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Charlie parker jam session12/25/2023 ![]() ![]() The place he wanted me to see, first stop, was 3219, a place he referred to as “Jack’s Basket.” I drove, he narrated-a sweet, silky solo.Ĭentral seemed wiped clean of any sentimental remnant of that former era, or so I thought. That first afternoon, in 1995, we slipped into my car and from his mid-city home in Los Angeles’s Miracle Mile district wound east, then south on surface streets toward Central. COURTESY OF THE TOM & ETHEL BRADLEY CENTER AT CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY, NORTHRIDGE Radio host Bill Sampson (standing at left microphone) and his band often played at Jack’s for KAGH. Jack’s attracted greats like Buddy Collette, Duke Ellington, and Dexter Gordon. Buddy was set on reanimating Central Avenue for me, its history and eminence, but also its meaning. How they all “vibed.” Our initial meeting turned into many. ![]() Buddy was avid about places where musicians came to unify-to play, yes, but also to share and commiserate how they got the word around about what was going on-musically and politically. He had been a major figure in the amalgamation of L.A.’s segregated musicians’ unions, black and white, that integrated under Local 47 in 1953. And because he was a musician, his ear was tuned to sense details of time and place that gave the stories a lush, surround-sound quality. I was, as a reporter, working on a profile of Buddy, and he was always generous with his time and his stories. ![]() I popped up on his porch one afternoon 25 years ago with a notebook, a cassette recorder, and a lot of questions about the old jazz scene that had coalesced, from the 1920s into the mid-1950s, along Central Avenue-“Jazz Street,” as some of the older locals I’d grown up around called it. My path to this particular past was jazz musician and composer Buddy Collette. The caveat: just be careful how you step, or you break the spell, change the future. They were a pathway, like the device in that old Ray Bradbury story “ A Sound of Thunder” that allowed you to wander back in time to view history. I leaned hard on people’s stowed-away histories-their stray memories and their internal maps. Growing up in L.A., I learned long ago that to get back to the past, I’d have to rely on the power of story. Most likely, the proprietors of adjacent businesses and the neighbors who wheeled their metal fold-up shopping carts past it had little idea what one of its most glamorous identities had been. For decades, the storefront has been one of those addresses that have nested various small enterprises-in this case, a sewing factory, a café, a butcher, office space, a discount store. This has been, in certain respects, the case with 3219 South Central Avenue. One shortcut might reveal an inventory of off-the-beaten-path structures that have eluded developers’ desires, or tucked-away jewels lost amid a hodgepodge of architectural styles or on-the-fly renovations. Yet, for all the fast-forward erasure-razed landmarks, dramatically altered vistas, and, more recently, the hard press (and anguish) of gentrification-the city still holds a cache of rich built history. After spending six months in detox at Camarillo State Hospital, a reinvigorated Charlie Parker went to Jack’s Basket Room and gave what is considered by many to be the greatest performance of his life. ![]()
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