Autograph letter and note - photo 1

Autograph letter and note

Lot 523
29.09.2023 11:00UTC +00:00
Classic
Sold
£ 4 032
AuctioneerCHRISTIE'S
Event locationUnited Kingdom, London
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Archive
ID 1029174
Lot 523 | Autograph letter and note
Estimate value
£ 1 000 – 1 500
PARKER, Charles “Charlie,” Jr. (1920-1955).

An autograph letter in pencil from Charlie Parker to his common-law wife Chan Parker, on ‘Birdland Theatre Restaurant’ letterhead, 1678 Broadway, New York, n.d. but early 1950s, telling Chan ‘Right now seeing you well will help me so much you couldn’t imagine, so – get will Quick! P.S. call me tomorrow (if you want to)’, together with an autograph note to Chan in pencil ‘Have gone to sign the contract for B’land, from Bird’. Although Parker considered Chan to be his wife, they were not legally married. Chan and Bird first met in 1944 and lived as husband and wife from 1950 until his death. The reference Parker makes to her ill health concerns one of her frequent bouts of pneumonia.

Birdland, named in honour of sometime headliner Charlie Parker, was opened on 15 December 1949 at the corner of Broadway and 52nd Street in Manhattan. ‘When the owners of Birdland contemplated the idea of naming the club after a practicing jazz musician,’ writes Ross Russell, ‘there had been no one else to consider. Big names of the past no longer held any box office allure. Of the contemporaries none, not even Dizzy Gillespie, possessed Parker’s charisma, or could lend the weight necessary to launch a club that would in fact be the “Jazz Corner of the World” for decades’. Interviewed by Robyn Flans for Modern Drummer in 1982, Charlie Watts spoke of his love for Birdland ‘When I had the honour to go to New York, that was it! All I wanted to do was go to Birdland and I was lucky enough to get there before it closed and that was it for me. I still walk down 52nd Street. I know it’s not the same anymore, but I do it. It’s just something that really meant something to me as a kid, listening to Charlie Parker, and to think that he lived there and walked down that street and played there.’ Russell, Bird Lives! 275. Watts, cited in Modern Drummer, August 1982.

The letter one page, 277 x 214 mmm; the note on one slip of notepaper, 228 x 136 mm; in common mount with a modern photo postcard of Charlie Parker (overall 609 x 509 mm). Provenance: The Chan Parker Collection, Christie’s London, 8 September 1994, lot 34. Literature: Parker and Paudras, 118 (illustrated).
Address of auction CHRISTIE'S
8 King Street, St. James's
SW1Y 6QT London
United Kingdom
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