Jack Kerouac, Charlie Parker, and the Poetics of Beat Improvisation

Abstract

On March 12, 1955, the Baroness Pannonica de Koenigswarter found her houseguest’s dead body sprawled across the sofa. He had arrived three days earlier on his way to a club performance in Boston suffering from an aggravated ulcer, but he refused to check into a hospital despite a doctor’s urging. Legend has him dying in front of the television, laughing at jugglers on the Dorsey Brothers Show. The death certificate estimated his age at between fifty and sixty, but Charlie (“Bird”) Parker was only thirty-four years old.