Kansas City Lightning: The Rise and Times of Charlie Parker

Kansas City Lightning: The Rise and Times of Charlie Parker

Kansas City Lightning: The Rise and Times of Charlie Parker is the first installment in the long-awaited portrait of one of the most talented and influential musicians of the twentieth century, from Stanley Crouch, one of the foremost authorities on jazz and culture in America. Throughout his life, Charlie Parker personified the tortured American artist: a revolutionary performer who used his alto saxophone to create a new music known as bebop even as he wrestled with a drug addiction that would lead to his death at the age of thirty-four. Drawing on interviews with peers, collaborators, and family members, Kansas City Lightning recreates Parker’s Depression-era childhood; his early days navigating the Kansas City nightlife, inspired by lions like Lester Young and Count Basie; and on to New York, where he began to transcend the music he had mastered. Crouch reveals an ambitious young man torn between music and drugs, between his domineering mother and his impressionable young wife, whose teenage romance with Charlie lies at the bittersweet heart of this story. With the wisdom of a jazz scholar, the cultural insights of an acclaimed social critic, and the narrative skill of a literary novelist, Stanley Crouch illuminates this American master as never before. *Starred Review* To jazz lovers, the prospect of music and cultural critic Crouch taking on the life of the iconic Charlie Parker carries the anticipation that fans would have had at the great battles of the jazz bands or the cutting contests vividly described here. Crouch captures with novelistic verve the excitement of that period in covering the early years of Parker’s ultimately short life, which contained within it so many warring elements that he has daunted even, perhaps especially, awestruck biographers. Crouch’s eyes are wide open, and he lends his considerable talents to a jazz biography that ranks with the very best, including Robin D. G. Kelley on Thelonious Monk. Though extensively researched, this is less academic, informed by Crouch’s extensive knowledge and his deft hand with complex elements of American music. The occasional cliché or clunky wording is offset by more frequent profundities, e.g., “the double consciousness so fundamental to jazz: the burdens of the soul met by the optimism of the groove.” Parker’s influences are made clear (Lester Young and Roy Eldridge, sure, but much here on the often-overlooked Buster Smith and guitarist Biddy Fleet), as is the vital context of Parker’s hometown, the wide-open and musically fertile Kansas City. This is, it must be noted, the first of two projected volumes. Those waiting expectantly for Crouch’s take on Parker’s full maturity (and drug-ridden decline, though foreshadowed here) and his classic collaborations with Dizzy Gillespie and others will need to be patient. --Mark Levine “Stanley Crouch has a store of fresh information for you in his new book about Charlie Parker (1920-55), the genius of American music universally known as Bird, and invaluable insights to offer into the meaning of Parker’s achievement. It is imperative that you come into possession of this material…” - Daily Beast “Award-winning Crouch takes a deep look at [Parker’s] rich life.” - Denver Post “Social and cultural critic, columnist and MacArthur Genius Crouch offers a mix of impressionist strokes, historical facts and context in his masterful Charlie Parker bio.” - New York Post “Meticulous and steeped in local lore. . . Feel[s] as urgent as a blast from Parker’s saxophone.” - Kansas City Star “In Crouch’s hands, the phrase that used to be ubiquitous around New York rings true: Bird lives. I hope I’m not the only one out there who is waiting with bated breath for Crouch’s next volume to see this Bird take flight.” - The Millions “An instant classic that will have wide appeal, from scholars and fans to those who may have heard Parker’s name but don’t know anything about him. In Crouch’s telling, Parker is put into rich context of life during the thirties in a place called Kansas City. . . . With a novelist’s sensibility, he creates a vivid picture of a young boy. . . . Crouch portrays Parker’s world more vividly than anything I have ever read previously. . . . Parker ‘lives’ in Crouch’s telling, backed by the most up-to-date information of his musical activies. One hopes that the second volume of Crouch’s biography does not take too long to arrive in bookstores.” - Jeff Sultanof, the Journal of Jazz Studies “An instant classic. . . . With a novelist’s sensibility . . . Crouch portrays Parker’s world more vividly than anything I have ever read previously. . . . Parker ‘lives’ in Crouch’s telling.” - Jeff Sultanof, the Journal of Jazz Studies “Capture[s] the excitement of a Charlie Parker performance, his incandescent swing, the way he took notes to places they’d never been before. . . Takes us as close as we are likely to get to the early years of a genius-in-waiting.” - Toronto Globe and Mail “Judicious, s