Charlie Parker Quotes

When I did 'Bird,' it was a surprise to some people, first because I wasn't in it and second because most of the films I'd been doing were cop movies or westerns or adventure films, so to be doing one about Charlie Parker, who was a great influence on American music, was a great thrill for me. ~ Clint Eastwood

I was blessed that I got married early and had a good wife. That sort of kept me straight. Probably I would have been like Charlie Parker, you know, involved in drugs or alcohol or something like that if I hadn't had this stability. ~ Dizzy Gillespie

Charlie Parker was a genius, as was Lester Young. ~ Sebastian Coe

Some guys said 'Here's bop!' Wham! They said, 'Here's something we can make money on!' Wham! 'Here's a comedian!' Wham! Here's a guy who talks funny talk!' ~ Charlie Parker

I went up to his [Hank Jones'] house and there were four guys there: Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Bud Powell, and Max Roach. Not a bad place to be. Scared shitless, but a nice place to be on my second day in New York. ~ Ray Brown

In those days before hearing Charlie Parker and Dizzy, and before learning of the so-called bebop era
by the way, I have some thoughts about that word, "bebop"
my first jazz hero ever, jazz improvisor hero, was Lester Young. I was a big "Lester Young-oholic," and all of my buddies were Lester Young-oholics. We'd get together and dissect, analyze, discuss, and listen to Lester Young's solos for hours and hours and hours. He was our god. ~ J.J. Johnson

Charlie Parker lifted jazz music off the dance floor and into the stratosphere! ~ Joe Lovano

I didn't know what the hell Charlie Parker was playing ... I just liked the way he played. ~ Charlie Watts

When I present the Charlie Parker book, I do a call and response that works quite well. With the Thelonious Monk book, I play the music and work with kids in a group to create a color wheel and show how the wheel can be mapped on a 12-tone chromatic scale. ~ Chris Raschka

Whenever I'm in Kansas City, I think back to all the jazz-blues greats who played the blues here - like Count Basie, Charlie Parker and Jay McShann. I watched those guys jam in different places and heard a lot of things - but I couldn't do what they did. They were too good. ~ B.B. King

Learn the changes, then forget them. ~ Charlie Parker

Don't be afraid, just play the music. ~ Charlie Parker

There was not a lot of rock n' roll in the house. Our parents didn't think it was very groovy, and I tend to agree with them. If you grew up with Charlie Parker, Bill Haley wasn't very hip. ~ Elvis Costello

I used to take musical instruments home from elementary school. There were some music teachers there - we all learned instruments. A lot of us got started in public schools. Charlie Parker and Bud Powell, for example. But now there are no more music teachers in public elementary schools. It's like (Senator) Moynihan said, 'benign neglect.' Just let it rot and fester. ~ Max Roach

ANDREW: But do you think there's a line? You know, where you discourage the next Charlie Parker from becoming Charlie Parker?
FLETCHER: No. Because the next Charlie Parker would never be discouraged. ~ Damien Chazelle

Charles Simic, when asked what he thought of Slam Poetry events: "They are fun, but they have as much to do with poetry as Elvis Presley had to do with Charlie Parker and Thelonious Monk". ~ Charles Simic

Mozart was born Mozart. Charlie Parker was born Charlie Parker. ~ Damien Chazelle

Black music has always known, and not been afraid to acknowledge just how high the stakes of Black thought are. To summarize the final soliloquy of Clay, the protagonist in LeRoi Jones' (aka Amiri Baraka's) play Dutchman. You'd better be glad Charlie Parker could play him some horn and Bessie Smith could sing, because if they didn't make music they might murder you. One would be hard pressed to find another group of people on this planet whose music is a surrogate for murder. One would be hard pressed to another group of people on this planet whose life is a proxy for death. ~ Frank B. Wilderson III

I wish - I wish instead of just recommending these books, I could set them down at your doorstep. The collected stories of John Updike, the second volume of T.C. Boyle's collected stories, and Stanley Crouch's book about the rise and times of our genius saxophone player Charlie Parker. These are deep books, books that you can get lost in. ~ Alan Cheuse

I listen to tons of hard rock and metal, like Iron Maiden, Motorhead, etc., but I also listen to Beethoven and Mozart, to Discharge and the Bad Brains, and to Charlie Parker and Duke Ellington. So I think there's merit to both the melodic punk and to the hardcore stuff too. ~ Dave Smalley

