Chasin' The Bird Charlie Parker in California

Plot

Foreword by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

Charlie "Bird" Parker and and Dizzy Gillespie brought frenetic sounds of bebop from the East Coast jazz underground to the West Coast for a two-month residency at Billy Berg's Hollywood jazz club in 1945. This marked the beginning of a tumultuous two year-stint for Bird bumming around L.A., showing up at jam sessions, crashing on people's couches, causing havoc in public places, and recording some of his most groundbreaking tracks, "A Night in Tunisia" and "Ornithology."

Chasin' the Bird explores Bird's relationship with the people he met encountered during his L.A. sojourn and those found themselves in the orbit of the jazz genius.