It has always been a mystery why Charlie Parker became a musician. The alto-saxophonist Gigi Gryce - one of his best friends - says: "Parker was a natural genius. If he had become a plumber, I believe he would have been a great one."
In 1937 - at seventeen - Parker became a member of Jay McShann's band, a typical Kansas City riff and blues orchestra. Parker said he was "crazy about Lester Young," but it is questionable whether he had a real model.
Parker's real schooling and tradition was the blues. He heard it constantly in Kansas City and played it night after night with Jay McShann.
When Parker once played in a jam session in Kansas City with members of the Basie band, and nobody liked what he was blowing, drummer Jo Jones "as an expression of his feelings took his cymbal off and threw it almost the entire distance of the room. Bird just packed up his horn and went out."
Parker says: "I'd been getting bored with the stereotyped changes that were being used all the time at the time, and I kept thinking there's bound to be something else. I could hear it sometimes, but I couldn't play it."
"Well, that night I was working over 'Cherokee.' and, as I did, I found that by using the higher intervals of a chord as a melody line and backing them with appropriately related changes, I could play the thing I'd been hearing. I came alive."
