Kansas City Lightning

by Stanley Crouch

  Young returned to the Southwest, to Andy Kirk’s band and then back to Basie’s, dejected but still in possession of his individuality, uncompromised and ever ready to speak and swing his piece in his own way. He quickly became the lead demon among the Kansas City musicians, one of the warriors who lay in wait for traveling jazzmen to appear in town expecting to get through a jam session without losing slices of scalp and butt to the locals. Young’s position was determined by the steadiness of his imagination. The longer he played, the better he sounded. His ideas didn’t stop. They were fresh and aesthetically waterproof. Lester Young was not a man successfully pissed on; he’d cut your head for trying.

  As the mystery of Young’s style began to reveal itself to Charlie Parker, he began to conceive a new set of goals for himself. Not only would he have to get command of harmony and tempo, he would also have to reach for the level of fluid expertise Young exhibited night after night, jam session after jam session. Charlie couldn’t quite have broken through the code of Young’s playing just by listening to him on bandstands—he would certainly have known the tenor player’s records with Count Basie—but he would have recognized the older player’s taste for long melodic lines, the linear inventions that gave lyric quality to his playing. The shape of Lester Young’s playing would have a formative effect on Charlie Parker’s work.

  In its own swinging way, Young’s style was a compelling saxophone variation on the legendary improvisations of Louis Armstrong, recordings Parker had been hearing coming out of windows all over his neighborhood since childhood. Those Armstrong records formed an accumulative epic of the imagination; musicians thrived on their ideas, lifting them for their own improvised features, slipping phrases into their arrangements, and emulating their rhythms in order to arrive at the nub of swing.

  Eddie Barefield, who worked with Young as part of a two-saxophone band, recalled how profoundly those three-minute recordings could inspire even the most idiosyncratic musicians. Barefield and Young traveled around the Midwest playing dances, with one of them improvising while the other sat nearby, keeping time and stomping out the rhythm. Many have noted how much Lester Young absorbed from Bix Beiderbecke and Frankie Trumbauer, but Barefield remembered that something else was just as important to his partner: Young had learned the Armstrong improvisations from the Hot Five and Hot Seven recordings of the twenties, and he was also taken by the melodic majesty of the records Armstrong made in the 1930s, when he started expanding the jazz repertoire by appropriating Broadway tunes. Charlie Parker may not have recognized Young’s connection to Armstrong’s work, but he certainly noticed the rhythmic fluidity of Young’s tenor.

  After a Halloween dance in 1936, Count Basie and his band left Kansas City on a series of jobs that would lead them, permanently, to New York. Their time as regulars in the sin-for-sale kingdom of Pendergast was over. It was a turning point for Charlie Parker: no longer could the young saxophonist listen to his idol on the bandstand at the Reno Club or in those relaxed but electric after-hours jam sessions, picking up a scrap of music here, a scrap of music there. He would never have the moment of direct communion that fellow saxophonist Frank Wess did a few years later in Washington, DC, when he and a buddy went to Young’s hotel to pay their respects—and were called up to his room, where the tenor saxophonist greeted them in his long underwear, hat atop his head, cigarette case filled with reefers, and his horn out. As the young musicians sat rapt before him, Lester Young shared a lifetime’s worth of lessons: alternate fingerings, breathing techniques, advice on tone production, the great man a light-skinned oracle right before them.

  No, none of that for young Charlie. His unrequited apprenticeship ended when Basie took Pres off to New York City. He would have to find another mentor.

  7

  Around this time, Charlie Parker secured a place in another Kansas City group. Trumpeter Clarence Davis—who would later run an after-hours situation in his home, complete with whiskey and gambling—was a running buddy of his at the time. “When I first heard Charlie Parker, we were both working in a WPA band,” he recalled. “He had got a union card through old man Simpson, Robert Simpson’s father, who also played the trombone.” For Charlie and Clarence, any gig was welcome. “But since it was a government band, the money would stop and go. They’d have a contract for so much time, and you played, then you’d be off. It was unpredictable.”

