Singer Jackie Paris: He Never Toured with Charlie Parker—Guest Post by Leif Bo Petersen (+Bonus Audio & More)
(Paying Subscribers, at the bottom you’ll find the printed Jackie Paris oral history interview, followed by two of his most rare recordings.)
[Jackie Paris was a much-loved singer, even as a white artist performing for Black audiences, as I will show. And several people told me that he was a wonderful person. THE POINT of this article is to correct some errors in the biographical writings about him—certainly not to dispute his musical value or his warm personality. You have already enjoyed the fine work of Leif Bo Petersen, a trumpeter and jazz researcher from Denmark. For example, he wrote about Miles Davis’s piece “Donna Lee,” and shared his extensive research about Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie in the Earl Hines band. You may also be interested in the detailed book about Fats Navarro that he coauthored with the late Theo Rehak. Today he looks into the career of singer Jackie Paris. Paris is said to have toured as a member of Parker’s group. But, as you surely have noticed, Parker did not have a singer in his band. (Leif found that the only exception was that a singer named Arthur "Junior" Daniels performed with Bird before and after the Paris jazz festival of 1949.) To my knowledge, not one of the many books on Bird mentions Jackie Paris at all—the story comes only from Paris himself. In fact, it is very rare for jazz combos to have singers--did Monk, Blakey, Roach & Brown, have a singer in the band? No, of course not. It reminds me of when Betty Carter was asked in an interview for radio, “What was it like singing with Miles Davis for two years?” She replied, “What are you talking about? Since when did Miles ever carry a singer?” [she means, “carry” on his payroll]. Similarly, what Jackie describes never happened—we need to start with that point, and then we can evaluate Petersen’s research. Leif has explored the history of this claim in depth, and his sources are provided in footnotes at the bottom:]
Jackie Paris: The Evolution of a Jazz Myth
by Leif Bo Petersen
When the jazz singer and guitarist Jackie Paris died (September 20, 1924 – June 17, 2004), obituaries said that he had “toured with Charlie Parker” and that he “later worked with Lionel Hampton.” (For example, see this New York Times piece.)
In a documentary film, which was produced just before Paris’s death and released in 2007, the director and narrator, Raymond De Felitta, states that “Jackie toured with Bird for six months.” [Lew notes: De Felitta is also a professional jazz pianist.] Paris afterwards tells of a Boston concert for which he was hired by Parker. In this connection, a photo of Paris with the Parker quintet is shown:
The stories about Paris with Parker and Hampton are both incorrect. In this essay I will try to describe how these legends evolved.
The above photo, taken from the documentary, is an important piece of the story. It shows the Charlie Parker Quintet and Jackie Paris on the stage of the Three Deuces, on Fifty-Second Street in New York. Parker’s quintet had engagements there August 7 to early November 1947, late January 1948, and March 25 to early April 1948. (The sources are listed in my detailed Charlie Parker chronology.) This quintet, which included Miles Davis, did not appear at the Deuces ever again. And Jackie Paris was not on the bill of the Deuces in this period. His trio worked on the opposite side of the street at the Onyx Club from September 12, 1947, continuing most weeks through February 1948. (DownBeat, September 24, 1947, p.12, says the Jackie Paris trio was “held over,” that is, continuing. He is still listed there in the issue of February 11, 1948.) I therefore conclude that the photo is not from an occasion where Paris was a part of the quintet. There were regular jam sessions at the Three Deuces in this period, so it is from one of these, or from an informal sitting-in occasion.
[Lew adds: Here is Paris’s first recording, “Skylark,” made with his trio on October 24, 1947—thank you to subscriber and researcher Dieter Salemann for this date. To my knowledge it was only issued on 78rpm, never reissued. He sings and plays some chords on guitar, with Deryck Sampson (piano) and Bill Lolatte (bass). This was the instrumentation then made popular by Nat “King” Cole:
(Thanks to Will Friedwald for this copy, much better sounding than my own. Will shares his research about jazz and pop singers here on Substack, as well as in his books and articles. )
Paris made a better-known recording of this song in 1953. Two more of his rare early recordings, never reissued, are below as a bonus for Paying Subscribers. Now, back to Petersen:]
The first written source I have found that contributed to the legend is a July 13, 1951 DownBeat ad (p.8) for the Anthony Scotti music school, which taught using the Schillinger System. It says: “Among our present students are: …Jackie Paris formerly with Lionel Hampton and Charlie Parker”:
The next time I have found the matter popping up is in an April 7, 1954 DownBeat article on Paris by Nat Hentoff, who states: “He worked some of Bird’s first concerts.” And Paris says, “Lionel Hampton helped me too… I was with his band in 1949, I was billed on all the theaters we played.”
