Charlie Parker and Bob Dylan Essay Example

Charlie Parker (1920-1955)

Charles Christopher Parker Jr. was born on August 29, 1920, in Kansas City. He was a child of two cultures as his father was African American while his mother was a Native American. His father worked as a stage entertainer. In 1927, the family of three decided to move from Kansas to Missouri. Missouri in the 1920s was teeming with predominantly African-American music styles. In Missouri, Charlie Parker was surrounded by jazz, gospel and blues musicians in a welcoming and homely community.

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From the time he was around seven he discovered that he was interested in music. He used the opportunity in public schools to learn to play musical instruments. When he was eleven or twelve, his father abandoned him, and his mother and the young Charlie was distraught. To help cheer him up, his mother bought for him a saxophone and Charlie started playing more and more (Young 267). The more he played the sax, the better and more refined he became at it. He joined the school band and played the baritone horn. When he was just fifteen years old, Charlie Parker started frequenting clubs, playing with local bands. In 1935, he dropped out of school completely to focus on his budding music career. At that time he was playing the alto saxophone.

Between 1935 and 1939, Charlie Parker gained a reputation for being a teenage sensation while playing in various nightclubs in Missouri. In 1937, he shared the same stage with Buster Professor Smith when they came around playing in Missouri clubs. In 1938, Charlie Parker spread his wings farther when he got the opportunity to tour Chicago and New York with pianist Jay McShann. Charlie Parker stayed in New York the whole of 1939, washing dishes in a local restaurant to pay the bills. He still played the sax but more to unwind and impress curious people. He was introduced to guitarist Fleet Biddy in 1940, and while playing together, the twenty-year-old Charlie Parker started experimenting with a new method of playing the sax which involved higher notes for the melody of the chord and subsequent changes to smooth the sound (Dennis 966). His followers and fellow musicians knew him fondly as "The Bird" In 1940 he rejoined McShann, recording his first record. In 1942, Dizzy Gelaspie became impressed with Charlie Parker's singular playing style while playing in Harlem.

1945 was the year that Charlie Parker matured as a musician. He formed his band and toured Hollywood with Gelaspie from November to December, performing in nightclubs. Together they pioneered the bebop sound although it took time before mainstream media accepted it. Charlie Parker's musical journey is the epitome of the American dream. He dropped out of school and still managed to write his name in the history books with the invention of the bebop sound of Jazz music. "The Bird" inspired many musicians of the 1940s and 1950s such as Miles Davis, Max Roach and Thelonius Monk (Young 273).

Bob Dylan

Award-winning folk musician, painter and Nobel Prize winner Bob Dylan is no stranger to fame, with a career spanning over five decades now. Bob Dylan has managed to reinvent himself time and time again while remaining one of the few musicians still relevant and conscious (Seeger 1023). Robert Allan Zimmerman was born on May 24, 1941, in Duluth Minnesota, the first-born of two boys. In 1959, he graduated from Hibbing High School. In High School, Robert was inspired by the likes of Elvis Presley and Little Richard who he imitated piano playing. In 1960, after dropping out of his alma mater The University of Minnesota, he moved to New York. It was at the university that he started performing as Bob Dylan.

In the early 1960s, Bob Dylan started becoming synonymous with folk music, largely because of his mentor Woody Guthrie. While Guthrie was hospitalized in New York, Dylan wrote and recorded a tribute song to his idol called "Song to Woody." He was signed by the record label Columbia Records in 1961. That same year he officially changed his surname to Dylan. The following year he released his first album, the eponymously titled "Bob Dylan." Most of the songs were renditions and covers of traditional folk songs and blues with only two original songs. However, critics and audiences were enamored by his rough mellow singing voice.

In 1963, Bob Dylan became identifiable with the protest movement of the 1960s where Americans, mostly led by musicians had feelings of apathy for the Vietnam War, discrimination of Americans among other issues (Seeger 1033). Bob Dylan composed and recorded original songs and sung poetically with a prowess few could master. His third album "The Times They Are A-Changing" had the sound of protest all over it. To top it off he dated popular protest musician Joan Baez from 1963 to 1965 (Marshall 21). His songs were used in protest meetings, go-slows, and strikes in the 1960s. Hence, Bob Dylan intentionally or not fuelled a big part of the political protest movement.

In 1965, Bob Dylan started using the electric guitar backed with acoustics, and as a result, he lost some of his fans in the album "Bringing All Back Home." The album was more personal than political, and Dylan gained new fans. He continued mashing literature and music together especially with "Blonde on Blonde" in 1966. In 2016, Bob Dylan received the Nobel Prize in Literature, a feat no other musician can claim to have accomplished for singing poetic songs grounded in American folklore.

Works Cited

Dennis, Noel. "The ubiquitous jazz metaphor: thoughts from a jazz musician and management educator." Marketing Intelligence & Planning 33.7 (2015): 966-971.

Marshall, Lee. "Bob Dylan: Newport Folk Festival, July 25, 1965, 1." Performance and popular music. Routledge, 2017. 16-27.

Seeger, Anthony. "Music of Struggle and Protest in the 20th Century." Springer Handbook of Systematic Musicology. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, 2018. 1029-1042.

Young, Horace Alexander. "Celebrating Bird: The Triumph of Charlie Parker." The Western Journal of Black Studies 39.3 (2015): 264-273