  In the fall of 1936, Charlie and Clarence headed east from Kansas City with the band to play at a club called Musser’s Ozark Tavern, part of a resort complex owned by Clarence Musser, whom Davis called “one of Pendergast’s henchmen.” The tavern was “a drive-in thing,” he recalled. “They had little castles where you go to fuck, and [they had] a tavern or something in the middle of it.”

  The band was slated to play Thanksgiving, and it was snowing. “The car that Charlie Parker was riding in was behind us,” Davis recalled. “I was riding with Musser in a Cadillac, and the bass fiddle player had a little old Chevrolet following us. We hit a little spot of ice, and the car slid like crazy. I looked back and I said, ‘I sure hope they don’t put on brakes.’ Just as I said that, the car hit that ice and did a tumbling thing. That car rolled over like a toy and rolled up an embankment.”

  It was a bad accident. “Charlie Parker broke his ribs and broke his saxophone up. Another guy, Ernest Daniels, he busted his drums all up and broke his ribs.” But the worst of it was reserved for the bass player and bandleader, George Wilkerson. “That guy that owned the bass fiddle, the neck was laying across his head; he was asleep. Just broke his neck and killed him.”

  The mess was cleaned up, courtesy of the Kansas City machine. “Old man Musser gave us all a couple of hundred dollars, paid for this guy’s burial, paid for his car, give his wife a car, and made the insurance company give everybody two or three hundred dollars, too. . . . Pendergast was in power then, and they could bend things the way they wanted them bent. It was a lot of money to us, but wasn’t nothing to them.”

  Rebecca heard about the accident when the hospital called, and soon Charlie was home again with his ribs taped up. That was when he started sleeping with her again upstairs. He sat up at home all the time, smoking some stuff she found in a bag. Smelled like burnt bacon. Rebecca didn’t want none of that. He could have it. But he was back, and they were in love . . . and as soon as he got better—thanks to the attentions she and Addie and Marie and Hattie Lee were lavishing upon him—he was back up and out the door, off to play that music.

  Charlie and Clarence Davis worked Ozarks jobs all winter. “We had a nice little swing band,” Davis recalled. “Nothing but a small combination. Me on trumpet, Charlie, Ernest Daniels, a woman piano player who was an older person, and a bass player. When we come back after the accident, Musser bought us a big old seven-passenger car to go back and forth from Kansas City to Eldon, Missouri, on the weekends, which is when we worked. We played from eight o’clock to about eleven or twelve, dependent on how many people were there.

  “We had everything we wanted down there, beds to sleep in, a stove, plenty of food. We didn’t want for nothing. We slept in one room, in bunks. The woman played piano slept in a room by herself.” Whatever Charlie was smoking back at home with Rebecca, in the Ozarks he seemed to be living clean. “Charlie couldn’t have been on that stuff then because there wasn’t no way he could get it. That had to be later, after we come back from there.” Even to a friend like Clarence Davis, he was something of a cipher. “Charlie was very quiet, didn’t have nothing to say at no time, unless you were very close to him. He was never talkative or nothing. Only time he talked was when he picked up his horn.”

  IT WAS EARLY afternoon on Monday, April 6, 1937, and the sun was still high in the sky of Kansas City, Missouri. Charlie Parker’s new alto saxophone was in the soft blue terrycloth drawstring bag, downstairs on the piano bench in the parlor, next to his mother’s room, where he always left it. In a few hours he would be walking up the street to get a ride back to the Ozarks, w
here he worked from Monday through Friday night. But at that moment Charlie Parker was climbing the stairs to see his wife of nine months. She was slim, golden and beautiful, with long, heavy brown hair, her still-adolescent but maturing features enriched by a heritage that was part British, part Indian, and part American Negro.

  He opened the door to their room, which contained a big brass bed, a light oak dresser against the right wall, and an adjustable mirror with tie racks on either side. In the center of the room was a potbellied stove, small but strong enough to heat the room. When it was winter, the head of the bed was pointed south, toward the stove, but in spring, summer, and fall it was pointed north. Rebecca, whom he also called Suggie, was lying on the bed and looking out the window at the sun, which was still heating the pleasant breezes of April. He crossed the room and lay his body next to hers, but with his head at the foot of the bed.

