surgery.

Narrator:
The night he got the news,

Parker sent four telegrams
from Los Angeles to chan--

each more incoherent
than the last.

Parker: My darling.

My daughter's death surprised me
more than it did you.

Don't fulfill funeral
proceedings until I get there.

I shall be the first one
to walk into our chapel.

Forgive me for not
being there with you

while you are at the hospital.

Yours most sincerely,
your husband,

Charlie Parker.

My darling, for god's sake,
hold on to yourself.

Charles Parker.

My daughter is dead.

I know it.

I will be there
as quick as I can.

My name is bird.

It is very nice
to be out here.

People have been
very nice to me out here.

I am coming in right away.

Take it easy.

Let me be the first one
to approach you.

I am your husband.

Sincerely, Charlie Parker.

Chan Parker: For me,
getting those telegrams
was horrific.

I was in shock.

They were giving
me tranquilizers.

I wouldn't let loose of
her bathrobe that she went
to the hospital in,

and then every hour,
another telegram and I...

You know, it was horrible
for me--horrible.

I'm sure bird didn't realize it.

I'm sure he was going
through his horror.

[Embraceable you Playing]

Narrator: He managed
to get through the funeral

but now seemed unable
to hold himself together.

An engagement with
a string section at birdland
ended in disaster

when he drank too much
and tried to fire the band.

The manager fired him instead.

He went home to chan,
quarreled with her,

and tried to kill himself
by swallowing iodine.

Ambulance workers saved him.

His drinking got worse.

He began riding
the subways all night.

He seemed frightened now--
"on a panic," he called it--

suspicious even of his admirers.

"They just came out to see
the world's most famous junkie,"
he told a friend.

One evening, he made his way
into a New York club

where his old friend
dizzy Gillespie sat
listening to the band.

Parker was rumpled,
overweight, disoriented.

"Why don't you save me, diz?"
He said over and over again.

"Why don't you save me?"

"I didn't know what to do,"
Gillespie remembered.

"I just didn't know
what to say..."

Parker stumbled back out
onto the street.

Hentoff: I ran into him one
night about 3:00 in the morning.

I was going downstairs
into birdland.

Bird was coming up,

and tears were
streaming down his face.

He said,
"I've got to talk to you.
I've got to talk to you."

I said, "fine, there's
an all-night coffee shop
right on the corner."

"No, no.
I'll call you tomorrow."

Well, he never called,

and I could have
been anybody, I think.

Mclean: And he tried,
I'm sure, many times to
get his self together,

but he was drinking,
and that didn't help.

And I had rented
this horn and used it,

and one night
I was getting in a cab,

and bird was helping me
to get in the cab with
some other people,

and he said,
"here. Let me take this."

And he took the horn.

And of course,
about two or three days later,

when I saw him,
he didn't have the horn.

It was in the pawn shop.

And I was a little angry
at him about that.

So, I was playing in
the open door that Sunday night,

and he came by to see me play.

And I remember that night.

He invited to drop me home
after the job was over,

and I said, "no, that's ok.
I'll get a cab,"

'cause I was still
a little angry at him, you know.

Narrator: On march 9, 1955,

Parker was scheduled
to take the train to Boston
for an engagement.

On the way, he dropped
by the stanhope hotel
on upper fifth Avenue.

It was the home
of his friend the baroness
pannonica de koenigswarter,

a member of
the rothschild family

and a generous patron
of jazz.

Parker was clearly ill,
and she called a doctor.

Chan Parker: She called
the doctor and the doctor said,

"this man needs
to be hospitalized,"

and bird refused
to go to the hospital.

And I think he'd just given up.

His heart just gave up.

I think, you know, life had been
too heavy for him, really.

Narrator: Parker agreed
to stay with the baroness
until he felt better.

[Getting sentimental over you
Playing]

Three days later,
on Saturday, march 12,

Charlie Parker turned
on the dorsey brothers'
variety show.

He'd always liked the sound of
Jimmy dorsey's saxophone.

The first act was a juggler.

Parker laughed, choked,
then collapsed.

By the time
the doctor got there,

he was dead.

The official cause was
pneumonia,

complicated by cirrhosis
of the liver.

But he had simply
worn himself out.

The coroner estimated his age
at between 55 and 60.

He was really just 34 years old.

Mclean: I bought a New York post
And I sat down on the bus

and I rode for several blocks
before I opened it

and then when I opened the paper
and looked inside,

I saw the article where
it said that bird was dead,

that he had passed away
at the baroness' house.

It was awful, you know.

It was, it was terrible,
especially--

I felt especially bad
because I had just seen him

two or three nights before that
at the open door,

and being angry about the horn,
I had missed the moment

that I could have had
one more moment with him.

Everybody was crushed
when bird died.

I didn't go to his funeral.

I couldn't--i just couldn't go.

I couldn't be
a part of that.

Narrator: When Parker was
finally buried

in his hometown of Kansas City,

his mother ordered that
no jazz was to be played
during the services.

[Bird of paradise Playing]

By then, his most
avid followers

had already covered walls
in greenwich village

with the slogan,
"bird lives."

Giddins: I think the real legacy
of Charlie Parker is

the uncorrupted humanity
of his music.

That's why it lives.

You can analyze it all you want,

but ultimately it's the beauty
and the perfection

and the refusal to compromise
in any way that moves us

and will continue to move us.

[Generique Playing]

Narrator: Middleweight champion
sugar ray Robinson

was miles Davis' hero.

Davis admired the elegance
with which he dispatched
his opponents,

admired Robinson's clothes,
his good looks,

and the women who seemed always
to be on his arm.

"When he got into the ring,"
Davis remembered,

"he never smiled.

He was all business."

Inspired by Robinson's
seriousness about his craft

and finally weary of the life

his own addiction was
forcing him to lead,

Davis resolved in 1954
to kick his habit.

Characteristically,
he decided to do it on his own.

He had just finished
an engagement with Max roach
in Hollywood

and rode the bus halfway
across the continent

to his father's farm
outside east St. Louis.

His father told him
he could do nothing for him
except offer his love.

"The rest of it," he said,
"you've got to do for yourself."

Davis did.

He moved into
a two-room apartment

on the second floor of
his father's guest house

and locked the door.

For seven days,
as the craving for drugs raged,

he neither ate nor drank,

shivering with cold
and struggling to keep
from screaming

with the pain
that tortured his joints.

Then, he remembered,
"one day it was over,
just like that...

"I walked outside into
the clean, sweet air over
to my father's house

"and when he saw me he had
this big smile on his face

and we just hugged
each other and cried."

"All I could think of,"
miles Davis recalled,

"was playing music and making up
for all the time I had lost."

[Groovin' high Playing]