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Kansas City Lightning: The Rise and Times of Charlie Parker

Stanley Crouch

Throughout his life, Charlie Parker personified the tortured American artist: a revolutionary performer who used his alto saxophone to create a new music known as bebop even as he wrestled with a drug addiction that would lead to his death at the age of thirty-four. Drawing on interviews with peers, collaborators, and family members, Kansas City Lightning recreates Parker's Depression-era childhood; his early days navigating the Kansas City nightlife, inspired by lions like Lester Young and Count Basie; and on to New York, where he began to transcend the music he had mastered. Crouch reveals an ambitious young man torn between music and drugs, between his domineering mother and his impressionable young wife, whose teenage romance with Charlie lies at the bittersweet heart of this story.

GenresParker, CharlieJazz musiciansUnited StatesBiographyBiographies

365 pages, 10 editions

English edition · First published 2007 by HarperCollins. It Books · ISBN 9780062005595

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Editions

10 editions

English

  • Kansas City Lightning: The Rise and Times of Charlie Parker · HarperCollins. It Books · 2013 · ISBN 9780062005595 This page
  • Kansas City Lightning: The Rise and Times of Charlie Parker · Blackstone Audio · 2014 · ISBN 9781482967678
  • Kansas City Lightning: The Rise and Times of Charlie Parker · Blackstone Audiobooks · 2014 · ISBN 9781482967661
  • Kansas City Lightning: The Rise and Times of Charlie Parker (LIBRARY EDITION) · Blackstone Audio · 2014 · ISBN 9781482967654
  • Kansas City Lightning: The Rise and Times of Charlie Parker · Harper Perennial · 2013 · ISBN 9780062005618
  • Kansas City Lightning: The Rise and Times of Charlie Parker · Harper · 2013 · ISBN 9780062314062
  • Kansas City Lightning: The Life and Times of Charlie Parker · Blackstone Audio Inc · 2009 · ISBN 9781433201967
  • Kansas City Lightning: The Life and Times of Charlie Parker · Blackstone Audio Inc · 2009 · ISBN 9781433201950
  • Kansas City Lightning: The Life and Times of Charlie Parker · Blackstone Audio Inc · 2008 · ISBN 9781433201974
  • Kansas City Lightning : The Life and Times of Young Charlie Parker · Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group · 2007 · ISBN 9780679438144

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