I chewed on A Perfect Day for Bananafish by J. D. Salinger and A Perfect Day for Kangaroos by Murakami Haruki last night like a squirrel’s last chestnut in the deep winter to prepare for this trip. My dream was about German Augmented Sixth Chord pirouetting with cream-colored acrylic plastic Grafton alto saxophone once played by Charlie Parker. At six, thirty-two minutes earlier than usual, I woke up to Ko-Ko, Parker’s fabulous parade of mastery recorded back in 1945, and reflected on Charlie Parker scholar Thomas Owens’ remark that the alto saxophonist “spiced his improvised melodies with unexpected accents and perfectly played flurries of notes” while wrestling with a very stubborn asiago-parmesan-leftover-bagel. Huge deal, visiting Charlie Parker’s gravesite is (does wise Yoda from Star Wars fancy some Charlie Parker’s music now and then?).

On my way to Parker’s gravesite, I tried very hard to ferret out the precise moment that Parker’s improvisation grasped my puckish music mind. Maybe Parker’s Confirmation had me at “hello” in that mysterious summer night back in 1989?

Jerry Maguire: “I love you. You…you complete me. And I just….”
Dorothy: “Shut up, just shut up. You had me at hello.”
----Jerry Maguire (1996)

…Oh-no-no-no-no-no. That’s not it. Maybe the delicious sound of Charlie Parker with Strings album sunk into me, bit by bit, like drops of abiding descants from a distance land cagily whispering some hush-hush messages? In any case, after few wrong turns, a long conversation with google map, and a cup of nonfat-milk-Caffè Latte that tasted like Parker’s Ornithology motive later, I reverentially walked into Lincoln Cemetery.

R.I.P.

On March 12, 1955, jazz alto saxophonist Charlie Parker passed away in Baroness Pannonica de Koenigswarter’s apartment at the Stanhope Hotel on Fifth Avenue in New York City.¹  Parker’s body was taken to Bellevue Hospital at around one o’clock in the morning on March, 13 and reached the hospital’s morgue around two o’clock. An autopsy was performed by the Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Milton Halpern, indicating the legal cause of the death as lobar pneumonia. Chan Richardson’s uncle identified the body, and Parker’s body was probably first sent to the Frank Campbell Funeral Home.² Doris Parker, Parker’s last legal wife, soon exercised her legal right and demanded Parker’s body to be moved to the Unity Funeral Home. Parker’s funeral was then held at the Abyssinian Baptist Church on 138th Street on March 21, with Rev. David Licorice conducting the service.³ An organist was reportedly playing Sir Arthur Seymour Sullivan’s The Lost Chord during the service. Louis Bellson, Leonard Feather, Dizzy Gillespie, Teddy Reig, Charlie Shavers, Sonny Stitt, and Lennie Tristano served as pallbearers. Parker’s body, reportedly against his wishes, was later flown to Kansas City with the financial support of Norman Granz for burial in the Lincoln Cemetery in Independence, Missouri.⁴

The Lincoln Cemetery, established in 1934, is located at Blue Ridge Boulevard, which separates it from a larger cemetery call Mountain Washington Cemetery.⁵ The burial service was held and attended by “Addie Parker and boyhood friends.”⁶ For the burial service, the first gravestone of Parker was installed. The inscription on the gravestone read “son, Charles Parker, Jr. Aug. 29, 1920 - Mar. 23, 1955.” It is unclear why the date of death was inscribed inaccurately.  In August 29, 1971, the second gravestone was installed by the Charlie Parker Memorial Foundation, unveiling “a bronze headstone incorporating a stylized bird and aggregate curbing within which an evergreen flower bed has been planted at Parker’s grave.”⁷ In 1992, the second gravestone was stolen and Kansas City authorities organized the Jazz Commission to design a large gravestone to prevent a similar incident. In 1994, the third gravestone was installed which weighted “several tons.”⁸ There is a rose etched on Addie Parker’s side of the gravestone and a dove and saxophone etched on Parker’s side.

