It's Black History Month in HL brehs....

[Julius Skrrvin]

Not black but this shyt had me

 

[2Quik4UHoes]

Not black but this shyt had me

 

[2Quik4UHoes]

 

[2Quik4UHoes]

I said I'd do this when I started this thread, figured at the halfway point I'd drop Martin Delany.

Martin Delany

Martin R. Delany
BornMay 6, 1812
Charles Town, Virginia, United States
Died24 January 1885 (aged 72)
Wilberforce, Ohio

Martin Robison Delany (May 6, 1812 – January 24, 1885) was an African-American abolitionist, journalist, physician, and writer, arguably the first proponent of black nationalism; Martin Delany is considered to be the grandfather of Black nationalism. He was also one of the first three blacks admitted to Harvard Medical School. Trained as an assistant and a physician, he treated patients during the cholera epidemics of 1833 and 1854 in Pittsburgh, when many doctors and residents fled the city. Active in recruiting blacks for the United States Colored Troops, he was commissioned as a major, the first African-American field officer in the United States Army during the American Civil War.
After the Civil War, he worked for the Freedmen's Bureau in the South, settling in South Carolina, where he became politically active. He ran unsuccessfully for Lieutenant Governor and was appointed a Trial Judge. Later he switched his party loyalty and worked for the campaign of Democrat Wade Hampton III, who won the 1876 election for governor.

Early life and education
Delany was born free in Charles Town, West Virginia (then part of Virginia, a slave state) to Pati and Samuel Delaney. Although his father Samuel was enslaved, his mother was a free woman, and Martin took her status under slave law. Both sets of Martin Delany's grandparents were African.

Delaney's paternal grandparents were of Gola ethnicity (from modern-day Liberia), taken captive during warfare and brought as slaves to the Virginia colony. Family oral history said that the grandfather was a chieftain, escaped to Canada for a period, and died resisting slavery abuses.

Pati's parents were born in the Niger Valley, west Africa, and were of Mandinka ethnicity. Her father was said to have been a prince named Shango, captured with his betrothed Graci and brought to America as slaves. After some time, they were given their freedom in Virginia, perhaps based on their noble birth. Shango returned to Africa. Graci stayed in America with their only daughter Pati. When Delany was just a few years old, attempts were made to enslave him and a sibling. Their mother Pati carried her two youngest children 20 miles to the courthouse in Winchester to argue successfully for her family's freedom based on her own free birth.

As he was growing up, Delany and his siblings learned to read and write using The New York Primer and Spelling Book, given to them by a peddler. Virginia prohibited education of black people. When the book was discovered in September 1822, Pati took her children out of Virginia to Chambersburg in the free state of Pennsylvania to ensure their continued freedom. They had to leave their father Samuel, but a year later he bought his freedom and rejoined the family in Chambersburg.

In Chambersburg, the young Delany continued learning. Occasionally he left school to work when his family could not afford for his education to continue. In 1831, at the age of 19, he journeyed west to the growing city of Pittsburgh, where he became a barber and laborer. Having heard stories about his parents' ancestors, he wanted to visit Africa, which he considered his spiritual home.

 

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Marriage and family
While living in Pittsburgh, in 1843 Delany met and married Catherine A. Richards. She was the daughter of a successful food provisioner, said to be one of the wealthiest families in the city. The couple had eleven children, seven of whom survived into adulthood. The parents stressed education and some of their children graduated from college.

Pittsburgh
Delany became a student of Rev. Lewis Woodson of the Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church on Wylie Avenue. Shortly after, he began attending Jefferson College, where he was taught classics, Latin and Greek by Molliston M. Clark.

During the national cholera epidemic in 1833, Delany became apprenticed to Dr. Andrew N. McDowell, where he learned contemporary techniques of fire cupping and leeching, then considered the primary techniques to treat disease. He continued to study medicine under the mentorship of Dr. McDowell and other abolitionist doctors, such as Dr. F. Julius LeMoyne and Dr. Joseph P. Gazzam of Pittsburgh.

Delany became more active in political matters. In 1835 he attended his first National Negro Convention, held in Philadelphia since 1831. He was inspired to conceive a plan to set up a 'Black Israel' on the east coast of Africa. He also became involved in the temperance movement and organizations caring for fugitive slaves who had escaped to Pennsylvania, a free state.

While in Pittsburgh, Delany began writing on public issues. In 1843 he began publishing The Mystery, a black-controlled newspaper. His articles and other writings were often reprinted in other venues, such as in abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison's The Liberator. A eulogy which Delany delivered for Rev. Fayette Davis in 1847 was widely redistributed. His activities brought controversy in 1846, when he was sued for libel by "Fiddler" Johnson, a black man he accused in The Mystery of being a slave catcher. Delany was convicted and fined $650 — a huge amount at the time. His white supporters in the newspaper business paid the fine for him.

