Charlie Parker's Relaxin' at Camarillo, written after his six-month stay at the Camarillo State Mental hospital, showcases a new composure and lyricism in his playing, perhaps indicating a change of lifestyle. The bebop colossus returned to the studio after being released in early 1947, and the composition – reportedly written in a cab on the way to the session – suggested he might be entering a new phase, both personally and musically.
Parker's quintet, featuring an increasingly poised and mature Miles Davis, and in Max Roach a drummer who could anticipate the saxophonist's most unexpected rhythmic detours, was perhaps his finest and most flexible band. But when Parker returned to New York after his Camarillo release, the dealers were waiting. At this point, the 26-year-old saxophonist had eight years more to live.
But those eight years, despite some inevitably uneven periods, produced a great deal of astonishing jazz, even if the creative intensity of the 1945-47 period would not be surpassed. Parker ended his relationship with Ross Russell's Dial label in December 1947. The session included the innovative bebop trombonist JJ Johnson, one of the few practitioners of his instrument at the time whose attempts to negotiate fast bop didn't sound, in critic Whitney Balliett's words "like a fat man trying to run uphill".
Parker's separation from Dial was also marked by another milestone. With the collection Bird Blows the Blues, Russell released the first ever 33rpm long-playing jazz record (yet to be dubbed an "album"), and in including alternate takes on the second side, established another first that started the jazz buff's favourite hobby of comparing the fascinating minutiae of solos.
From 1947 to 1952, Parker worked more regularly, and to an increasingly enthusiastic and less specialised audience. A key factor in his wider popularity was a series of recordings with a classical string section. Parker listened extensively to classical music, and the innovations of Igor Stravinsky (who had emigrated from Europe to the States on the outbreak of the second world war) particularly fascinated him, even if he didn't live long enough to adapt such breakthroughs for jazz.
When impresario Norman Granz suggested a strings project in November 1949, Parker jumped at the chance – and the recording produced classics such as Just Friends, Everything Happens to Me and Summertime. The album Charlie Parker With Strings was one of the most successful of his career, which alienated some hardcore fans, who saw it as a sell-out, despite Parker's opinion that it was one of his best. Sixty years later, contemporary jazz musicians like the UK's Gilad Atzmon still explore this repertoire. But here's the man himself on one of that session's standouts - Just Friends.
