Kansas City Lightning: The Rise and Times of Charlie Parker is the first
installment in the long-awaited portrait of one of the most talented
and influential musicians of the twentieth century, from Stanley Crouch,
one of the foremost authorities on jazz and culture in America.
Throughout his life, Charlie Parker personified the tortured American
artist: a revolutionary performer who used his alto saxophone to create a
new music known as bebop even as he wrestled with a drug addiction that
would lead to his death at the age of thirty-four. Drawing on
interviews with peers, collaborators, and family members, Kansas City
Lightning recreates Parker's Depression-era childhood; his early days
navigating the Kansas City nightlife, inspired by lions like Lester
Young and Count Basie; and on to New York, where he began to transcend
the music he had mastered.
Crouch reveals an ambitious young man
torn between music and drugs, between his domineering mother and his
impressionable young wife, whose teenage romance with Charlie lies at
the bittersweet heart of this story. With the wisdom of a jazz
scholar, the cultural insights of an acclaimed social critic, and the
narrative skill of a literary novelist, Stanley Crouch illuminates this
American master as never before.
Kansas City Lightning : The Rise and Times of Charlie Parker - Stanley Crouch
- Product Code:New
- Availability:In Stock
-
£9.99