Every Film Clip of Charlie Parker, 6; Audio from a 1950 TV Show

In this chronological series about Charlie Parker’s film and TV appearances, you’ll find more info than has ever been published before, plus every film clip and, where the film was not preserved, audio clips. The first part of this series is here. Simply scroll through my postings in order and you’ll easily find the others.

Broadway Open House, with most shows hosted by comedian Jerry Lester, is considered to have been the first late-night variety show on television. It was shown ‘live” on NBC from May 29, 1950, to August 24, 1951, Mondays through Fridays from 11pm to midnight. There are two or three programs online, such as this one, and this one, and more exist in archives.

But, as I’ve explained in an earlier Parker post, broadcasting and recording were two different processes. Many early TV shows were broadcast but not recorded. Unfortunately for us, the shows that were not recorded include the one from October 31, 1950, when Charlie Parker was one of the guests, performing with the regular “house” band, led by accordionist Milton DeLugg. (DeLugg had a very successful career in television, which included leading the “Band with a Thug” for the Gong Show starting in 1976! That’s Milton conducting the band right at the beginning of this clip.)

However, even though Bird’s appearance was not filmed for posterity, we do have the audio, thanks to someone who recorded it from his TV speakers. We’ll listen to it now. Even better, along with the audio we have an eyewitness! The late jazz critic Ira Gitler saw the show when it was broadcast, and shared his memories in an email, when I asked about this show on the jazz research listserve on May 26, 2013. We will read Ira’s description as we listen to the audio below.

A partial script for this show is reproduced in the late Ken Vail’s book Bird’s Diary, p.87. (The book is of course not Bird’s personal diary. It’s a detailed and illustrated chronology of Parker’s life, day by day as much as possible.) Vail made a kind of collage by putting over it an ad for the Soldier Meyers club in Brooklyn, where Bird had performed for a week, earlier in October. But we can still read most of the script excerpt:

The script indicates that Parker and tap dancer Ray Malone should begin with Miles Davis’s tune “Donna Lee.” (Yes, it’s by Miles—I’ll explain another time.) But this show was famously improvisational, and often things changed on the spur of the moment. On the first track Bird begins to play “Donna Lee,” but he immediately changes gear and goes into his own tune “Anthropology.” (Gillespie’s name was apparently added as co-composer because of his greater fame, according to Brian Priestley’s excellent Parker book, p.47.) Either they changed the plan to start with “Donna Lee” without telling Parker, or they did tell him but he forgot for a second. It sounds to me that the latter is the case, since he recovers so quickly.

Before that, you’ll hear Jerry talking with Parker, and at one point he says to Bird, “You look real George.” That was a kind of “silly slang” of the era, meaning simply “real good.” (Here are some examples from the same time period.) Let’s listen now to the first part of the Parker segment. Parker taps off the tempo with his foot. He is accompanied by the house group of piano, bass, guitar and accordion. (There was no drummer, and the group sometimes had a trumpeter, but he didn’t play on every number.)

Now, I mentioned that Bird starts with “Donna Lee,” then switches to “Anthropology” after four measures. But, as jazz historian and subscriber Brian Priestley recently pointed out to me, Parker doesn’t go to the fifth measure of “Anthropology.” Instead, he “resets” and goes back to the beginning. There must have been some signalling between the musicians, because most of them go along with him, so they also start again from measure 1 of “Anthropology.” But the accordionist, who started counting from when Bird came in initially, mistakenly goes to the bridge on the 5th measure of the second A section, at 1:13. That is, he is 4 bars too early. (Sorry if this is getting complicated!) Bird and the others ignore him, but when the actual bridge arrives at 1:19, both the guitar and the piano highlight it audibly. I’m sure they all exchanged many frantic looks during this short performance! Here it is:

After that, they do indeed play “Donna Lee” while Malone tap-dances. Ira Gitler saw this, and described it for us:

I was a Jerry Lester fan and watched his Broadway Open House show every week. Imagine my anticipation waiting for Bird to appear! When Bird blew "Donna Lee" at a furious tempo, tap dancer Ray Malone was right alongside him and when they started doing "fours" the camera would zero in on Ray's feet only, and then bounce back to Bird in full flight.

Malone was quite a good dancer, as you can see here at 36:40. (The part where his pants start to fall down appears to be unplanned!) So keep that image of him in your mind while you listen to “Donna Lee.” He matches Bird’s rhythms on the theme, then trades “fours” (four-measure phrases) with Bird. Very cool!:

Next comes a blues, with goofy words and scat singing improvised by Jerry Lester, and a few seconds of Malone tapping off the tempo at the beginning and dancing at 1:10:

The last audio segment is edited, and this gap is very likely on the original recording. It appears that the person who was recording shut off the tape recorder when it became clear that the next sketch, “Bedtime Story,” did not involve Parker. The tape turns on again at 0:18, as everyone ends a number by saying “Stop, Look, and Listen.” While the band continues to play and then fades itself out, Jerry announces that there was supposed to be an award from Schrafft’s. The Schrafft’s restaurants were well known around New York City, and people knew that, although the overall company was founded by a William Schrafft in the late 1800s, the restaurants were run by Jane Shattuck and her brother Frank. When he jokingly refers to the owners by the Jewish-sounding names “Sam and Bella Schrafft,” he gets a really big laugh. (It doesn’t seem that funny to us today, but trying to understand what used to be considered funny, versus today’s humor, is a whole study in itself.)

He then thanks actor Jose Ferrer, “who had to leave early.” Remember, this was an hour program, so Parker’s appearance was not the whole show. Ferrer was there to promote his film of the stage play “Cyrano De Bergerac.” It was going to be released on November 16, 1950. His performances in both stage and screen productions were acclaimed.

Jerry then asks Parker to join them in their closing theme song. Here is Ira Gitler’s reminiscence of the show’s ending:

At the end of the show, Milton DeLugg's band closed, as they always did, with the theme "Almost Like Being in Love" as Bird improvised serenely beautiful obbligatos before the show was abruptly cut off. My memory of the show makes the ending a bit longer but that's probably wishful thinking.

I hope you enjoyed this installment of my series on Parker’s TV and film appearances. Looking ahead:

Next time we’ll have a short silent clip of Bird.

After that, we’ll have an in-depth study of the only Parker film where the sound was captured “live,” the famous Bird and Diz TV performance of “Hot House.”

And finally, we’ll have some audio from Bird on Canadian TV.

All the best,
Lewis