While Frederick Douglass and William Lloyd Garrison were in Pittsburgh in 1847 on an anti-slavery tour, they met with Delany. Together the men conceived the newspaper that became the North Star. It was first published later that year in Rochester, New York. The business was handled by Douglass, while Delany traveled to lecture, report, and obtain subscriptions. During these travels, he was frequently confronted by mobs opposing his views, sometimes violently.

In July 1848 Delany reported in the North Star that U.S District Court Justice John McLean had instructed the jury in the Crosswait trial to consider it a punishable offense for a citizen to thwart white persons' trying to "repossess" an alleged runaway slave. His coverage influenced abolitionist Salmon P. Chase to lead a successful drive to remove McLean as a candidate of the Free Soil Party for the Presidency later that summer.

Medicine and nationalism
While living in Pittsburgh, Delany studied the basics of medicine under doctors and maintained his own cupping and leeching practice. In 1849 he began to study more seriously to prepare to apply to medical school. In 1850 he failed to be accepted to several institutions before being accepted to Harvard Medical School, after presenting letters of support from seventeen physicians. He was one of the first three black men to be admitted there.

The month after his arrival, however, a group of white students wrote to the faculty, complaining that "the admission of blacks to the medical lectures highly detrimental to the interests, and welfare of the Institution of which we are members." They stated they had "no objection to the education and elevation of blacks but do decidedly remonstrate against their presence in College with us." Within three weeks, Delany and his two fellow black students, Daniel Laing, Jr. and Isaac H. Snowden, were dismissed, despite dissenting opinion among students and staff at the medical school. Furious, Delany returned to Pittsburgh.

He became convinced that the white ruling class would not allow deserving persons of color to become leaders in society, and his opinions became more extreme. His book, The Condition, Elevation, Emigration, and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States, Politically Considered (1852) argued that blacks had no future in the United States. He suggested they should leave and found a new nation elsewhere, perhaps in the West Indies or South America.

More moderate abolitionists were alienated by his position, and they resented his criticism of those who failed to hire colored men in their own businesses. Delany also criticized racial segregation among Freemasons, a fraternal organization.

As a response to Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, in 1859 and 1862, Delany published parts of Blake: Or The Huts of America in serialized form. His novel portrayed an insurrectionist's travels through slave communities. He believed that Stowe had portrayed slaves as too passive, although he praised her highlighting the cruelty of Southern slave owners. Modern scholars have praised Delany's novel as an accurate interpretation of black culture. The first half of Part One was serialized in The Anglo-African Magazine, January to July 1859. The rest of Part One was included in serial form in the Weekly Anglo African Magazine from 1861-1862. This was the first novel by a black man to be published in the United States.

Delany worked for a brief period as principal of a colored school before going into practice as a physician. During another cholera outbreak in 1854, most doctors abandoned the city, as did many residents who could leave, as no one knew how the disease was caused nor how to control the epidemic. With a small group of nurses, Delany remained and cared for the victims.

In August 1854 Delany led the National Emigration Convention in Cleveland, Ohio. Delany advanced his emigrationist argument in his manifesto "Political Destiny of the Colored Race on the American Continent". The convention approved a resolution stating, "[A]s men and equals, we demand every political right, privilege and position to which the whites are eligible in the United States, and we will either attain to these, or accept nothing." There were a significant number of women attendees who also voted for the resolution, considered the foundation of black nationalism.

 

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Travels overseas
In May 1859 Delany sailed from New York for Liberia, to investigate the possibility of a new black nation in the region. He traveled in the region for nine months. He signed an agreement with eight chiefs in the Abeokuta region that would permit settlers to live on "unused land" in return for using their skills for the community's good. It is a question whether Delany and the chiefs shared the same concepts of land use. The treaty was later dissolved due to warfare in the region, opposition by white missionaries, and the advent of the American Civil War.

In April 1860 Delany left Liberia for England, where he was honored by the International Statistical Congress. One American delegate walked out in protest. At the end of 1860, Delany returned to the United States. The next year, he began planning settlement of Abeokuta. He gathered a group of potential settlers and funding. When Delany decided to remain in the United States to work for emancipation of slaves, the pioneer plans fell apart.

The Army


Martin R. Delany was the only black officer who received the rank of major during the Civil War.
In 1863 after Abraham Lincoln had called for a military draft, Delany began recruiting black men for the Union Army. His efforts in Rhode Island,Connecticut, and later Ohio raised thousands of enlistees, many of whom joined the newly formed United States Colored Troops. He wrote to the Secretary of War, Edwin M. Stanton, requesting that he make efforts "to command all of the effective black men as Agents of the United States," but the request was ignored.

