Kansas City Lightning (46 page)

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Authors: Stanley Crouch

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Courtesy of the Frank Driggs Collection at Jazz at Lincoln Center.

The Savoy Ballroom, the “home of happy feet” and the beating heart of Harlem, 1940.

Courtesy of the Frank Driggs Collection at Jazz at Lincoln Center.

Charlie Parker in a photo booth in Kansas City, 1940.

About the Author

STANLEY CROUCH
has been writing about jazz music and the American experience for more than forty years. He has twice been nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award, for his essay collections
Notes of a Hanging Judge
and
The All-American Skin Game
. His other books include
Always in Pursuit
,
The Artificial White Man
, and the novel
Don't the Moon Look Lonesome
. His writing has appeared in
Harper's
,
The New Yorker
,
Vogue
,
Downbeat
,
Partisan Review
, the
New Republic
, the
New York Times
, and elsewhere. Since 1987 he has served on and off as artistic consultant for jazz programming at Lincoln Center and is a founder of the jazz department known as Jazz at Lincoln Center. He is also executive vice president of the Louis Armstrong Educational Foundation. A recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, he is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a regular columnist for the New York
Daily News.

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www.AuthorTracker.com
for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins authors
.

Also by Stanley Crouch

NONFICTION

Considering Genius: Writings on Jazz

The Artificial White Man: Essays on Authenticity

Reconsidering the Souls of Black Folk: Thoughts on the Groundbreaking Classic Works of W. E. B. DuBois

One Shot Harris: The Photographs of Charles “Teenie” Harris

Always in Pursuit: Fresh American Perspectives, 1995–1997

The All-American Skin Game, or, The Decoy of Race: The Long and the Short of It, 1990–1994

Notes of a Hanging Judge: Essays and Reviews, 1979–1989

FICTION

Don't the Moon Look Lonesome?: A Novel in Blues and Swing

Copyright

K
ANSAS CITY LIGHTNING
. Copyright © 2013 by Stanley Crouch. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to reprint the following:

“Hometown Blues,” lyrics by Jay McShann, courtesy of Hal Leonard Corporation

“To a Dark Girl,” poem by Gwendolyn Bennett, Courtesy of the Literary Representative for the Works of Gwendolyn Bennett, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations

“I, Too,” poem by Langston Hughes, courtesy of Random House

FIRST EDITION

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Crouch, Stanley.

Kansas City lightning : the rise and times of Charlie Parker / Stanley Crouch. — First edition.

pages cm

ISBN 978-0-06-200559-5

1. Parker, Charlie, 1920-1955. 2. Jazz musicians—United States—Biography. I. Title.

ML419.P4C76 2013

788.7'3165092—dc23

[B]

2013015773

EPub Edition October 2013 ISBN 9780062314062

13 14 15 16 17
OV/RRD
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

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