The thing in jazz that will get Bix Beiderbecke out of his bed at two o'clock in the morning, pick that cornet up and practice into the pillow for another two or three hours, or that would make Louis Armstrong travel around the world for fifty plus years non stop, just get up out of his sick bed, crawl up on the bandstand and play, the thing that would make Duke Ellington, the thing that would make Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, Mary Lou Williams, the thing that would make all of these people give their lives for this, and they did give their lives, is that it gives us a glimpse into what America is going to be when it becomes itself. And this music tells you that it will become itself. And when you get a taste of that, there's just nothing else you're going to taste that's as sweet. ~ Wynton Marsalis

You can't steal a gift. Bird [Charlie Parker] gave the world his music, and if you can hear it you can have it. ~ Dizzy Gillespie

Don't play the saxophone, let the saxophone play you. ~ Charlie Parker

'The Simpsons' is like Charlie Parker or Marlon Brando or Richard Pryor: Comedy couldn't go back to the way it was after 'The Simpsons' came out. ~ Eric Andre

You've got to learn your instrument. ~ Charlie Parker

Early mornings were given over to Bartok and Schoenberg. Midmorning I treated myself to the vocals of Billy Eckstine, Billie Holiday, Nat Cole, Louis Jordan and Bull Moose Jackson. A piroshki from the Russian delicatessen next door was lunch and then the giants of bebop flipped through the air. Charlie Parker and Max Roach, Dizzy Gillespie, Sarah Vaughan and Al Haig and Howard McGhee. Blues belonged to late afternoons and the singers' lyrics of lost love spoke to my solitude. ~ Maya Angelou

I don't play the traditional Charlie Parker songs. But I do improvise and I do create with my instrument, and that to me is jazz. But there are people who use the word 'jazz' only in a traditional sense, and they would be offended by that, and that's fine. ~ Kenny G

Dizzy, Duke and Charlie Parker were the greatest jazz legends of all time. ~ Milt Jackson

I can play all I know in eight bars. ~ Charlie Parker

Charlie Parker and Art Tatum to me were genius, and I'm right below that. I did, in my own way, do something different on the instrument, and that's the way I'd like to be remembered. ~ Buddy DeFranco

What does New York sound like? For me, the Charlie Parker at the Royal Roost recordings on the Savoy label are the total embodiment of the New York music experience. ~ Henry Rollins

Some musicians, man, you hear the note almost before they hit it. Jimi, Coltrane and Charlie Parker were like that ... ~ Carlos Santana

I'm very glad to have met you. I like your playing very much. ~ Charlie Parker

I don't remember that I copied any guitar player note-for-note. But I remember copying Charlie Parker note for note. ~ Joe Pass

Man, there's no boundary line to art! ~ Charlie Parker

He was Jimi Hendrix! He didn't sound like anybody else but himself. He was like Charlie Parker in his way of playing, he played well, he was a person that made waves. When you heard Jimi Hendrix you knew it was Jimi Hendrix, he introduced himself in his instrument ... You know, many radio stations play records and a lot of the times they don't call out the names who you just listened to, but when they play Jimi Hendrix, you don't have to tell me, [you know] it's Jimi Hendrix ... ~ B.B. King

Any musician who says he is playing better either on tea, the needle, or when he is juiced, is a plain, straight liar. When I get too much to drink, I can't even finger well, let alone play decent ideas ... You can miss the most important years of your life, the years of possible creation. ~ Charlie Parker

I look at melody as rhythm. ~ Charlie Parker

My grandfather was Bob Shad, one of those legendary jazz and blues producers - he worked with Charlie Parker and Dinah Washington, and he produced Janis Joplin's album [1967's Big Brother & the Holding Company]. He always owned small labels as well - he had a label called Mainstream Records in the 70s. ~ Judd Apatow

I don't care who likes it or buys it. Because if you use that criterion, Mozart would have never written Don Giovanni, Charlie Parker never would have played anything but swing music. There comes a point at which you have to stand up and say, this is what I have to do. ~ Branford Marsalis

A portrait of the young Charlie Parker with a degree of vivid detail never before approached ... [Kansas City Lightning is] a deft, virtuosic panorama of early jazz ... This is a mind-opening, and mind-filling, book. ~ Tom Piazza

When I first heard music, I thought it should be very clean, very precise. Something that people could understand, something that was beautiful. ~ Charlie Parker