In early 1865 Delany was granted an audience with Lincoln. He proposed a corps of black men led by black officers who could serve to win over Southern blacks. Although a similar appeal by Frederick Douglass had already been rejected, Lincoln was impressed by Delany and described him as "a most extraordinary and intelligent man."

Delany was commissioned as a major a few weeks later, becoming the first black line field officer in the U.S. Army and achieving the highest rank an African American would reach during the Civil War. After the war, he remained with the Army and served under General Rufus Saxton in the 52nd U.S. Colored Troops. He was later transferred to the Freedmen's Bureau, serving on Hilton Head. He shocked white officers with his strong call for the right of freed blacks to own land. Later in 1865, he was mustered out of the Freedmen's Bureau and shortly afterward resigned from the Army.

Later life
Following the war, Delany continued to be politically active. He worked to help black cotton farmers improve their business and negotiating skills to get a better price for their product. He also argued against blacks, when he saw fit. For instance, he opposed the vice presidential candidacy of J. J. Wright on the grounds of inexperience, and he opposed the candidacy of another black man for the mayor of Charleston, South Carolina.

Delany unsuccessfully sought various positions, such as the appointment as Consul General in Liberia and nomination for lieutenant governor of South Carolina. In 1874, Delany ran and lost an election for Lieutenant Governor of South Carolina to Richard Howell Gleaves. He was appointed as a Trial Justice in Charleston. In 1875 charges of "defrauding a church" were brought against him. He was convicted, forced to resign, and served some time in jail. Although pardoned by the Republican governor, Delany was not allowed to return to his former position.

Delany supported the Democratic candidate Wade Hampton in the 1876 gubernatorial election. Partly as a result of black swing votes encouraged by Delany, Hampton was elected. Much more significant to his victory was the intimidation and violence practiced by "rifle clubs" and the Red Shirts, a paramilitary group of mostly white men, who worked to suppress black voting at the polls. Historian George C. Rable described them as acting as "the military arm of the Democratic Party." By 1876, there were estimated to be 20,000 white men who were members of rifle clubs in the state. More than 150 blacks were killed in violence related to the election. Hampton reappointed Delany as Trial Justice.

White Democrats soon replaced Delany as Justice. In 1877 the federal government withdrew its troops from the South, marking an end to the Reconstruction era. Paramilitary groups such as theRed Shirts continued to suppress black voting in the Carolinas, especially in the upland counties.

In reaction to whites' regaining power and the suppression of black voting, Charleston-based blacks started planning again for emigration to Africa. In 1877, they formed the 'Liberia Exodus Joint Stock Steamship Company', with Delany as chairman of the finance committee. A year later, the company purchased a ship, the Azor, for the voyage. Delany worked as president of the board to organize the voyage.

In 1880, Delany withdrew from the project to serve his family. Two of his children were students at Wilberforce College in Ohio and required money for tuition fees. His wife had been working as a seamstress to make ends meet. Delany began practicing medicine again in Charleston. On 24 January 1885, he died of tuberculosis in Wilberforce, Ohio.

 

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Legacy and honors

• In 2002, scholar Molefi Kete Asante listed Martin R. Delany as among the 100 Greatest African Americans.

In 1991, the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission installed a historical marker near 5 PPG Place in Pittsburgh, near to where published 'The Mystery, that commemorated Delany's historic importance. In 2003, Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission installed a second historical marker on Main Street in Chambersburg, noting Delany's historic importance.

Writings
Delany's unfinished novel Blake: or, the Huts of America advocated black activism and rebellion. In it Delany reworked several of Stephen Foster's sentimental "plantation songs". Thus hereappropriated material for his own purposes, to express black resistance and independence. Songs had been used in minstrel shows, in part to show slave contentment or lack of resistance to slavery. For example, Foster's "Old Uncle Ned" mourned the passing of a slave:

Den lay down de shubble and de hoe
Hang up de fiddle and de bow:
No more hard work for poor old Ned
He's gone whar de good darkeys go.
Delany turned this into a song of rebellion about the death of a master:

Hang up the shovel and thee hoe-o-o-o!
I don't care whether I work or no!
Old master's gone to the slaveholders' rest —
He's gone where they all ought to go!
While Part One was publlished in serial form, scholars do not know if he ever completed the novel or published the entire thing. Sections found were edited and published in the 20th century.

Works
See the bibliography, "Martin Delany's Writings", West Virginia University Library, as archived on line.

