The high life and hard times of Charlie Parker

Many millions of words have been written on the history of jazz, but according to the music's greatest minimalist, Miles Davis, they could all be boiled down to just four - 'Louis Armstrong, Charlie Parker'.

Like a lot of Davis' authoritative pronouncements, this one, though uncharacteristically modest, is reasonably obvious nonsense. We can all supply our own lengthy lists of artists - with Davis included on most of them - who have made contributions that require recognition.

It is also wrong to suppose, although many people do, that Armstrong invented jazz or that Parker invented bebop, but there is a simple truth underlying Davis' assertion: whoever else changed the music, nobody changed it half as much as those two.

Fifty years ago next Saturday Charlie Parker died, and as soon as the news got out graffiti artists started painting 'Bird Lives!' on walls in New York. In a way that was and is true - jazz is still assimilating his legacy. Even at the time pianist Lennie Tristano, commenting on the legions of Parker imitators, said: 'He could sue almost anybody who has made a record in the last 10 years'.

The main thing Armstrong and Parker had in common was genius. Both had original vision and vaulting imagination, allied to what at the time appeared to be superhuman levels of virtuosity.

Technically they have since been equalled - even, though rarely, surpassed - but no players before or since have been able to break the mould of music and remake it in their own image in a comparable way. Modern jazz does not end with Charlie Parker but it certainly starts with him.