The real Charlie Parker: what the movie didn't tell you

Ebony, Jan, 1989 by Marilyn Marshall

During the mid-'40s, Parker and bebop went to the West Coast, and he spent a number of months in Los Angeles. By this time he shared the stage with gifted trumpeter Miles Davis. In July 1946, while suffering from malnutrition and alcoholism, he recorded the now famous "Lover Man." Afterwards, police and firemen were called to Parker's hotel after he appeared in the lobby naked and then somehow set a mattress in his room on fire. He was jailed and admitted to Camarillo State Hospital, where he stayed about six months.

By 1950 Parker had begun a common-law marriage with Chan Richardson, as detailed in the movie. A daughter, Pree, who was born in 1951, died of pneumonia in 1953. Son Baird was born in 1952.

It was also in 1950 that Rebecca Parker and her son, Leon, moved to Inkster, Mich. A year or so later, Leon saw his father for the first time when Parker performed in Detroit. The youngster was about 11 at the time and knew very little about his father since neither his mother nor his grandmother, Addie, ever talked about Charlie Parker.

Leon saw his father sporadically for the next few years. He says that when they were together, Parker would give him advice such as, "Don't ever become a musician unless you really want to." A few years later, Parker surprised his son by giving him a brand new saxophone he had gotten from an instrument company. That same day, however, Parker's unpredictability surfaced. Leon says: "From what I understand, he came back later that evening and picked it up. I never saw that horn again."

During the last years of Parker's life, some of those who knew the musician well seldom saw him. Rebecca Parker's last encounter with her first husband was about nine months before he died when Parker and Chan visited her home in Inkster. She says he took her into the kitchen and said, 'Rebecca, if I had my life to live over again this is what I would want.' He was saying, 'forgive me.'" She adds that, "I knew he was dying."

When Charlie Parker died in 1955, the jazz world mourned one of its most gifted stars. Because his music lives on, it can be said that he is gone, but certainly not forgotten.