Roger Rettig wrote:Sorry - I don't see them [the Beatles] in the same light as musicians of the calibre of Charlie Parker.
I'm a huge fan of both the Beatles and Charlie Parker.
Apples and oranges.
The title of this thread is "What it takes to be great."
At the risk of stating an obvious truism, what is "great", or "genius", or "deep", or their opposites, in art is always and inherently a subjective judgment, peculiar to the individual human perceiver, and this fact is not changed by how many other humans have a reaction that coincides.
Charlie Parker stands out from a good number of bebop saxophone soloists who arguably had/have equal technical command of the instrument and mental command of the harmonic and melodic concepts used in bebop improvisation and composition. In my opinion this would still be true if his recordings and those of others were presented to a sophisticated, receptive listener who had no knowledge of where each individual stood in the historical development of bebop--that is, the knowledge that he was an originator, that much of what the listener hears the others doing was done
first by Bird would not enter the equation. I think that listener would still say, "
This guy really has it; there's something extra to his music. He's greater. The others are all good but..."
And that's the x factor that defines "great" music for me, and the Parker example illustrates for me how ultimately it isn't a question of elaboration of technique, physical or mental, that makes great art. In the case of Charlie Parker, it helped him a lot. There are other musicians (I won't name any), who in my opinion are even hindered from making great music by their huge development of the "tools" of the art.
A Chinese painting with a handful of brush strokes on otherwise blank paper can be a great painting. So can a painting by Leonardo da Vinci.
Lots of people write lots of simple three-chord songs. A few of them are great songs.
In my view, "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry" is a great song. If someone says it's obviously vastly inferior to a Charlie Parker solo, as far as I'm concerned they're missing the point.
But, as I said, it is all subjective.
