Recovered Classic: Bird

Jazz musicians and blues singers make fascinating subjects for biopics because many of them led such tumultuous lives. Some of the all-time greats were famously plagued by drug addiction and alcoholism, none more so than legendary saxophonist Charlie “Bird” Parker.

So it was no surprise when his incredible story was put on celluloid in 1988. What might have raised a few eyebrows was the fact that Clint Eastwood was behind the camera. Eastwood’s direction, however, proved mighty impressive, wisely choosing to put the music centre stage and giving Forest Whitaker the perfect platform from which to produce a towering central performance. But at over two-and-a-half hours long, the film does open itself up to a number of minor quibbles.

We’ll come to those later, because any movie which wins an Oscar (for Best Sound), earns its director a Golden Globe and its star a Best Actor gong at Cannes has obvious merits which deserve attention. The keys to Bird’s success as a movie lie in Whitaker’s career best tour-de-force and Eastwood’s free-form direction, which allows the story to flit backwards and forwards and follow a non-linear structure, as if mirroring the improvisational genius for which Parker became so famous.

In terms of his formative years, Eastwood almost does away with Parker’s youth and concentrates mainly on the events that shaped his life from his late teens onwards. The reason for this is that the director clearly wants to focus on major turning points, such as his drug dependency, alcoholism, the death of his daughter, his rise to fame, his relationship with devoted wife Chan Parker (Diane Verona) and his friendship with fellow bebop originator Dizzy Gillespie.

Then there’s the music. Second in the billing only to Whitaker himself, it’s worth pointing out that the saxophone heard on the soundtrack is actually being played by the real-life Bird. Eastwood and music co-ordinator Lennie Niehaus began with actual recordings (some of them from Chan Parker’s private collection), isolated the Parker tracks and recombined them with contemporary musicians to create a new stereophonic soundtrack. It’s this sort of attention to detail which makes such a huge difference.

But while the music is ever-present, there’s no getting away from Parker’s drug and alcohol addiction. He was a warm and gentle man, someone who only Chan really understood, and this is portrayed superbly by both Whitaker and Verona, with the latter perhaps being too much of a peripheral figure. So too is Gillespie (Sam Wright), a man who formed such a strong relationship with Parker and who tellingly describes himself as a reformer and Bird as a martyr. “People always remember martyrs longer,” he adds.

Admittedly, Eastwood had a lot to cram in, but he chooses to spend time lingering on the “important” events (his attempted suicide, his spell in an institution), in an effort to give them more impact, rather than linger on other episodes in Parker’s life, such as his prestigious recording career, which is merely hinted at.

But it was Parker’s personal notoriety (he was also a womaniser and frequently lost his temper), rather than his God-like artistry, which always made the headlines, so the word according to Bird often falls by the wayside. Eastwood’s ambitious movie, however, is remarkably faithful to many true-life events, such as an early jam session when a young Bird was ushered off stage during a jam session when an unimpressed drummer hurled a cymbal at him. A tour of the Deep South also features prominently, which saw white trumpeter Red Rodney passed off as an albino because integrated bands were forbidden.

Which just leaves the great man’s death, which is poignantly portrayed. As a musician, he carried on playing as long as he could, but his addiction had reduced him to a physical wreck and his body could take it no longer. He collapsed one evening at the home of a jazz loving baroness. The coroner who attended on the night estimated his age at 65. Parker was 34.

David Lichtneker

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