Dizzy Gillespie recorded it with Charlie Parker in an
influential 1945 track (incorporating a much imitated intro - perhaps initially
intended as a parody of Rachmaninoff 's Prelude in C-Sharp Minor ~ Ted Gioia

Master your instrument. Master the music. And then forget all that bullshit and just play. ~ Charlie Parker

Nothing surpasses my performances with small bands, especially with Charlie Parker. A small band doesn't forestall creativity. ~ Dizzy Gillespie

Since I was seventeen I thought I might be a star. I'd think about all my heroes, Charlie Parker, Jimi Hendrix ... I had a romantic feeling about how these people became famous. ~ Jean-Michel Basquiat

Bop began with Jazz but one afternoon somewhere on a sidewalk maybe 1939, 1940, Dizzy Gillespie or Charlie Parker or Thelonious Monk was walking past a men's clothing store on 42nd Street or South Main in L.A. and from a loudspeaker they suddenly heard a wild impossible mistake in jazz that could only have been heard inside their own imaginary head, and that is a new art. Bop. ~ Jack Kerouac

I grew up with all these old jazz guys in the '70s in L.A., and they grew up idolizing Charlie Parker, Charles Mingus, Lester Young - all of these incredible musicians. ~ Flea

I realized by using the high notes of the chords as a melodic line, and by the right harmonic progression, I could play what I heard inside me. That's when I was born. ~ Charlie Parker

When I heard Charlie Parker, I knew that that was going to be the new wave, the new way to play jazz. From that point on, I was sold with ... the idea of bebop. ~ Buddy DeFranco

First you learn the instrument, then you learn the music, then you forget all that s**t and just play. ~ Charlie Parker

Bop is no love-child of jazz. ~ Charlie Parker

If you don't live it, it won't come out your horn. ~ Charlie Parker

I'd been getting bored with the stereotyped changes (harmonies) that were being used all the time ... 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. ~ Charlie Parker

You've got to learn your instrument. Then, you practice, practice, practice. And then, when you finally get up there on the bandstand, forget all that and just wail. ~ Charlie Parker

He died at forty-two.

I was there to collect his talent.

I was there at the hospital deathbed of my beloved Billie Holiday, just forty-four, her liver destroyed by drinking; I was there inside the hotel room of Charlie Parker, my singular jazz saxophonist, who died in his midthirties, but whose body was so ravaged by drugs the coroners thought he was sixty.

Tommy Dorsey, the bandleader, choked in his sleep when he was fifty-one, too deep in pills to awaken. Johnny Allen Hendrix (you called him Jimi) swallowed a handful of barbiturates and expired. He was twenty-seven.

It is not new, this idea that a purer art awaits you in a substance. But it is naive. I existed before the first grapes were fermented. Before the first whiskey was distilled. Be it opium or absinthe, marijuana or heroin, cocaine or ecstasy or whatever will follow, you may alter your state, but you will not alter this truth: I am Music. I am here inside you. Why would I hide behind a powder or a vapor?

Do you think me so petty? ~ Mitch Albom

Music is your own experience, your own thoughts, your wisdom. ~ Charlie Parker

Inside McClintic Sphere was swinging his ass off. His skin was hard, as if it were part of the skull: every vein and whisker on that head stood out sharp and clear under the green baby spot: you could see the twin lines running down from either side of his lower lip, etched in by the force of his embouchure, looking like extensions of his mustache.
He blew a hand-carved ivory alto saxophone with a 4 ½ reed and the sound was like nothing any of them had heard before. The usual divisions prevailed: collegians did not dig, and left after an average of 1 ½ sets. Personnel from other groups, either with a night off or taking a long break from somewhere crosstown or uptown, listened hard, trying to dig. 'I am still thinking,' they would say if you asked. People at the bar all looked as if they did dig in the sense of understand, approve of, empathize with: but this was probably only because people who prefer to stand at the bar have, universally, an inscrutable look…
…The group on the stand had no piano: it was bass, drums, McClintic and a boy he had found in the Ozarks who blew a natural horn in F. The drummer was a group man who avoided pyrotechnics, which may have irritated the college crowd. The bass was small and evil-looking and his eyes were yellow with pinpoints in the center. He talked to his instrument. It was taller than he was and didn't seem to be listening.
Horn and alto together favored sixths and minor fourths and when this happened it was l ~ Thomas Pynchon