• The Condition, Elevation, Emigration and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States, Politically Considered, (1852); Black Classic Press, reprint (1993); Project Gutenberg, on line.
• "Political Destiny of the Colored Race on the American Continent" (1854), in Richard Newman, Patrick Rael, and Phillip Lapsansky, Pamphlets of Protest: An Anthology of Early African-American Protest, Routledge (2000) ISBN 0-415-92443-X
• Blake, or the Huts of America, (1859-62); Boston: Beacon Press, reprint (1970) with Floyd Williams, ed., University of Virginia, on line
• "Stand still and see the salvation", Uncle Tom's Cabin & American Culture, University of Virginia, on line.
• Martin Robison Delany, Official Report of the Niger Valley Exploring Party (1861)
• University Pamphlets: A Series of Four Tracts on National Polity (1870)
• Principia of Ethnology: The Origin of Races and Color, with an Archaeological Compendium of Ethiopian and Egyptian Civilization (1879)
• Introduction to Four Months in Liberia, by William Nesbitt (1855)

 

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Charles "Charlie" Parker, Jr. (August 29, 1920 – March 12, 1955), also known as "Yardbird" and "Bird", was an American jazz saxophonist and composer.

Parker was a highly influential jazz soloist and a leading figure in the development of bebop, a form of jazz characterized by fast tempos, virtuosic technique and improvisation. Parker introduced revolutionary harmonic ideas including rapid passing chords, new variants of altered chords, and chord substitutions. His tone ranged from clean and penetrating to sweet and somber. Many Parker recordings demonstrate his virtuoso playing style and complex melodic lines, sometimes combining jazz with other musical genres, including blues, Latin, and classical.

Parker acquired the nickname "Yardbird" early in his career and the shortened form, "Bird", which continued to be used for the rest of his life, inspired the titles of a number of Parker compositions, such as "Yardbird Suite", "Ornithology", "Bird Gets the Worm", and "Bird of Paradise."

Parker was an icon for the hipster subculture and later the Beat Generation, personifying the jazz musician as an uncompromising artist and intellectual rather than just an entertainer.

Biography
Childhood
Charlie Parker was born in Kansas City, Kansas, and raised in Kansas City, Missouri, the only child of Charles and Addie Parker. Parker attended Lincoln High School. He enrolled in September 1934 and withdrew in December 1935, just before joining the local musicians' union.

Parker began playing the saxophone at age 11, and at age 14 joined his school's band using a rented school instrument. His father, Charles, was often absent but provided some musical influence; he was a pianist, dancer and singer on the T.O.B.A. circuit. He later became a Pullman waiter or chef on the railways. Parker's mother Addie worked nights at the local Western Union office. His biggest influence at that time was a young trombone player who taught him the basics of improvisation.

Early career
In the late 1930s Parker began to practice diligently. During this period he mastered improvisation and developed some of the ideas that led to bebop. In an interview with Paul Desmond, he said that he spent 3–4 years practicing up to 15 hours a day.

Bands led by Count Basie and Bennie Moten undoubtedly influenced Parker. He played with local bands in jazz clubs around Kansas City, Missouri, where he perfected his technique, with the assistance of Buster Smith, whose dynamic transitions to double and triple time influenced Parker's developing style.

In 1938, Parker joined pianist Jay McShann's territory band. The band toured nightclubs and other venues of the southwest, as well as Chicago and New York City. Parker made his professional recording debut with McShann's band.

As a teenager, Parker developed a morphine addiction while in hospital after an automobile accident, and subsequently became addicted to heroin. He continued using heroin throughout his life, which ultimately contributed to his death.

 

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New York City
In 1939 Parker moved to New York City, to pursue a career in music. He held several other jobs as well. He worked for nine dollars a week as a dishwasher at Jimmie's Chicken Shack, where pianist Art Tatum performed.

In 1942 Parker left McShann's band and played with Earl Hines for one year, whose band included Dizzy Gillespie, who later played with Parker as a duo. Unfortunately, this period is virtually undocumented, due to the strike of 1942–1943 by the American Federation of Musicians, during which time few recordings were made. Parker joined a group of young musicians, and played in after-hours clubs in Harlem, such as Clark Monroe's Uptown House and Minton's Playhouse. These young iconoclasts included Gillespie, pianist Thelonious Monk, guitarist Charlie Christian, and drummer Kenny Clarke. The beboppers' attitude was summed up in a famous quotation attributed to Monk by Mary Lou Williams: "We wanted a music that they couldn't play" – "they" being the white bandleaders who had usurped and profited from swing music. The group played in venues on 52nd Street, including Three Deuces and The Onyx. While in New York City, Parker studied with his music teacher, Maury Deutsch.

Bebop
According to an interview Parker gave in the 1950s, one night in 1939, he was playing "Cherokee" in a jam session with guitarist William "Biddy" Fleet when he hit upon a method for developing his solos that enabled one of his main musical innovations. He realized that the twelve tones of the chromatic scale can lead melodically to any key, breaking some of the confines of simpler jazz soloing.

Early in its development, this new type of jazz was rejected by many of the established, traditional jazz musicians who disdained their younger counterparts. The beboppers responded by calling these traditionalists "moldy figs". However, some musicians, such as Coleman Hawkins and Benny Goodman, were more positive about its development, and participated in jam sessions and recording dates in the new approach with its adherents.

