Charlie Parker with Strings - photo 1
Charlie Parker with Strings - photo 2
Charlie Parker with Strings - photo 3
Charlie Parker with Strings - photo 4
Charlie Parker with Strings - photo 5
Charlie Parker with Strings - photo 6
Charlie Parker with Strings - photo 7

Charlie Parker with Strings

Lot 519
29.09.2023 11:00UTC +00:00
Classic
Sold
£ 1 260
AuctioneerCHRISTIE'S
Event locationUnited Kingdom, London
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ID 1029170
Lot 519 | Charlie Parker with Strings
Estimate value
£ 2 000 – 3 000
PARKER, Charles “Charlie,” Jr. (1920-1955). Charlie Parker with Strings. Mercury Records, three-sleeve album, 1950.

Illustrated with pencil sketches on the outside boards of the album cover sleeve, the inside of the lower board, and all three integral sleeves, attributed to Charlie Parker, the sketches parodying the original cover design, depicting musicians, saxophones and other sketchier motifs, the inside of the lower board annotated with an intriguing incomplete sentence in Parker’s hand ‘The sky became an inferno and the heat was to [sic] intense there was…’ alongside an unfinished sketch of a kneeling, pinioned figure.

According to Rick Alper, the album was purchased among the effects of trumpeter Vernon “Geechie” Smith. When he was looking through the record collection, Alper asked Geechie’s widow whether the drawings on the cover were by her husband, to which Mrs. Smith replied ‘no… he did… Him, the guy on the cover’. She went on to explain that Charlie Parker and her husband were good friends, and that parker would come over to their home and hang out. One day, Parker brought over this album and complained that he didn’t like the picture on the cover. She remembered Parker as always acting nervous and fidgety and that on this occasion he started drawing on the album cover to mimic the David Stone Martin artwork. Oklahoma born Smith was for many years a stalwart of the Kansas City scene, before moving to LA in the early 1940s where he joined Joe Lutcher’s band. In 1947, his own group was hired as the house band at The Cricket Club on Washington Boulevard, which was to become a key foothold for the bebop invasion of the West Coast. Drummer and Parker sideman Roy Porter remembers: ‘Smith became manager and entertainment director. Prior to this Blacks were not welcome. Smith was responsible for integrating the club. He hired Dizzy, and during Diz’s two-week stint all of the Hollywood movie stars like Ava Gardner, who liked the new thing in music, regularly came by. When I came back to LA from back East in June of 1948, I stopped by for a jam session on a Sunday afternoon and the place was jumping’. Porter, 64.

Recorded with a small string orchestra and rhythm section for Norman Granz’ labels between 1947 and 1952, Parker’s two With Strings albums were the realisation of a long-held desire to record with strings and his best-selling records during his lifetime. ‘Charlie excitedly embraced the project,’ notes biographer Chuck Haddix, ‘feeling that recording with strings legitimized his music’. Haddix, 125.

Three 10-inch shellac discs (one original, the other two replaced by records by Vernon “Geechie” Smith), in three-sleeve album with cover design by David Stone Martin; accompanied by two letters of provenance from Rick Alper of Atomic Records and Norman Saks. Provenance: Vernon “Geechie” Smith – Rick Alper (Atomic Records) – The Norman R. Saks Collection (Vail, pl.57).
Address of auction CHRISTIE'S
8 King Street, St. James's
SW1Y 6QT London
United Kingdom
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