Jazz should be recognized as music of the people, based in a lot of accents and melodies. What is jazz but music that people danced to? Jazz has the dynamic thing. I don't think you have to be playing only Charlie Parker licks on your horn or whatever the new version of that is. ~ Al Jarreau

It really was a whole generation who were listening to Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, Ella Fitzgerald, Sonny Rollins, James Moody, Fats Navarro and, a little bit later on, Mongo Santamaría and Chuck Berry, and these dozen or so guys gave them a voice. They led the way. They wrote what a whole generation wanted to read. The time was right and they seized the day by writing about their lives. They travelled, they got into scrapes, they got arrested, they got wasted … and they wrote about it.

Isn't that something? ~ Karl Wiggins

You have the right to kill me, but you do not have the right to judge me. Boom. That's the whole movie. That's life. ~ Charlie Sheen

Working on such a big film was amazing. I learned a lot. There weren't too many stunts, just some doubling. ~ Christopher Parker

It was a fun job but I'd never claim Busted was anything other than a pop band. ~ Charlie Simpson

While observing some people with their dogs, it is often a question of who is training whom. It is not uncommon to see an owner with their arms extended, holding on for dear life, while their dog runs wild. Unfortunately, I was becoming one of those owners. ~ Elizabeth Parker

I was always scared to meet people. Scared or maybe lazy. ~ Charlie Lovett

At that time, 73 and 74, I became aware that there were a number of us making instruments. Max Eastley was a good friend and he was making instruments, Paul Burwell and I were making instruments, Evan Parker was making instruments, and we knew Hugh Davies, who was a real pioneer of these amplified instruments. ~ David Toop

He'll be cross if he sees I have been crying. They don't like you to cry. He doesn't cry. I wish to God I could make him cry. I wish I could make him cry and tread the floor and feel his heart heavy and big and festering in him. I wish I could hurt him like hell.
He doesn't wish that about me. I don't think he even knows how he makes me feel. I wish he could know, without my telling him. They don't like you to tell them they've made you cry. They don't like you to tell them you're unhappy because of them. If you do, they think you're possessive and exacting. And then they hate you. They hate you whenever you say anything you really think. You always have to keep playing little games. Oh, I thought we didn't have to; I thought this was so big I could say whatever I meant. I guess you can't, ever. I guess there isn't ever anything big enough for that. ~ Dorothy Parker

the reality we belong to, the reality we long to know, extends far beyond human beings interacting with one another. ~ Parker J. Palmer

I think that, every time you saw the word EBITDA, you should substitute the word "bullshit" earnings. ~ Charlie Munger

Half?" Ceony asked. "How do you have half of an apprentice? ~ Charlie N. Holmberg

A squirrel is just a rat with a cuter outfit! ~ Sarah Jessica Parker

Most people I know are not hard-core religious people. They are what I would call 'lightly religious.' So I don't buy the notion that we can't laugh about religion in America. ~ Trey Parker

After I hung up I felt completed, the way I always did after talking to her, like a plant that had been watered. ~ Robert B. Parker

And I just want to work with good directors and good people. ~ Charlie Hunnam

As with all dead things, holding onto it won't keep it alive or change the fact that it's useful time has come and gone. Hanging onto dead stuff has a higher psychic cost than most of us realize; in time, dead stuff does what trash and dead things do – it stinks ~ Charlie Gilkey

If you looked for things to make you feel hurt and wretched and unnecessary, you were certain to find them ... ~ Dorothy Parker

Every human can be a wizard. ~ Charlie Jane Anders

One spirit remained unaware of his presence, staring at Miss Parker with such longing that he reluctantly decided to let it stay. The spirit, a hollow-eyed girl with ringlets and clothing from long past, reached toward Percy, wishing to touch her. Alexi understood. When left to her own devices, Miss Parker was neither shy nor awkward; she was radiant. ~ Leanna Renee Hieber

When live entertainment was not available, women delivered the film and ran the projectors for the hundreds of movies that were shown to the soldiers. Frances witnessed the popularity of movies time after time; they were shown in warehouses, airplane hangars, on battered portable screens, or projected against the wall of a building in the village square where townsfolk crammed in around the soldiers. "Charlie and Doug" were the two favorites, but anything showing familiar sights from home - the Statue of Liberty, a Chicago department store, or San Francisco's Golden Gate - created a sensation and bolstered morale. Toward the end of the war German propaganda films left behind by the retreating army became a prime attraction.30 Frances traveled to and from Paris for a few days at a time, usually arriving on or near the front after a battle to witness doctors and nurses doing what they could for the injured in the shattered villages and burying the dead. She was struck by how thoroughly exhausted the Europeans were after four devastating years of war. ~ Cari Beauchamp