Because of the two-year Musicians' Union ban of all commercial recordings from 1942 to 1944, much of bebop's early development was not captured for posterity. As a result, it gained limited radio exposure. Bebop musicians had a difficult time gaining widespread recognition. It was not until 1945, when the recording ban was lifted, that Parker's collaborations with Dizzy Gillespie, Max Roach, Bud Powell and others had a substantial effect on the jazz world. One of their first small-group performances together was rediscovered and issued in 2005: a concert in New York's Town Hall on June 22, 1945. Bebop soon gained wider appeal among musicians and fans alike.

On November 26, 1945, Parker led a record date for the Savoy label, marketed as the "greatest Jazz session ever". Recording as Charlie Parker's Reboppers, Parker enlisted such sidemen as Dizzy Gillespie and Miles Davis on trumpet, Curly Russell on bass and Max Roach on drums. The tracks recorded during this session include "Ko-Ko", "Billie's Bounce" and "Now's the Time".

Shortly afterward, the Parker/Gillespie band traveled to an unsuccessful engagement at Billy Berg's club in Los Angeles. Most of the group returned to New York, but Parker remained in California, cashing in his return ticket to buy heroin. He experienced great hardship in California, eventually being committed to Camarillo State Mental Hospital for a six-month period.

Addiction
Parker's chronic addiction to heroin caused him to miss gigs and lose work. He frequently resorted to busking on the streets, receiving loans from fellow musicians and admirers, and pawning his saxophones for drug money. Heroin use was rampant in the jazz scene, and the drug could be acquired easily.

Although he produced many brilliant recordings during this period, Parker's behavior became increasingly erratic. Heroin was difficult to obtain when he moved to California, where the drug was less abundant, and Parker began to drink heavily to compensate for it. A recording for the Dial label from July 29, 1946, provides evidence of his condition. Before this session, Parker drank a quart of whiskey. According to the liner notes of Charlie Parker on Dial Volume 1, Parker missed most of the first two bars of his first chorus on the track, "Max Making Wax." When he finally did come in, he swayed wildly and once spun all the way around, away from his microphone. On the next tune, "Lover Man", producer Ross Russell physically supported Parker. On "Bebop" (the final track Parker recorded that evening) he begins a solo with a solid first eight bars. On his second eight bars, however, Parker begins to struggle, and a desperate Howard McGhee, the trumpeter on this session, shouts, "Blow!" at Parker. Charles Mingus considered this version of "Lover Man" to be among Parker's greatest recordings, despite its flaws. Nevertheless, Parker hated the recording and never forgave Ross Russell for releasing it. He re-recorded the tune in 1951 for Verve.

When Parker was released from the hospital, he was clean and healthy. Before leaving California, he recorded "Relaxin' at Camarillo" in reference to his hospital stay. He returned to New York, resumed his addiction to heroin and recorded dozens of sides for the Savoy and Dial labels, which remain some of the high points of his recorded output. Many of these were with his so-called "classic quintet" including trumpeter Miles Davis and drummer Max Roach.

 

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Charlie Parker with Strings
A longstanding desire of Parker's was to perform with a string section. He was a keen student of classical music, and contemporaries reported he was most interested in the music and formal innovations of Igor Stravinsky and longed to engage in a project akin to what later became known as Third Stream, a new kind of music, incorporating both jazz and classical elements as opposed to merely incorporating a string section into performance of jazz standards.

On November 30, 1949, Norman Granz arranged for Parker to record an album of ballads with a mixed group of jazz and chamber orchestra musicians. Six master takes from this session comprised the album Charlie Parker with Strings: "Just Friends", "Everything Happens to Me", "April in Paris", "Summertime", "I Didn't Know What Time It Was", and "If I Should Lose You".

Jazz at Massey Hall
In 1953, Parker performed at Massey Hall in Toronto, Canada, joined by Gillespie, Mingus, Bud Powell and Max Roach. Unfortunately, the concert clashed with a televised heavyweight boxing match between Rocky Marciano and Jersey Joe Walcott, so it was poorly attended. Mingus recorded the concert, resulting in the album Jazz at Massey Hall. At this concert, he played a plastic Grafton saxophone. At this point in his career he was experimenting with new sounds and materials. Parker himself explained the purpose of the plastic saxophone in a May 9, 1953 broadcast from Birdland and did so again in a subsequent May 1953 broadcast.

Parker is known to have played several saxophones, including the Conn 6M, The Martin Handicraft and Selmer Model 22. Parker is also known to have performed with a King "Super 20" saxophone. Parker's King Super 20 saxophone was made specially for him in 1947.

