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    Kansas City Lightning: The Rise and Times of Charlie Parker
    Unavailable
    Kansas City Lightning: The Rise and Times of Charlie Parker
    Unavailable
    Kansas City Lightning: The Rise and Times of Charlie Parker
    Ebook432 pages7 hours

    Kansas City Lightning: The Rise and Times of Charlie Parker

    By Stanley Crouch

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    “A tour de force. . . . Crouch has given us a bone-deep understanding of Parker’s music and the world that produced it. In his pages, Bird still lives.” — Washington Post

    A stunning portrait of Charlie Parker, 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, Stanley Crouch 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.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateSep 24, 2013
    ISBN9780062314062
    Unavailable
    Kansas City Lightning: The Rise and Times of Charlie Parker
    Author

    Stanley Crouch

    Stanley Crouch was twice nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award, for his essay collections Notes of a Hanging Judge and The All-American Skin Game. His other books include Always in Pursuit, The Artificial White Man, and the acclaimed novel Don't the Moon Look Lonesome. He served on and off as the artistic consultant for jazz programming at Lincoln Center, was the president of the Louis Armstrong Educational Foundation, and was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He died in 2020 at the age of 74.

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    Reviews for Kansas City Lightning

    4/5

    31 ratings6 reviews

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    • 4/5
      A fascinating look at Charlie Parker's beginning. I assumed (wrongly) that this would be a full biography of Parker's life, but it stops before he truly hits the big time. It traces his rice in Kansas City, his hoboing to Chicago and then to New York to see the world and prove his worth, and ends with his eventual return to Kansas City. Included are many pictures, interviews with his first wife and a wonderful array of Jazz history and culture so that the reader can gain a better understanding of how Parker created a unique sound all his own while studying the Jazz masters of the day. A wonderfully informative book that makes me wonder if it's the first in a series. I want to know about his rise to fame, not just the beginnings!
    • 1/5
      Absolutely awful biography of the legendary Bird. I'm not sure even Crouch knew what he was trying to accomplish with this book. It is like an extended dissertation on the history of jazz, rather than a straight biography. Charlie Parker, the God of Jazz, is just a footnote in this book for an extensive amount of pages, to the point that you completely forget this is supposed to be a biography about him. Such a disappointment and truly an example of an egotistical author too enamored with his own intellect to be able to tell a compelling story about another person.
    • 4/5
      Wandered a little far afield at times, maybe a little TOO much background, but even these digressions helped to set the tone of the book and gave important context.
    • 5/5
      I really enjoy Crouch's prose style. Interesting and informative on the first have of Charlie Parker's life.
    • 4/5
      "There was a certain majesty to this young man, but also a delicate misery."Charlie Parker was a spoiled mama's boy and one of the greatest saxophone players that ever lived. At fifteen he was a drug addict and pawning the sax he loved so much to feed his addiction. Despite being flawed and seemingly emotionally distant there is something about Parker's melancholy air that draws you to him and his story.He had two loves but one stole his heart. He fell in love with the young Rebecca. Their young love could not survive the relationship he was building with music. Parker studied jazz musicians and the music itself tirelessly. It possessed him. Rebecca could not compete.It wasn't fame that drew Parker to the music but it almost seemed like it was a supernatural pull. Parker's life is shrouded in mystery. Crouch did his best to unveil some of the mystery around this legendary artist but he still came short. In life and death, Parker keeps us on the perimeter of his life.This book is a historian's dream. Crouch gives so much detail to the people, places, and times that influenced Parker and jazz as a whole. There were times that the reader could actually get lost in these details and forget the focus of the book was Parker's life. The ending felt like you fell off a cliff. There was no closure whatsoever.
    • 4/5
      I received Kansas City Lightning as part of a Goodreads giveaway.

      As a big jazz fan, I was excited to read this biography of Charlie Parker and was not disappointed.

      Kansas City Lightning, the first of two volumes, represents over 30 years of research and personal interviews by Stanley Crouch. It's a vividly-told biography, bringing to life Parker's birth and childhood near and in Kansas City, his relationship with his first wife Rebecca, the budding jazz culture of the 1920s and 1930s, and the sights and sounds of Depression-era America as Parker and his band traveled throughout the country.

      Crouch skilfully demonstrates Parker's incredible talent, but this is no fawning tribute. He doesn't gloss over Parker's faults or problems, specifically his troubled teenage marriage to Rebecca and his growing drug addiction.

      All in all, an incredibly well-researched, fascinating biography. I would look forward to reading Part 2.

      Highly recommended.