Charlie Parker (1920-1955) - Bebop Sax

Charlie Parker (1920-1955)

Koko (c. 1945)



Lady, Be Good (1946, after George Gershwin)



Embraceable You (1947, after George Gershwin)



Klactoveedsedstene (1947)



Crazeology (1947)



Parker's Mood (1948)





Out of Nowhere (1948, with Miles Davis)

Charles Parker, Jr. (August 29, 1920 – March 12, 1955) was an American jazz saxophonist and composer.

Parker is widely considered one of the most influential of jazz musicians, along with Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington. Parker acquired the nickname "Yardbird" early in his career, and the shortened form "Bird" remained Parker's sobriquet for the rest of his life, inspiring the titles of many Parker compositions, such as "Yardbird Suite" and "Ornithology."

Parker played a leading role in the development of bebop, a form of jazz characterized by fast tempos, virtuoso technique, and improvisation based on harmonic structure. Parker's innovative approaches to melody, rhythm, and harmony exercised enormous influence on his contemporaries. Several of Parker's songs have become standards, including "Billie's Bounce," "Anthropology," "Ornithology," and "Confirmation." He introduced harmonic practices from concert music, including a tonal vocabulary employing 9ths, 11ths and 13ths of chords, rapidly implied passing chords, and new variants of altered chords and chord substitutions. His tone was clean and penetrating, but sweet and plaintive on ballads. Although many Parker recordings demonstrate dazzling virtuoso technique and complex melodic lines -- such as "Koko," "Kim," and "Leap Frog" -- he was also one of the great blues players. His themeless blues improvisation "Parker's Mood" represents one of the most deeply affecting recordings in jazz.

At various times, Parker fused jazz with other musical styles, from various types of classical music to Latin, establishing paths followed later by others.

Parker also became an icon for the hipster subculture and later the Beat generation, personifying the conception of the jazz musician as an uncompromising artist and intellectual, rather than just a popular entertainer.

[8920 Brubeck / 8920 Parker / 8920 High Life]

Miles Davis (1926-1991) - Miles Runs

Miles Davis (1926-1991)

Out of Nowhere (1948, with Charlie Parker)

Boplicity (1949)

Summertime (1958)

So What (1959)

Miles Runs the Voodoo Down (1969)



Miles Dewey Davis III (May 26, 1926 – September 28, 1991) was an American jazz trumpeter, bandleader, and composer.

Widely considered one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century, Davis was at the forefront of almost every major development in jazz from World War II to the 1990s. He played on various early bebop records and recorded one of the first cool jazz records. He was partially responsible for the development of modal jazz, and jazz fusion arose from his work with other musicians in the late 1960s and early 1970's.

Davis belongs to the great tradition of jazz trumpeters that started with Buddy Bolden and ran through Joe "King" Oliver, Louis Armstrong, Roy Eldridge and Dizzy Gillespie, although unlike those musicians he was never considered to have the highest level of technical ability. His greatest achievement as a musician, however, was to move beyond being regarded as a distinctive and influential stylist on his own instrument and to shape whole styles and ways of making music through the work of his bands, in which many of the most important jazz musicians of the second half of the 20th Century made their names.

[8926 Coltrane / 8926 Davis / 8925 Haley]