Death


Parker's grave at Lincoln Cemetery.
Parker died on March 12, 1955 in the suite of his friend and patron Baroness Pannonica de Koenigswarter at the Stanhope Hotel in New York City, while watchingThe Dorsey Brothers' Stage Show on television. The official causes of death were lobar pneumonia and a bleeding ulcer, but Parker also had an advanced case of cirrhosis and had suffered a heart attack. The coroner who performed his autopsy mistakenly estimated Parker's 34-year-old body to be between 50 and 60 years of age.

Since 1950, Parker had been living with Chan Berg, the mother of his son Baird and his daughter Pree, who died as an infant of cystic fibrosis. He considered Chan his wife although he never formally married her, nor did he divorce his previous wife, Doris, whom he had married in 1948. This complicated the settling of Parker's estate and would ultimately serve to frustrate his wish to be quietly interred in New York City.

It was well known that Parker never wanted to return to Kansas City, even in death. Parker had told Chan that he did not want to be buried in the city of his birth; that New York was his home. Dizzy Gillespie paid for the funeral arrangements and organized a lying-in-state, a Harlem procession officiated by Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., as well as a memorial concert, before Parker's body was flown back to Missouri, in accordance with his mother's wishes. Parker's widow criticized Parker’s family for giving him a Christian funeral even though they knew he was a confirmed atheist. Parker was buried at Lincoln Cemetery in Missouri, in a hamlet known as Blue Summit.

Parker's estate is managed by CMG Worldwide.

Music
Parker's style of composition involved interpolation of original melodies over existing jazz forms and standards, a practice known as contrafact and still common in jazz today. Examples include "Ornithology", also known as "How High The Moon" and "Yardbird Suite", the vocal version of which is called "What Price Love", with lyrics by Parker. The practice was not uncommon prior to bebop, however it became a signature of the movement as artists began to move away from arranging popular standards and toward composing their own material.

While tunes such as "Now's The Time," "Billie's Bounce," "Au Privave", "Barbados", "Relaxin' at Camarillo," "Bloomdido," and "Cool Blues" were based on conventional twelve-bar blues changes, Parker also created a unique version of the 12-bar blues for tunes such as "Blues for Alice", "Laird Baird", and "Si Si". These unique chords are known popularly as "Bird Changes". Like his solos, some of his compositions are characterized by long, complex melodic lines and a minimum of repetition although he did employ the use of repetition in some tunes, most notably "Now's The Time".

Parker contributed greatly to the modern jazz solo, one in which triplets and pick-up notes were used in unorthodox ways to lead into chord tones, affording the soloist with more freedom to use passing tones, which soloists previously avoided. Parker was admired for his unique style of phrasing and innovative use of rhythm. Via his recordings and the popularity of the posthumously published Charlie Parker Omnibook, Parker's uniquely identifiable style dominated jazz for many years to come.

Other well-known Parker compositions include "Ah-Leu-Cha", "Anthropology", co-written with Dizzy Gillespie, "Billie's Bounce", "Bird Gets the Worm", "Cheryl", "Confirmation", "Constellation", "Donna Lee", "Ko-Ko", "Moose the Mooche", and "Scrapple from the Apple".

Miles Davis once said, "You can tell the history of jazz in four words: Louis Armstrong. Charlie Parker."

 

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Awards and recognitions


"Bird Lives" sculpture by Robert Graham in Kansas City, Missouri
Grammy Award
Charlie Parker Grammy Award History
YearCategoryTitleGenreLabelResult
1974Best Performance By A SoloistFirst Recordings!JazzOnyxWinner
Grammy Hall of Fame
Recordings of Charlie Parker were inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame, which is a special Grammy award established in 1973 to honor recordings that are at least twenty-five years old, and that have "qualitative or historical significance."

Charlie Parker: Grammy Hall of Fame Awards
Year RecordedTitleGenreLabelYear Inducted
1945"Billie's Bounce"Jazz (Single)Savoy2002
1953Jazz at Massey HallJazz (Album)Debut1995
1946"Ornithology"Jazz (Single)Dial1989
1950Charlie Parker with StringsJazz (Album)Mercury1988
Inductions
Year InductedTitle
2004Jazz at Lincoln Center: Nesuhi Ertegun Jazz Hall of Fame
1984Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award
1979Big Band and Jazz Hall of Fame
National Recording Registry
In 2002, the Library of Congress honored his recording "Ko-Ko" (1945) by adding it to the National Recording Registry.
Lennie Tristano's overdubbed solo piano piece "Requiem" was recorded in tribute to Parker shortly after his death.
Musical tributes

