Charlie Parker on "Groovin' High"

Continuing the beginning of the year effort to unload old transcriptions and such, here's another immortal declamation from Bird: "Groovin' High," from Diz 'n' Bird, live at Carnegie Hall in 1947. Like "Confirmation" from the same performance, "Groovin' High" appears in Steve Coleman's essential The Dozens essay on Bird:

Parker's incredible time feel is on display from the moment he takes his break. He swings hard, even more evident here because during these four measures he is playing unaccompanied. The song begins in Eb major, but just before Bird's solo the music modulates during an interlude to Db major, then, after a second interlude, back again to Eb major for Dizzy's solo. Yard's solo break contains a classic example of what I call cutting corners, where Bird takes this one path, then, beginning with his characteristic rhythmic vocal-like sigh just after the 8th beat of the break, moves briefly into a harmonic path in the area of Amin6, before falling back into the subdominant Gb major (of Db major). In this case the melody that he plays is more melodic voice-leading than harmonic, as Bird's melodic trajectory is aimed towards the high F and Ab, both pitches that have a dominant function from a melodic perspective in the key of Db major. So functionally this final phrase is a subdominant-to-dominant progression. 

For the next three choruses, Parker gives a clinic on economy, telling his story with a compact approach, getting right to the point. His musical sentences are perfectly balanced without being predictable; he was a master of intuitive form. But what I want to discuss here is the loose precision that is demonstrated, a kind of playing that is extremely relaxed and variable and yet at the same time extremely detailed. This kind of laid-back, behind-the-beat, loose accuracy seems to have been the norm with players like Art Tatum, Don Byas, Bird and Bud Powell—in Chicago we used to call it the beginner-professional sound. The expression of rhythms and modes is so precise that repeated detailed listening is like reading an advanced music theory text, only a text that reveals more on each reading, and the words are in motion on top of it! In this sense it's like the oral storytelling traditions, but here the information is encoded in musical symbolism. For this reason, I've always felt that this music really was telling stories, on many different levels.

I've nothing more to add, save that Bird altissimo is always a rare, wondrous phenomenon to behold (twice in this same solo) and more likely spotted in earlier live recordings such as this one. Also, the riffing off phrase endings throughout this solo is a joy: the sound of self-aware cheekiness and wit in motion.

C
Bb
Eb