Charlie "Bird" Parker and and Dizzy Gillespie brought frenetic sounds of bebop from the East Coast jazz underground to the West Coast for a two-month residency at Billy Berg's Hollywood jazz club in 1945. This marked the beginning of a tumultuous two year-stint for Bird bumming around L.A., showing up at jam sessions, crashing on people's couches, causing havoc in public places, and recording some of his most groundbreaking tracks, "A Night in Tunisia" and "Ornithology." Chasing the Bird explores Bird's relationship with the people he met encountered during his L.A. sojourn and those found themselves in the orbit of the jazz genius.
Maybe a bit more niche than most graphic novels that are on the market but Batman does make an appearance at one point to explain and important point about how important the artist was for the genre. Read Full Review
It seems ridiculous to even try to place a score on this. The work and the talent speaks for itself. To give this anything less than a perfect score would be appalling. Instant classic. Read Full Review
You can tell from this book that those two years were full to the max with Parker living, and that was shown in his music. This book does a fantastic job of making our imaginations come alive to match what we see on the printed page. We HEAR what's happening just as well as we SEE it. This book has opened up a whole new world to me, and that's something I'm grateful for! Read Full Review
Chasin' The Bird: Charlie Parker in California is not a full view of the man. As a collection of different perspectives of the musician, each one wants something different from the artist, and those color the viewpoints of each of the narratives. They all want something different from him but they all want something. They're looking for some love, some validation, some partnership, and even some friendship from a man who was all about the music. They wanted him, but did he want them at all? Chisholm only gives us these outside views of the artist. We're left to put together a puzzle of who Charlie Parker was during this year, but the puzzle is intentionally incomplete. Read Full Review
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