  “Suggie?”

  “Yes, Charlie.”

  “You know all of the men I work with have children. I’m the only one who doesn’t have children. Give me a son.”

  “Well, I haven’t had any yet. Maybe we can’t have any children.”

  “Ma knows. Ma knows how,” he said, and left the room.

  He returned shortly, holding a white-capped bottle with an orange label. It was Lydia E. Pinkham’s Vegetable Compound. “A baby in every bottle,” as the old people said. When the cap was removed, a strong smell, like that of today’s vitamins, came forth. Now they were sitting next to each other on the bed with their legs crossed.

  “We both have to drink this, Suggie. You want some first?”

  “No, you drink it first. Then I will.”

  He took a swig, winched, and passed it to her. Now that he had done it, she did the same, believing it was safe. After two swigs apiece, they placed the brown bottle with the orange label on the small night table next to the lamp. They then made love, still something of a new experience for the couple of nine months.

  Later that evening, Charlie got up. He put on his dark, tailor-made J. B. Simpson’s suit and suspenders, which gave him the look of a man much older than sixteen, and pushed his bad feet, with their high arches, into some slip-on shoes, his gaiters. When Rebecca woke up a few minutes later, she looked out the window and saw her husband hunched over, horn under his arm, walking with his feet splayed out, digging into the pavement for all he was worth, back for five more nights in the Ozarks.

  In the beginning of May, when the Musser’s gig was over, Rebecca had something to tell her husband.

  “Charlie?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I guess you’re going to have a son.”

  “What? You mean a baby?” he asked, shocked as a sleeping pet doused with ice water.

  “You wanted a son. I guess we’re going to have a son. It’s my time of the month, and I haven’t seen anything.”

  With that, the young saxophonist changed. The mantle of adulthood he’d been seeking to conjure through his clothing and manner got under his skin a bit when he heard he was going to be a father. Though he’d been known to lay about the house, aimless—especially in a month like May, when it often rained—now Charlie started to hit the street, looking for gigs in earnest. No longer did he seem content to float along, playing the saxophone and the part of Addie Parker’s spoiled only son. Now he meant to shoulder his responsibilities, or appeared to.

  In June, two months pregnant, Rebecca Parker got up and went downstairs to the parlor. She opened the sliding doors and entered, passing the big potbellied stove, the mahogany player piano, the sliding doors that led to Addie Parker’s room. Her eye took in the old-fashioned Victrola standing in the right corner, and the oversize mantel where Parkey kept her collection of knickknacks. As Rebecca stood before the picture window, she peered through the lace curtain, watching people passing on the street. Then a cab rolled up. In the backseat were three people: two men and a woman between them. One of the men was Charlie Parker, who leaned over and kissed the woman before getting out and walking up to the door.

  When he entered the parlor with his horn, Charlie was surprised to see his wife.

  “Hello, Rebeck.”

  “Charlie, who was that woman I saw you kissing?”

  “I wasn’t kissing any woman.”

  “Charlie, I was looking out this window and I saw you. Who was she?”

  “Rebeck, I said I wasn’t kissing any woman.”

  “Charlie, I don’t care. I told you I saw you kissing her.”

  He slapped Rebecca.

  “I still say you was kissing a girl.” Her cheek began to redden from the blow. Charlie picked up a pan of cool water that had been standing overnight and started patting it on his wife’s face.

  “Suggie, I’m so sorry,” he said, going to his knees. “Please forgive me.”

  Seated now, Rebecca said, “I still don’t care. Who was the girl, Charlie?”

  Charlie left the parlor and went down the hall to the kitchen, looking for something to eat. Nothing more was said.

  The following month, as Charlie was getting ready to go out one night, Rebecca was downstairs talking to Parkey when she heard her husband’s voice.

  “Suggie, come upstairs.”

  When she went into their room, all the shades had been pulled down. Charlie, who hated to cross the upstairs hall to bathe, was standing next to the tin tub he used to wash up.

