Charlie Parker

Zoot begging Charlie Parker's forgiveness

Charlie Parker (1920-1955) was a jazz musician and bandleader. Nicknamed "Bird," Parker was a leading saxophonist from the late 1930s to his death in the fifties. He helped develop bebop through his jazz improvisation and became an icon not only to jazz musicians but to the hipster and beat crowd in general. His band went under various names over the years, but often as the Charlie Parker All-Stars and included notables such as Dizzy Gillespie and Max Roach. Others who played with Parker at various times included Billy Taylor and Toots Thielemans.

The New York City jazz club Birdland was named after Parker to capitalize on his fame (and in turn inspired the title of the jazz standard "Lullaby of Birdland"). In actuality, Parker was only a sporadic performer at the club.

References

• In the dialogue surrounding a 1961 Sam and Friends sketch using a Mitch Miller sing-along record, Harry the Hipster protests Kermit's musical selections and worries if his fellow hep cats were to find out he listens to such stuff: "They'd break my Charlie Parker records."

• Floyd Pepper establishes his own hep jazz credentials early on in The Muppet Show: Sex and Violence by telling Sam the Eagle "You may be *a* bird but you're not *The* Bird," referencing Parker.

• Nigel presents Zoot with his own composition "Sax and Violence" in The Muppet Show episode 102. Zoot, embarrassed by the squareness of the piece and its disgrace to jazz saxophone playing, utters, "Forgive me, Charlie Parker, wherever you are." The French release of The Muppet Show album carried the concept even further, titling the track "La honte de Charlie Parker," which translates to "The shame of Charlie Parker."

• Birdland, the jazz club owned by Hoots the Owl on Sesame Street, references the original club, and Hoots' band is called The Owl-Stars in reference to the Charlie Parker All-Stars.

• In the Farscape novel House of Cards, John Crichton says that whenever he gets a song stuck in his head, he tries to cleanse his mind with songs from Charlie Parker's discography, typically the solo from "Ornithology."