In 1998, the possibility of relocating Parker’s remains was discussed and in April, Kansas City mayor Emanuel Cleaver requested $25,000 from the city for the relocation of Parker’s remains. The initial plan was to move Parker’s remains to Charlie Parker Memorial Plaza behind the AJM American Jazz Museum and The Blue Room Jazz Club in 18th & Vine Historic District of Kansas City, Missouri. However, the family members reversed their initial approval regarding the plan. Doris Parker stated that “I feel a little squeamish about moving the bones. A status’s great. I have no objection to that. But why do they need the bones?”⁹ In 1999, Charlie Parker Memorial Plaza, featured a 17-foot statue by Robert Graham, was opened without Parker’s remains.

Lincoln Cemetery is pretty close to Interstate-435. 65-mile-per-hour-car-canal gushed out perpetual mumbles that sound like a chatty dinosaur calling from Mars on a bad-reception-day. I aimlessly ambled around the cemetery, backed by that hum-hum-hum automobile stutters, playing around the idea to write few paragraphs about inverted mordent in Bebop improvisation. “Hum-hum,” my friend I-435 dinosaur would probably gabble a bit and complain. "Elementary, my dear Watson."

The inverted mordent, sometimes referred to as upper mordent, is probably “the most common single-note ornament used in bebop.”¹⁰ This linear embellishment, listed as M.2A in Charlie Parker scholar Thomas Owens' motive catalog, appears to be closely associated with the ornamentation technique in Western classical music and the use of the inverted mordent can be traced back as early as the Renaissance Period. For example, Fray Tomás de Santa María cited the practice of using the inverted mordent in Arte de tañer fantasia published in 1565.¹¹ Scholar Robert Donington’s remarks on the inverted mordent further confirms its usage in Western classical music:

The inverted mordent, alternating with an upper auxiliary, occurs in free ornamentation, but did not become a specific ornament of standard application in baroque music, except when a descending half-trill is curtailed to an inverted mordent under pressure of speed. After the baroque period, the inverted mordent or upper mordent became a standard and indeed a fashionable ornament.¹²

The construction of the inverted mordent, or M.2A, features a rapid alternation between a principal note and its upper auxiliary note (Example 1). The principal note is introduced first and is followed by its upper auxiliary note. The quick rebound back to the principal note concludes this rhythmic decorative figure. The function of the inverted mordent is comparable to that of the mordent, which is to “enhance the melody and sharpen the rhythm and even color the harmonic texture by introducing a slightly inharmonic element.”¹³

Example 1. The basic construction of the inverted mordent.

The inverted mordent, the fabulous winner of "The Fashionably Elementary Motive Award", makes frequent guest-appearance in Parker’s performances of Now’s the Time and is labeled as I.M. (Example 2).  It is noted that the duration of a principal note, which commonly occupies the length of an eighth-note, is flexible.  Parker sometimes uses an inverted mordent to decorate a quarter-note, such as the instance selected from the fourth version of Now’s the Time in the second example.  The sequential employment of this decorative figure can be observed in some isolated occasions, such as the instance taken from the fourteenth version of Now’s the Time.  Several rhythmic deviations are applied by Parker to this figure in his performances of Now’s the Time as well.

Example 2.  The employments of the inverted mordent in Charlie Parker’s performances of Now’s the Time.

Thomas Owens comments on Parker’s usage of inverted mordents, citing that “because of its brevity and simplicity the motive appears in almost any context, and is an incidental component in a number of more complex figures.”¹⁴  Furthermore, Parker might have borrowed this figure from tenor saxophonist Lester Young who was Parker’s early musical influence.  In a discussion of Parker’s style during his apprenticeship and Parker’s usage of motive M.2B, aka Ornithology Motive (more info. here), Owens remarks that:

This motive, of course, incorporates the inverted mordent, M.2A, Parker’s favorite motive in these early recordings, and Young’s favorite motive throughout his career.  Young preferred to play it on F, while Parker preferred to play in B-flat.  These notes are both written as G for the tenor and alto saxophone; the fingering on the two instruments is identical and technically simple.¹⁵

Here are two before-and-after-inverted-mordent-makeover examples:

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In memory of Steve Larson

*NOTE: This article is based on materials presented in “Charlie Parker: The Analytical Study of Twenty-Two Performance Versions of Now's The Time”.