In a July 11, 1957 DownBeat feature by Dom Cerulli, Paris is quoted as saying, “The biggest thing that happened to me, even bigger than the M-G-M hit I had in “Skylark,” was playing with Bird.” It is also stated that when 52nd Street started to fold—for example, when the Onyx Club stopped presenting jazz in 1949—he sang and played guitar with Hampton.
On October 11, 1962 DownBeat again had a feature on Paris, by Bill Coss: “The greatest time in my life,” [Paris] recalled, “was in 1949, when I went out on tour with Charlie Parker.” It is also stated that “later that year he joined Lionel Hampton.”
An interview in the November 1975 issue of the short-lived magazine Jazz New England states that he was two years with the Lionel Hampton band while Betty Carter was the “chick singer,” and it also claims that “in 1948 came the kind of gig that every musician dreams of. He was asked to joint [sic] Charlie Parker’s combo.” Paris is quoted as follows:
He was at the Three Deuces, and I was also playing on the Street and he came by to hear me. The next day the I got a call from the Shaw Artists [Parker’s agency] saying that Charlie wanted me in the group. They said come over right now. In fact the first gig I did with Charlie was here in Boston at Symphony Hall. It was a big show and Billie Holiday was also on the bill so you can imagine how excited I was. All in all I was with Charlie for ten months. I used to do a few tunes each set. Things like “I Can’t Get Started,” “I’ve Got a Crush on You,” “Mean to Me,” “September in the Rain”—you know, nice ballad stuff. My roommate in the group was Max Roach… Miles was in the group then.
In a 1995 feature in the Village Voice, Will Friedwald stated: “He was also the favorite singer of Charlie Mingus, who worked with him in Lionel Hampton’s band circa 1949…Further, Paris was the only singer to tour with the Charlie Parker Quintet (with Miles Davis and Max Roach).”
Finally, in the April 1996 issue of Cadence, Paris gave a long oral history interview to Bob Rusch, who tried to sort out the circumstances of his touring with Charlie Parker and Lionel Hampton. Paris told of his touring with Parker as follows:
(The complete interview is below for Paying Subscribers, plus rare recordings.)
To sum up, Paris here states that he traveled on two tours with Parker. The first started in 1948 in Boston with the Charlie Parker combo and Billie Holiday. Then came a package with a Gene Ammons group and Billie Holiday. He does not give details of the second tour, and he confusingly states that the tours lasted 6 or 7 weeks but then says 6 months. He also stated, above, that it began while Parker played at the Three Deuces (late 1947–early 1948), but this can’t be true, as Billie Holiday was imprisoned from May 1947 and not released until March 1948. Parker’s activities in the first half of 1948 are well known. There were no concerts with the quintet and Bille Holiday. Studying Holiday’s itinerary in the second half of 1948 (see K. Vail, Lady Day’s Diary, 1996), we find that she was quite busy until after her gig at the Silhouette in Chicago, which ended on November 14. But Parker was not available then. He had joined a JATP tour which lasted from November 6 to December 4, 1948.
A notice in DownBeat, November 3, 1948, announces that Holiday would appear in Kansas City on November 19 with a Howard McGhee band. Other local press articles tell about Billie Holiday concerts with McGhee. For example, the Chicago Defender has a promotional article about a concert in Chicago’s Civic Opera House. It gives the date as November 14, but the accompanying photo caption has the correct date of November 21. In the article, the listed artists are Billie Holiday, Charlie Ventura, Charlie Parris [actually Jackie Paris], Gene Ammons, Tom Archie [sic; should be Archia), Howard McGhee, Allen Eager, Max Roach, and Miles Davis:
An article in Chicago World, November 20, 1948, says that Holiday, Jack Parrish [sic; again Jackie Paris), Miles Davis, McGhee, and Max Roach will appear in concert at the Pabst Theater, Milwaukee, on November 22.
