“Liner Notes to Charlie Parker” – a poem (and playlist) by Chuck Sweetman

May 16th, 2023

Berthold Faust, CC BY-SA 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

Liner Notes to Charlie Parker, a Playlist

After a Dyzzing road-trip West—
gigs as inconsistent heroin fixes
(now that he’s lost his sources)—
a strung out Charlie Parker
collapses. Wakes up in of all places
Camarillo, California, 1947.
An asylum where he relaxes,
maybe does a little gardening,
and, on the advice of his counselor,
sits in with Sunday’s all-inmate band.

Next thing the band knows
—middle of some waltz—
the new smiley chubby black guy stands up
and takes his borrowed alto sax
on a joy ride, soaring right over the chorus,
in and out of
everything
else,
but somehow hitting all its notes
several times along with a thousand others.
Parker,
a hummingbird—aflutter
and still at the same time, flitting back
and forth among the squawking crows.

Or, to put the experience another way:
The Tigers of Camarillo High lose
the tip-off to The Harlem Globetrotters
in their star-spangled
shorts and headbands. And now
it’s behind-the-back,
through-the-legs,
alley-oop, slam-dunk
before the Camarillons can call
time out.

And as we lace up our
off-white canvas high-tops,
we wonder if what’s happened
is plausible, permitted or even possible
in the game as we once knew it,
moments ago, when we warmed
with layups and the Tiger fight song
marched in perfect 4-4 time.

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Chuck Sweetman’s 15-song playlist features many of Charlie Parker’s signature recordings, including “Relaxin’ at Camarillo,” “Donna Lee,” “Scrapple From the Apple,” “Confirmation” and “Salt Peanuts”

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Chuck Sweetman’s career in jazz lasted for six weeks of lessons on the sax, but jazz remains a key source of inspiration. He is senior editor for december magazine. His essays, stories, reviews, and poems have appeared in such places as Verse Daily, River Styx, Poet Lore, Black Warrior Review, and Notre Dame Review. His chapbook of poems, Incorporated, won the 2007 Dream Horse Press Chapbook Prize and was consolidated into the book Enterprise, Inc. (2008)

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