  “Yes, Charlie?”

  “Go over there and sit on the bed.”

  She had no idea what Charlie was doing—was he going to give her a gift? Some kind of surprise? On the windowsill, there was a small mirror Charlie used to pick ingrown hairs from his face. Charlie was out of her line of sight, but when she looked in the mirror, she saw him put one foot up on a chair, remove one of the ties with the tight, small knots from the rack on the oak dresser, put it around his arm, and pull it tight. Then he removed a hypodermic needle from the dresser and pushed it into the crook of his arm. When Rebecca saw the blood rush up into the needle, she screamed and ran over to him.

  “Charlie, what are you doing?”

  He smiled, removed the needle, wiped the blood from his arm, loosened the loop, and put the tie on. Then he took his coat from the closet, looked at his wife, and kissed her on the forehead. “Suggie, I’ll be seeing you,” he said, then went downstairs, got his saxophone, and was gone.

  After he left, Rebecca opened the dresser drawer and found a kit with a hypodermic needle, a twisted piece of rubber, a spoon, and a small, white packet. She took it downstairs to Parkey, telling her what she’d seen and asking her if she understood it. Parkey said nothing, merely looked inside the kit and took it into her room.

  The next morning, when Charlie returned, he was met by his wife and mother in the parlor.

  “Charlie,” Addie Parker said to her son, “I’d rather see you dead than use that stuff.”

  Charlie looked at Rebecca, set his saxophone on the piano bench, left the parlor, and went to the kitchen.

  Shortly afterward, Rebecca began to notice a change in Charlie. When he got home, a shuffle of companions would come into the house and head to his room with him. When he emerged to leave for the evening, he would be aloof, distant, descending the stairs as if he owned the world, speaking to no one in the family and listening to no one. Before too long, Rebecca noticed that things were starting to go missing. All of Rebecca’s good clothes disappeared, suit by suit, then her rings. Charlie started acting frantic, and as his own tailor-made suits disappeared, he began looking more and more haggard. He was in the streets almost all the time and seemed on the verge of losing his mind—nervous, irritable, and always preoccupied. Rebecca wouldn’t see him or hear from him for three days; then he would return, eat like a horse, and sleep as if dead for twenty-four full hours. One morning he came to his wife.

  “Suggie,” he said.

  “Yes,” she answered, looking at him and feeling a sorrow she had never felt. This wasn’t her Charlie, this man who looked as if he’d slept in
the street, who’d dissolved into a nightlife she knew nothing of and was now aging before her eyes; he was as much a ragged stranger as he was her husband of nearly a year.

  “Why don’t you get an abortion?”

  “No.”

  Charlie said nothing else, but that evening he borrowed Parkey’s Model T Ford and took Rebecca to the movies. For that evening, at least, he seemed more like the old Charlie. He could still be fun. Maybe all this trouble would pass. She prayed it would.

  One evening in the middle of August, after Charlie had left, Rebecca was cleaning up their room. While she was making up the bed, she found an envelope addressed to Charlie under the pillow. The letter had already been opened, and she sat down to read it.

  It was a love note from a woman named Geraldine, and it detailed her physical experience with Charlie Parker in no uncertain terms. The letter ended with these words: “Rebecca sure is a very lucky girl. I wish I could be in her shoes.” Had she been knocked down with a bat, it might have hurt less.

  She turned the letter over and found another page behind it.

  Geraldine

  Nobody will ever walk in Rebecca’s shoes.

  Charlie

  Charlie’s wife put everything back under the pillow where she’d found it. Knowing the condition Charlie was in, she decided not to cross him, not to ask him about it. But why would he leave letters like that under the pillow? Was he toying with her? Was it his way of apologizing for kissing another woman right outside the house? She didn’t know. There was so much she didn’t know about Charlie. Even Parkey, who used to have so much influence on her boy, couldn’t get him to stop what he was doing. And Parkey was starting to seem tired, as if she was giving up trying to win back the control she’d had over her son for so many years. Out there in the Kansas City night, Charlie Parker was doing whatever the hell he wanted to do.