It appears that a Billie Holiday-Howard McGhee tour had been planned, but as it turned out McGhee was touring with JATP, so they were only able to do these three concerts, on November 19, 21, and 22. The latter two concerts are well documented, and two reviews in DownBeat’s December 15 issue specifically mention the participation of Holiday, Paris, Dolores Bell, a Charlie Ventura group, and an all-star group including Fats Navarro, Miles Davis, Allen Eager, and Max Roach. This group may have had further undocumented concerts, before Holiday opened at Ciro’s in Philadelphia on November 29. A curious fact is that the Jackie Paris trio was billed at the Kingston Lounge in Brooklyn on all weekends (Friday through Sunday) from October 22 until December 3. (There were regular ads in the N.Y. Daily News.) This seems not to have prevented his participation in the concerts on Sunday and Monday, November 21 and 22. Maybe he took off from Kingston for those.
The question arises: Was Paris directly lying when he gave such a detailed story about a Boston concert with Charlie Parker and Billie Holiday? Or can we find a date for such an event before November 14? The only windows of free time in Holiday’s Itinerary after her Strand engagement (which lasted July 16 through August 26) were August 27 to 30 and September 6 to 10. However, we can exclude these dates for a Holiday and Parker Quintet concert, as Parker, Miles Davis, and Max Roach were appearing at and broadcasting from the Royal Roost on some of the first dates, and Davis and Roach, without Parker, on the second ones. There is one more possibility: Billie Holiday’s Silhouette gig was not unproblematic—she was fired, was out for one week, but was then taken back again. Here we may have the room for Holiday to appear with Parker. Unfortunately, I have found no traces of a concert in Boston or other places at all with Holiday and Parker.
I conclude that Jackie Paris did not ever “tour” with Parker, and if they ever were booked on the same stage, it could have been at most for only a few days.
Now, about the Lionel Hampton tour, Paris stated as follows in Cadence, April 1996:
Let us see what can be established as facts in this case:
The Hampton band opened at the Strand Theatre in midtown New York on January 23, 1948. Afterwards it toured all over the U.S.A., returning to California in mid-August. Charlie Mingus was the bassist, and Fats Navarro was in the band for about six weeks during this period. However, Jackie Paris can be documented in newspapers and DownBeat, working with his trio through the first half of 1948: In March/April in Club Bengasi, Washington, D.C., in April in Astoria Musical Bar, Baltimore, in May at the Three Deuces, New York, and in July at the 500 Café, Atlantic City, New Jersey.
We must therefore turn to 1949 to find Paris with Hampton. He worked with his trio opposite Thelonious Monk in Chicago in April, but a July 15 DownBeat notice of changes in Hampton’s personnel: “Lionel Hampton added Doug Duke on Duke-a-tron [a kind of organ] and Jackie Paris, guitar and vocals.” Paris states that he joined Hampton at the Strand. We do find such an engagement from April 14 through May 5, 1949. The ads for the opening do not have Paris billed, but he may have joined later during this engagement. Ads for subsequent Hampton appearances do list Paris.
[Lew adds: Dieter Salemann found that the Baltimore Afro-American of June 11, 1949 specifically mentions that Jackie was part of Hampton’s “entirely new show” that performed in Philadelphia on May 30, and it lists forthcoming tour dates. The anonymous article also raves about Jackie’s music, as did other Black newspapers:
A DownBeat article in the August 12, 1949 issue, which reviews Hampton in an Oakland, California, concert that was scheduled for July 3, includes Paris in the personnel, and the September 23 issue has a photo of Paris, Hampton, and Eddie Shu:
I have not found out exactly when, Paris left Hampton, but in August 1949 he was back in New York with his trio at the Orchid Room (formerly the Onyx). As Paris states that he never went back to Hampton, I conclude that his engagement with Hampton was less than 5 months.
Not detracting from the fact that Jackie Paris was a fine jazz vocalist, my final conclusion is that his collaborations with Charlie Parker and Lionel Hampton are greatly exaggerated in his legacy. The cause of this is Paris himself, whose tales have been repeated uncritically by the press. This this a reminder of the limitations of oral history in general, which is of course essential, but should always be accompanied with factual research.
[Thank you Leif for your thorough and definitive study. I hope that from now on people will write the corrected information about Jackie Paris.
All the best,
Lewis
P.S. Paying subscribers, the full interview and two rare Paris recordings are below!
