Pendergast's high tolerance for corruption led to a wide-open city during the Prohibition era, which became a center for anyone looking for booze, gambling, prostitutes, or entertainment. Kansas City, Missouri, became the most important of the territorial centers with the ascension of the political machine run by Tom Pendergast. Musicians who got their start in the territories included Earl Bostic and Buster Smith.
Jesse Stone, later the chief producer at Atlantic Records, and Walter Page were among the best known of the territory bandleaders.
The rapidly spreading popularity of jazz in the 1920s led to the rise of the "territory bands," bands located throughout the Midwest and Southwest, which designated a specific city, often a small one, as home base and played dance dates throughout the surrounding territory. As his mastery and influence on jazz grew, Parker’s lifestyle would ultimately cement his legacy and his demise.Jazz flourished in Kansas City during the 1920s and 1930s, becoming a key part of a significant happening in American sociopolitical history, as well as an important musical style. It was in the Kansas City music scene where he cut his chops on late-night performances, becoming a renowned soloist, improvisationalist and leading figure in the development of bebop alongside Dizzy Gillespie. At the age of 11, he picked up the saxophone, laying the foundation of his musical career. The documentary features rarely-seen archival footage and includes interviews with musicians and historians also offering live performances from some of Kansas City’s most talented jazz musicians, including Chuck Haddix, Bobby Watson and more.īorn in 1920, Parker grew up in Kansas City, Kansas, near Westport during the height of Prohibition. Before he ever played bebop on New York's famed 52nd Street, Charlie Parker was Bird.Ĭharlie “Bird” Parker was a musical gift to the world from Kansas City, a gift that will continue giving because “There is music before Charlie Parker… and then there is music after Charlie Parker.”ĭirected and produced by Emmy Award-winner Brad Austin ( Me, Dorothy and This Road to Oz In Situ), Bird: Not Out of Nowhere takes an in-depth look at the 21 years Parker spent in Kansas City and his lasting impression on present-day Kansas City jazz. It was from that music scene where Charlie Parker cut his chops in late-night jam sessions, most famously at the Reno Club on 12th where Jo Jones, disgusted with 16-year-old Charlie’s inability to keep up, threw a cymbal at his feet, prompting an embarrassed young Charlie to sulk back home determined to one day “show those cats.” It was his elementary school music teacher calling him and his friends “Yardbirds” that set in motion what would one day become his famous moniker, "Bird." And it was a car accident on a Missouri backroad that gave Charlie both a new horn and a taste for heroin. A destination for a low moral character, Kansas City had an unquenching lust for booze, women, drugs, and the music that accompanied such vices: Jazz. Luckily for the musical world, Charlie Parker grew up in Kansas City during the ’20s and ’30s.