Harry Belafonte

At his first gig, Belafonte was backed up by some friends who happened to be great jazz players. And then "Bird" — saxophonist Charlie Parker himself — took the stage and Belafonte hung on for the ride.

"What I heard was [Bird's solo] and Bird's virtuosity in those first few bars of music threw me completely. I just sat there looking for the rescue team."

Will Lee

His music career continued at Morehouse College in Atlanta where he learned the bass. After college, in the early 1950s, he moved to Chicago, attracted by the city’s world-class jazz scene. Charlie Parker was an early inspiration.

“He came to one of the hotels there,” recalls Mr. Lee. “There are a lot of great musicians, and I’ve had the good fortune to meet some of them. Charlie Parker’s my favourite.”

Charles McPherson

You were the featured saxophonist in the Charlie Parker, biopic, ‘Bird’ directed by Clint Eastwood. How did you get that gig?

CM:They were able to use Charlie Parker, but there were instances where they could not use him, for technical reasons. So in those kinds of situations, I was used. I played Charlie Parker on only some of the soundtrack. Clint Eastwood is a jazz fan and I think he knew who I was. Stylistically I was similar to Charlie Parker, so when he wanted to get somebody to play some of these parts on the soundtrack, there were maybe a couple of people that came to mind, one of whom was me. He [Eastwood] was in the studio when we did the soundtrack…very interesting man; He’s not the cowboy that people think he is, though. He was a very astute businessman.

Quincy Jones

When he finally got to New York, his eyes were opened wider than they had ever been before. When he was introduced to Charlie "Bird" Parker, "the four of us took a cab to 139th Street. Bird was sweating a lot. He had a white shirt on and a big belly. One button was off his shirt and I could see some of his meat. We got out of the cab in front of a beat-up tenement and I felt like a million dollars. I was hangin' with Bird. I couldn't believe it. Bird and me." And then Parker conned some dollars out of him to score some heroin, and promptly disappeared.

Alex Ross

THERE IS A story about composer Igor Stravinsky and saxophonist Charlie Parker that has become part of jazz lore (Alex Ross mentions it in his superb book The Rest is Noise).

Parker had heard Stravinsky’s astonishing The Rite of Spring and, in 1951, while playing a concert in New York’s Birdland, he spotted Stravinsky in the crowd. He immediately worked some motifs from the composer’s Firebird into the tune he was playing, Koko. Stravinsky was so delighted that, in the words of Ross, he “spilled his scotch in ecstasy”.

Edgard Varèse

With jazz, the ones who could have been good become very conventional. I heard the man who was playing—what was his name? He died. He was a god of music in that field. He played a kind of saxophone—Charlie Parker. At that time he lived in New York. He followed me on the street, and he said he wanted to be with us. The day I left I said, "We'll get together. I'll take you for my pupil." Then I had to catch my boat. It's when I went to Europe for Déserts. And Charlie Parker died in '55, in March. Oh, he was so nice, and so modest, and he had such a tone. You could not know if it was an angelic double bass, a saxophone, or a bass clarinet. Then one day I was in that big hall there on 14th Street, the Cooper Union. Somebody said, "I want to meet you." She was the widow of Charlie Parker. She said, "He was always talking about you, so I know all about you." And that man was a great star. He wanted to study music and thought I had something for him. - (From Perlis and Cleve's Composers' Voices from Ives to Ellington

“He stopped by my place a number of times. He was like a child, with the shrewdness of a child. He possessed a tremendous enthusiasm. He’d come in and exclaim, ‘take me in as you would a baby and teach me music. I only write one voice. I want to have structure. I want to write orchestral scores.’ I promised myself I would try to find some time to show him some of the things he wanted to know.”