Blues for Bird

Santa Monica Press, 2001

Blues for Bird is Martin Gray's stunning, one of-a-kind biography of Charlie Parker. Written in iambic trimeters and syncopated hexameters, Gray's epic biographical poem runs some 5665 lines. The work chronicles the life of one of the 20th century's most pivotal musical figures, from his humble beginnings in Kansas City through his pioneering of the breakthrough musical from of "bebop" to his early tragic death in the Park Avenue apartment of a European Countess.

Gray's poetry dances nimbly along in a way that echoes Bird's blazing, fast-fingered solos, and his marvellous use of language reflects the rhythms of jazz and the beat that lies at the heart of bebop. Indeed, Blues for Bird is like a piece of jazz itself: exciting, innovative and constantly surprising. Blues for Bird not only functions as a primer on Bird, but as an introduction to the musical nature of jazz; it is a welcome addition to the library of any jazz or poetry aficionado.