• Street musician Moondog wrote his famous "Bird's Lament" in his memory.
• The Californian ensemble Supersax harmonized many of Parker's improvisations for a five-piece saxophone section
• Saxophonist Phil Woods recorded a tribute concert for Parker
• Weather Report's jazz fusion track and highly acclaimed big band standard "Birdland", from the Heavy Weather album (1977), was a dedication by bandleader Joe Zawinul to both Charlie Parker and the New York 52nd Street club itself
• In 2003 various artists including Serj Tankian and Dan the Automator put out Bird Up: The Charlie Parker Remix Project. This album created new songs by remixing Charlie Parker's originals.
• The biographical song "Parker's Band" was recorded by Steely Dan on its 1974 album Pretzel Logic.
• The avant-garde trombonist George Lewis recorded Homage to Charles Parker (1979)
• Sparks released the song "(When I Kiss You) I Hear Charlie Parker Playing" on their 1994 album Gratuitous Sax & Senseless Violins
• Duane Allman devised a unique slide guitar technique that enabled him to mimic the sounds of chirping birds, stating in at least one interview that this was his tribute to Parker.
• The Only World by poet Lynda Hull includes the poem "Ornithology" about Charlie Parker.
• Refused included live recordings of Parker at the end of the song "Liberation Frequency" and transitioned it into "The Deadly Rhythm" on the album The Shape of Punk to Come.
• Anders Osborne recorded "On The Road to Charlie Parker" for his album "American Patchwork."

 

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Charlie Parker Residence
U.S. National Register of Historic Places
NYC Landmark

(2011)

Charlie Parker Residence
From 1950 to 1954, Parker and his common-law wife, Chan Berg, lived in the ground floor of the townhouse at 151 Avenue B, across from Tompkins Square Park in Manhattan's East Village. The Gothic Revival building, which was built c.1849, was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1994, and was designated a New York City landmark in 1999. Avenue B, between East 7th and 10th Streets, was renamed Charlie Parker Place in 1992.

Other tributes

• The 1957 story "Sonny's Blues" by James Baldwin features a jazz/blues playing virtuoso who names Bird as the "greatest" jazz musician, whose style he hopes to emulate.
• In 1949, the New York night club Birdland was named in his honor. Three years later, George Shearing wrote "Lullaby of Birdland", named for both Parker and the nightclub.
• A memorial to Parker was dedicated in 1999 in Kansas City at 17th Terrace and The Paseo, near the American Jazz Museum located at 18th and Vine, featuring a 10-foot (3 m) tall bronze head sculpted by Robert Graham.
• The Charlie Parker Jazz Festival is a free two-day music festival that takes place every summer on the last weekend of August in Manhattan, New York City, at Marcus Garvey Park in Harlem and Tompkins Square Park in the Lower East Side, sponsored by the non-profit organizationCity Parks Foundation. The festival marked its 17th anniversary in 2009.
• In one of his most famous short story collections, Las armas secretas (The Secret Weapons), Julio Cortázar dedicated "El perseguidor" ("The Pursuer") to the memory of Charlie Parker. This piece examines the last days of Johnny, a drug-addict saxophonist, through the eyes of Bruno, his biographer. Some qualify this story as one of Cortazar's masterpieces in the genre.
• A biographical film called Bird, starring Forest Whitaker as Parker and directed by Clint Eastwood, was released in 1988.
• In 1984, legendary modern dance choreographer Alvin Ailey created the piece For Bird – With Love in honor of Parker. The piece chronicles his life, from his early career to his failing health.
• In 2005, the Selmer Paris saxophone manufacturer commissioned a special "Tribute to Bird" alto saxophone, commemorating the 50th anniversary of the death of Charlie Parker (1955–2005).
• Parker's performances of "I Remember You" and "Parker's Mood" (recorded for the Savoy label in 1948, with the Charlie Parker All Stars, comprising Parker on alto sax, Miles Davis on trumpet, John Lewis on piano, Curley Russell on bass, and Max Roach on drums) were selected by Harold Bloom for inclusion on his shortlist of the "twentieth-century American Sublime", the greatest works of American art produced in the 20th century. A vocalese version of "Parker's Mood" was a popular success for King Pleasure.
• The Oris Watch Company created a limited edition timepiece in Charlie Parker's name. The watch features the word "bird" at the 4 o'clock hour, in honor of Parker's nickname and signifying "Jazz, until 4 in the morning".
• Jean-Michel Basquiat created many pieces to honour Charlie Parker, including Charles the First, CPRKR and Discography I.
• In 1995, Live Bird, a one-man play about Charlie Parker, written and performed by actor/saxophonist Jeff Robinson, made its premier at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, Massachusetts.
• Charlie Watts, drummer for the Rolling Stones, wrote a children's book entitled Ode to a High Flying Bird as a tribute to Parker. Watts has cited Parker as a major influence in his life as a young man learning to play jazz.
• In 1997, jazz guitarist Steve Rochinski recorded for Jardis Records, an album titled "A Bird In The Hand"(JRCD 9922), where he overdubbed, as the title cut, three of Charlie Parker's blues melodies, "Buzzy", "Chi-Chi", and "Billie's Bounce", creating a complex, three-part blues counterpoint.
• In December 2013, WordPress, the popular blogging platform, honored Parker's achievements by naming version 3.8 of the software, "Parker" after him.

