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Chasin' the Bird
The Life and Legacy of
Charlie Parker

By Brian Priestley

(Equinox, 252pp., £16.99)

Brian Priestley’s Chasin’ the Bird: The Life and Legacy of Charlie Parker (Equinox, 252pp., £16.99). An expanded version of the brief study he wrote for Spellmount in 1984, and is a characteristically thorough piece of work from one of the UK’s most knowledgeable and diligent jazz observers.

It has been published in conjunction with a Properbox (99), containing four CDs of live Bird. Unlike previous studies of the bebop master, Priestley’s book restricts itself to known facts (it contains a 60-page discography), and thus is not as racy a read as Ross Russell’s Bird Lives!, but what it perhaps loses in page-turning readability it more than makes up for in authenticity and gravity, concentrating as it does on meticulous study of Parker’s recordings and live performances.

It deals at some length with the altoist’s drug and drink demons, plus his tangled personal life, but only in so far as they are relevant to his art, and the result is an absorbing and serious-minded biography that gains a great deal from being read in conjunction with listening to the aforementioned Properbox.