Charlie Parker
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The madman, the master, the Bird.
As sad as Bird’s life was, sadder still, there’s almost no live footage of him playing except for the one clip with Dizzy from the DownBeat award show in early 1952, and a recently uncovered clip of Bird playing with Coleman Hawkins, a very young Buddy Rich, Hank Jones and Ray Brown.
Both clips convey, in the few minutes of extant tape, some of the joy, subtlety and bird-like flights the master could take us on.