 

[tru_m.a.c]

The NAACP, the nation’s oldest and largest civil rights organization, is calling for nominations in The Unsung Heroes Campaign. From the nomination announcement:



We join the nation in honoring great African-Americans in history, but we also celebrate the everyday heroes who may not make the history books.
The unsung heroes. The special people in our lives making our neighborhoods and communities a better place.

The Unsung Heroes campaign harkens the words spoken by civil rights activist Carter G. Woodson, the “Father of Black History” who founded the Black History Week back in 1926:
“Those who have no record of what their forebears have accomplished lose the inspiration which comes from the teaching of biography and history.”
Woodson sought to bring the overlooked and under appreciated work of African-Americans to light, ensuring the contributions of our communities to the nation and the world received the recognition they deserved and that we know from whence we came.

Please join me and nominate an unsung hero and achiever in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM). By recognizing the individuals work to save lives, innovate, make new discoveries, improve and problem solve the most critical crises we experience today we help pave the way for future science achievers of tomorrow.

Nomination is very simple. Just share a short paragraph naming your Unsung Hero and explaining why you are nominating him/her. This is a recognition program to honor heros that are apart of our communities today, living and working along side us in our communities today. We want to celebrate these unsung heros and shine light on what they do. You can upload a photo and url of a video of your nominee, optional. But that’s it. Here is the link to the nomination form.​

 

[tru_m.a.c]

Archibald A. Alexander – Noted Design and Construction Engineer

Best known for designing Washington, DC’s Tidal Basin Bridge and Whitehurst Freeway; first black graduate of the University of Iowa’s College of Engineering; served as territorial governor of the U.S. Virgin Islands



Growing up in Iowa during the late 1880s, Archibald “Archie” Alexander remembers being warned that engineering was not something he could expect to succeed in as a black man. But he pushed forward anyway, later graduating in 1912 with a bachelor’s degree in engineering from the State University of Iowa (now the University of Iowa), becoming the first African American in the school’s history to do so. Such perseverance would be a hallmark of Archie’s life and career.

He was born in Ottumwa, Iowa, the son of Price and Mary Alexander. When the family moved to a farm outside Des Moines, his father became head custodian at the Des Moines National Bank, which at the time was a prestigious job for a black man Attending Oak Park Grammar School, Oak Park High School and Highland Park College for one year, Archie began his engineering education at the State University of Iowa.

Although he initially went to Des Moines College and attempted to join the white-only team there, he was declined. As a result, he played tackle from 1910 to 1912 at Iowa and was nicknamed “Alexander the Great” During the summer he worked as a draftsman for Marsh Engineers, a Des Moines bridge-designing firm.

After university graduation, Archie served as a foreman for a bridge-building company before going into business for himself in 1917. Continuing his education at the University of London, Alexander studied bridge design in and obtained a degree in civil engineering in 1925 from the State University of Iowa.

Three years later, he was joined in his business by George Higbee, a white colleague from Marsh Engineering. Together, they made their company thrive by specializing in building bridges, viaducts and sewerage systems throughout Iowa until Higbee’s accidental death in 1925. Archie continued on his own for four years landing substantial contracts before going into another partnership. In the partnerships, Archie was the outside man engaged in landing contracts and fostering good public relations while his partners attended to the administrative details of running the business. His expertise as both an engineer and a marketer helped to overcome any existing color barriers there were.

Why He’s Important: Through his company, Archie Alexander spearheaded more than 300 major projects in design and construction engineering including: theTidal Basin Bridge and seawall in Washington DC; Washington DC’s Whitehurst Freeway; the heating plant and power station at the University of Iowa; an airfield in Tuskegee, Alabama; a 52-acre sewage treatment plan in Grand Rapids Michigan, and a powerhouse in Columbus, Nebraska.

Other Achievements: In 1934, he was appointed as one of a 12-member commission to investigate the social and economic conditions in Haiti. In 1946, he was awarded an honorary Doctor of Engineering by Howard University.
In 1954, Archie was appointed Governor of the United States Virgin Islands by President Dwight D. Eisenhower. He was the first Republican governor there since the establishment of the civil government.

He died in 1958 in Iowa. The Archie Alphonse Alexander Papers are held at the University of Iowa Special Collections & University Archives.

http://scienceblogs.com/usasciencef...engineering-achievement-archibald-a-alexande/

 

[Kaypain]

I'm sorry guys but this has been a horrible Black History Month with alot of White trolling...