Culture January 30, 2014

True believers want to reclaim Parker from a now deeply degraded image, emphasising instead the dare and complexity of his music. This is a gamble when many fair-weather fans tend to shut down at the first mention of flattened fifths and roving thirteenths. Biographers first have to explain the tradition Parker emerged from—solo improvisation within a many-handed ensemble music—but also show Parker’s own itchy, wasp-sting style as the fruit of one vulnerable life, no other.