Charlie Parker: Dating His Solo Recording of "Honey & Body"—Guest Post by John Purcell, with Carl Woideck

[John Purcell is a Boston alto saxophonist with a lifelong interest in Charlie Parker and his music, and a Founding Member of this Playback. His Charlie Parker essays can be found here, and he posts new essays there on Bird’s music regularly. The following essay on the solo disc of “Honeysuckle Rose” and “Body and Soul” was written especially for us, and it is a good example of what you will find in his columns. This disc has been explored in writing by Carl Woideck, in his Parker biography (revised edition). But here you will have the chance to actually hear the disc and its connections, and for John to add his own observations. As Woideck briefly notes, the songs that Parker chose are significant as well, because he explicitly said that he embarrassed himself trying to play those two songs at a jam session that has been dated to 1935. Also please note that the so-called “Wichita Transcriptions” are discs that Bird recorded as a member of Jay McShann’s group in late 1940, not issued until 1974. They were made informally at a radio station and not intended for release to the public.]

Charlie Parker’s Solo Sax Recording

by John Purcell

…Kansas City trumpeter Clarence Davis recorded on an amateur disc-cutter alto saxophonist Charlie Parker improvising a medley of two songs. Although the performance has been referred to under a variety of names, Davis labeled his disc simply “Honey & Body” … Carl Woideck, Charlie Parker, His Music and Life (revised edition)

[Lew notes: Duodisc was a brand of blank 78 rpm discs for home recording. As Carl notes, the disc appears to say “Pt. 1,” but if there was a second part, it was never found. Here’s John:]

If you’re prepared to follow Bird down a rabbit hole, you can try to establish the exact recording date for “Honey & Body,” presumed to be his first recording. If you want to save yourself the trip, you can settle for an inexact date, but even that is elusive. If, however, you can make peace with uncertainty, you may be satisfied with this convoluted answer: “Honey & Body” was recorded no earlier than December 1939, but more likely in the early months of 1940, or at least sometime before the Wichita Transcriptions, recorded on November 30 and December 2—although a recording date in 1941 can’t be completely ruled out.

The collector in possession of the “Honey & Body” disc gave the recording date as 1937. This isn’t impossible on its face, since Bird was still living in Kansas City at the time and knew Clarence Davis, but it’s impossible nonetheless, due to evidence provided by the “Body And Soul” portion of the recording itself.

First, here’s the most complete version of “Honey & Body.” (On some online versions the first few notes are missing, and on others the needle gets stuck and repeats before the end.) Bird segues from “Honeysuckle Rose” to “Body And Soul” at 2:14:

[Lew notes: Here is the recording, missing the first few notes, with a transcription by Remi Bolduc.]

The 1937 recording date goes out the window at 2:57, when Bird quotes Roy Eldridge while leading into the “Body And Soul” bridge (here and in all following audio clips, the quote is repeated twice at slow speed for clarity)

Here’s an excerpt from Eldridge’s solo on the October 10, 1938 Commodore label recording of “Body And Soul,” released under Chu Berry’s name (again, repeated):

Bird uses the same quote at 0:40 in the November 30, 1940 recording of “Body And Soul,” one of the Wichita Transcriptions:

Bird is clearly relying on this quote to make the difficult transition a half-step up to the key of D major, but the same might be said of Eldridge, since he also uses it in this version from the Savory Collection, a boxed set of radio broadcasts preserved by the late Bill Savory. [Lew notes: Savory recorded this from the radio on August 13, 1938, but it was never re-broadcast and was only released on CD in 2018, so Parker could not have studied it.]:

So far, we have established that “Honey And Body” can’t have been recorded any earlier than October 1938, when Eldridge first recorded that lick. But that date is immediately defenestrated in the following bar, when Bird quotes Jimmy Van Heusen’s “I Thought About You,” copyrighted in October 1939. In 1938, Bird couldn’t have heard any popular big band arrangements of the song. [Lew notes: The first one, by Dinah Shore, was issued on November 3, followed soon by Bob Crosby, Benny Goodman, and others.]

Speaking of October 1939, there’s more evidence to be found in the Coleman Hawkins version of “Body And Soul,” recorded on October 11th. [Lew notes: It was issued in November 1939. The earliest printed references to it that I have yet found are from November 15, saying that it was coming soon, and November 27, saying that it was now out.] Bird quotes it in the November 30, 1940 solo noted above.

Here’s Hawkins:

The fact that Bird didn’t use this quote in “Honey & Body” might be evidence that it predates the Wichita Transcriptions. I wouldn’t be persuaded by that argument alone, but Bird’s “Honeysuckle Rose” solo (December 2, 1940) is an argument in itself. Despite the informal nature of this recording, Bird seems to have posterity in mind, acknowledging his debt to Lester Young by quoting Lester’s solo on the Count Basie version of “Honeysuckle Rose” (January 21, 1937). Here’s Lester’s opening:

Bird starts with those same notes, and goes on from there. His supernatural poise at an unforgiving tempo, and the unbroken strings of eighth notes he unspools, surpass anything in “Honey & Body”:

No matter how you date “Honey & Body” (my best guess is early 1940), these two solos are only months apart. This remarkable rate of progress shouldn’t be dismissed merely as genius. Bird could have been referencing this period when he said, “I put quite a bit of study into the horn, that’s true. In fact, the neighbors threatened to ask my mother to move once, when I was living out west [meaning Kansas City], I mean. They said I was driving them crazy with the horn. I used to put in at least eleven, from eleven to fifteen hours a day” (from the 1954 radio interview with Paul Desmond and Parker):

That explains a lot.

[Thank you John! And readers, please remember his Charlie Parker essays—and Carl’s Parker book.]

All the best,

Lewis