BOP'S GLISTEN:

The Royal Roost, which was located at 1580 Broadway, was originally a chicken restaurant. It struggled to make a profit, and the would-be poulter, Ralph Watkins, sold it to Sid Torin. You might not know his given name, but you'll recognize his nom de jazz of Symphony Sid, the man who turned a place to nosh on some legs and breasts into a venue that did worlds for postwar jazz, helping bebop to blossom and send its seeds a'wafting into millions of homes, courtesy of the radio. Dizzy Gillespie, Fats Navarro, Dexter Gordon, Max Roach, Miles Davis, and of course the Bird were all Roost regulars. The club was near the Met, which led to its dashing handle of "the Metropolitan Bopera House." In jazz, even a nickname is a hot lick.

At this point in his career, Parker has already done a lot of his innovating. The core bebop texts have been waxed, and he's nursing a dream to record with strings, one he'll realize in November of the next year. He's an inventor still, but a lot of that invention is glimpsed in live performance. Bird has some stalwart help this holiday morning at the Roost: Max Roach on drums, Al Haig on piano, Kenny Dorham on trumpet, Bennie Green on trombone, among others. Symphony Sid certainly does not sound dimmed by any revelries from the previous evening. If he had been out late wassailing, you'd not know it. He's clearly gassed to have the Bird for Christmas morning, and that energy feels pervasive. Miles Davis' "Half Nelson" is taken at a gallop; we are obviously not here to lollygag over Bloody Marys at brunch. Sometimes Bird's lines could become enjambed, like he was thinking so quickly that one figure would run into the backside of another, maybe several others--but here, right now, he's bang on. The number feels complete, total, definitive, but also a setup. Rarely do we feel that we are both wholly satiated and just getting started. But we are.

Sid takes the microphone at the close of the number. "You know, somebody called a little while ago at the studio," he says, as you can just make out Haig lightly chording away on the piano, "and they said, 'I wonder if you'd get Bird to do something on Christmas.'" You can hear that Sid didn't think this request would necessarily be met with open arms. "Well, it's fitting," he says, more to himself than any of us, a replay of the thought process he had when the caller gave Sid his idea. "This is Christmas morning ... and the Bird's got a little arrangement, a little surprise for you, on 'White Christmas.'" As he's talking, Haig's piano chords are coming up ever so slightly in volume until, with the close of Sid's announcement, they instigate the performance proper.

These days, we cannot get away from "White Christmas." For some of us that's an annoyance--no matter how great the tune--and for others, like myself, it's a welcome sound each and every time it's encountered, so long as it's by an artist who's up to handling the job. Give me Bing, give me Clyde McPhatter, give me Elvis. Crosby gave the first public performance of the song on Christmas 1941, cutting it the next year for release as a package of songs from Holiday Inn, in late July 1942. The master was then used over and over again to the point that it was deteriorating, such was the song's popularity. (Crosby had to re-record the song due to that raddled master; what you usually hear on the radio is a version he taped in 1947, which put the song back in the American consciousness, although it had never really left.)

That original 1942 version made No. 1 on the Harlem Hit Parade, the first time Crosby reached the top spot on black charts. This is not surprising to me. The song is no work of Hollywood bunkum. It's bluesy as hell, and the blues, just like a ghost story, is perfect for Christmas. Think of something like Judy Garland's performance of "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas"--its blues feel is every bit as strong as anything by Skip James. Think of how many carols work from within the context of a bluesy minor key, and how they have a fraughtness to them that tends to elude popular songs. They appear to be pregnant with what we might think of as the overarching, the ineffable.

Now the blues tends to be slow and bebop, naturally, is fast. But everything in Parker, if you know how to listen to it, is passed through a blues filter. He must have heard Crosby's version of "White Christmas" and filed it away as an idea to return to later, in his time, in his fashion. For an artist to take a pop song and turn it into a veritable secular carol is among the greatest achievements of seasonal song alchemy. Perhaps something best undertook by a tuneful Santa, or the elfin equivalent of Rudolph, with his unique skill set. Or a transcendent alto saxophonist.

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