When it comes to the blues, few voices sing as clearly, or as creatively, as Charlie Parker’s. While Bird is often celebrated for his iconic solos and well-known standards, there’s a treasure trove of lesser-known blues melodies in his catalog that offer equal insight into his musical genius.
In this lesson, we’re diving into 10 lesser-known Charlie Parker blues tunes that are not just fun to play, but incredibly rich with melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic techniques you can bring into your own playing.
Whether you’re a seasoned improviser or a beginner branching out into the bebop repertoire, these tunes provide a fresh lens for approaching the blues form.
These 10 melodies are part of our series focusing specifically on Bird’s compositions over the blues, you can catch up here:
Charlie Parker’s Approach to the Blues in 3 parts
- Part I: 10 Charlie Parker Blues Heads Everyone Should Know
- Part II: Bird Blues: A Players Guide
- Part III: 10 Hidden Gems from Charlie Parker on the Blues
Remember, each tune is more than just a blues head to glance over – they’re practical blueprints for a deeper understanding of the blues and a guide to learning the language of Bird.
Ready to take your blues playing beyond the basics?
10 deep cuts of bird on the Blues
You’ve heard of Billie’s Bounce and Now’s the Time, but when you dig a little deeper into Bird’s recorded output, you’ll find a number of other blues compositions that are worth some extra study…
Today we’re going to explore ten blues melodies from Bird that don’t get as much play as the old workhorses you hear at jam sessions.
Each tune below offers a unique approach to the blues, so as you go through and learn each one, be sure to focus on:
- How Parker constructed melodies in a unique & musical way
- His rhythmic placement and phrasing tactics over the progression
- How he navigated and altered the harmony, implying different chords
- And his approach to the blues form, creating new paths through familiar changes
These are great exercises in ingraining the form and language of the blues, working through the progression in all keys, and expanding your melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic approach.
Let’s get started...
1. Si Si
Parker’s tune Si Si, an F blues, was recorded during the same 1951 session that produced Blues for Alice and featured players like Red Rodney, John Lewis, Ray Brown, and Kenny Clarke.
The melody to Si Si contains many elements of a bebop blues, however the second bar presents a curve ball, with an E natural, C#, and A natural in the melody – creating dissonance before returning to diatonic material in the 3rd bar.
2. Bongo Bop
Bongo Bop is a blues in C from a 1947 Dial recording session with Miles Davis, Duke Jordan, Max Roach, and Tommy Potter.
This is another blues tune with the hallmarks of Bird’s approach – musical statements, blues language, rhythmic sophistication, and forward motion through the form.
Note the how Parker navigates the harmonic transition points of the blues:
- The I chord moving to the IV chord in the 2nd bar
- The ii-V to IV in the 4th bar
- IV moving to the minor iv or bVII7 (F to F- Bb7)
- The iii-VI resolving to D minor
- and the final ii-V-I
There are important musical tools in each of these places that you can apply to any other jazz standard that you play.
3. Chi Chi
Chi Chi is one of the last blues tunes Bird recorded in a 1953 session that yielded many alternate takes of the tune to study…
This tune straddles the line between a “standard” blues progression and a Bird Blues. The difference is subtle, like viewing the same harmonic relationships through a different lens…
For example, in the second bar the diatonic ii-V (Bb-7 Eb7) is closely related to the Bird Blues progression in the same spot (Gø7 C7).
For Bird, these harmonic possibilities are available in any blues and can be expressed explicitly through the chord progression, or more subtly by hinting at them in his melodic lines.
4. Perhaps
Perhaps was recorded in 1948 on the Savoy label by “Charlie Parker’s Allstars” featuring Miles Davis, John Lewis, Curly Russell, and Max Roach:
You may have noticed that the first phrase of this C blues is completely diatonic first and includes major 7ths in the melody.
A good reminder that melodies don’t have to be complex or contain chromaticism – with strong melodic content and rhythm the basic chord tones of any chord can produce great ideas.
5. Barbados
Parker’s F blues Barbados is one of the more common tunes on this list and features a calypso feel and a more lyrical melody over the song form…
One of the distinctive parts of this melody is the unique sound of the b9 moving to the 13 on the C7 chord in the 2nd bar:
This figure happens once more in the final line of the tune and is a distinctive dominant alteration that resolves to I.
6. Mohawk
Mohawk is a Bb blues found on the classic 1950 record “Bird and Diz” with Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, Curly Russell, and Buddy Rich…
A prime example of a bebop melody that combines simple ideas like chord tones and riff motifs with more complex rhythmic concepts and harmonic alterations.
*Note the rhythmic content throughout that utilizes triplets, off-beat emphasis, and syncopation.
7. Visa
Parker’s C blues “Visa” is from a 1949 recording with Kenny Dorham, Al Haig, Tommy Potter, Max Roach, and Carlos Vidal.
Along with Bird’s sophisticated harmonic alterations on the V7 sounds, one of the interesting aspects of this melody is the rhythmic approach that creates a continual feeling of forward motion…
A great way to focus on this is to look at the melody notes without pitches, only in terms of rhythm:
This is a useful way to ingrain new rhythms and phrasing into your approach and spark new musical ideas over familiar tunes and progressions.
For instance, you might take the first and central rhythmic phrase as a starting point in your practice:
Try to create musical statements over the blues using this short rhythmic cell as a thematic jumping off point.
8. The Hymn
The Hymn is an uptempo blues in Bb that opens with Parker soloing for a few choruses and leads to a surprisingly relaxed and simple “hymn-like” melody:
Here an elongated diatonic melody is juxtaposed with a fast tempo – a half- time melody over a double-time feel.
This counter-intuitive approach to an up-tempo blues can create some new phrasing possibilities that we normally might not think of in our rush to play 8th notes…
For instance, with a whole note note or half note as your reference point to the time (rather than quarters) what musical ideas can you come up with?
9. Bird Feathers
Another blues from the 1947 Dial sessions, Bird Feathers is a Bb blues that also features Miles Davis, Duke Jordan, and Max Roach, who plays a solo chorus on this track:
In each of these melodies Parker employs a different rhythmic approach, and here, note how he is emphasizing the down beats of the important arrival chords in the progression.
In contrast to the up beat emphasis in other tunes, in this melody he begins on the downbeat, returns to I (Bb) on the downbeat, arrives on beat one of the IV, and so on…
10. Buzzy
From a 1947 Savoy record date with Miles Davis, Bud Powell, Tommy Potter and Max Roach, Buzzy is a simple Bb blues with a repeated motivic melody…
This is a riff based blues tune, like Now’s the Time or Cool Blues…where one simple motivic idea is repeated and applied to the entire form.
Along the way it is slightly altered to reflect the harmonic movement, changing the D to Db on the IV chord in the 5th bar.
This is a great way to move away from the scale, chord, theory mindset and more toward an open musical, thematic approach to the larger form – beginning with melody
Start with a riff or thematic musical idea that you develop patiently, focusing on musical ideas and phrasing, time & rhythm vs. only playing the “right” notes with the right chords.