People tell me not to do a soap, but it was a great learning experience because I became familiar with the technical aspects of the business. Besides, look who came out of soaps - Julianne Moore, Demi Moore, Tommy Lee Jones, Parker Posey, Kathleen Turner. All amazing people. ~ Sarah Michelle Gellar

I love London. I love the U.K., but if I was going to live anywhere else on Earth, it would be Australia. ~ Tom Parker Bowles

I had achieved the most important things in my life when I married Joan and had the sons. Given the choice between Joan and the boys, and being a writer, I world give up being a writer without a blink. ~ Robert B. Parker

And she felt like they, the two of them, right here, right now, could make something that defied tragedy. ~ Charlie Jane Anders

Look at The King's Speech. For one thing, you can look at it: no lens caps left on there. What's more, the story is simple. The world's most important man can't speak properly, so he gets taught to speak properly. But then disaster strikes! It looks like he might not be able to speak properly after all. Finally, in a triumphant climax, he speaks properly. It's a feelgood ending for everybody, apart from the 450,000 Britons killed in the war he just announced on the radio. ~ Charlie Brooker

Her mind lives tidily, apart from cold and noise and pain. And bolts the door against her heart, out wailing in the rain. ~ Dorothy Parker

Charlie and Daniel think money and happiness are not related. They don't know what poor is. They don't know that poverty is a sharp knife carving away at you. They don't know what it does to a body. To a mind. ~ Nicola Yoon

Colombians have been dealing with cocaine since your ancestors were running around Ireland with their bodies painted blue," Kingsley ~ Robert B. Parker

Hawk could track a salmon to its spawning bed without getting wet. But ~ Robert B. Parker

This is Jai." She bobbed a head over her left shoulder. "And Charlie." Head bob over her right shoulder. "But today you can call them Ass and Hat. ~ Samantha Young

One of the great changes wrought by the increased public awareness of Alzheimer's - and thank you, Nancy Reagan, you wonderful tough old dame, you - is that people in the early stages of the disease are now speaking out while they still have the capacity to do so. ~ Charlie Pierce

Nell glanced down at her brother and a swell of love lifted her heart. Always her champion.
"Sounds like you think she talks to them, Seth."
Seth shrugged. "She does. Not with words exactly. I can't explain it." He repositioned his hat. "Don't matter how she does it; I'm just glad she can."
Turning back to the horses, Nell let go her breath and flexed her stiff shoulders. All they had to do now was set up camp and begin work tomorrow. Anticipation thrummed inside her chest, not only because of the horses but because of Charlie and the way she felt him looking at her right now. With a light in his eyes that said he was more than a little curious about what she'd reveal next. ~ Caroline Fyffe

Never throw mud. You may miss the mark, and you'll have dirty hands. ~ Joseph Parker

When you leave a club like Liverpool, you have to go somewhere you'll feel comfortable and progress as a player. To come to Stoke was an easy decision. ~ Charlie Adam

Delicate fingers
Reach for me,
Eagerly
Awaiting
My embrace.
I'll hold you
Night and day,
Giving you and
Only you my
Fragile heart.
You and I become
One
our bodies
United in love. ~ Madison Parker

Honesty means nothing until you are tested under circumstances where you are sure you could get away with dishonesty. ~ Dorothy Parker

I mean if it wasn't for The Beatles, none of this, none of the music we listen to would even exist. They're my favourite band of all time. ~ Charlie Benante

The American dream is more about opportunity than anything else. ~ Nate Parker

I showed my magic to a civilian one time, and it got ugly. ~ Charlie Jane Anders

Back in I want to say 2011, Taylor Swift was on her 'Speak Now' tour. She was kind enough to bring me out as one of the openers on that tour. Between her and Miranda Lambert, who also helped me out that year, I got a pretty non-typical first tour as a fellow artist. ~ Charlie Worsham

It is entirely possible that Limbaugh himself never needed contraception in college, but virtue in the absence of opportunity is hardly a moral triumph. ~ Kathleen Parker