IMPORTANT FACTS

1. In the first half of the 20th century, many Jazz greats turned to heroin and illicit drugs to block out the powerful effects of racism, including Billie Holiday, Bud Powell and Charlie �Bird� Parker.

2. Often the artists would be prescribed powerful mind-numbing tranquilizers that were more addictive than the substance they were trying to withdraw from.

3. Charlie �Bird� Parker was subjected to powerful psychotropic drugs that affected him physically. He narrowly escaped electroshock treatment when a doctor recognized it would ruin his performance ability.

4. When Bud Powell was admitted to a psychiatric facility after being beaten up by police, psychiatrists refused to believe that he was a pianist and composer and diagnosed him with �delusions of grandeur� and put him in a straitjacket. He was electroshocked and drugged, which eventually led to his deterioration and death.

CHAPTER FOUR Targeting Icons of Jazz

Billie Holiday�s trade song, �Strange Fruit,� was a powerful commentary on racism, particularly the murder of Southern black men by white lynching parties. Holiday spoke of the effects of racism: While performing with Count Basie in Detroit, she was told by white club owners that her face was �too yellow to sing with all the black men in his band. Somebody might think I was white if the light didn�t hit me just right. So they got special dark grease paint and told me to put it on. � I said I wouldn�t do it. But they had our name on the contracts, and if I refused it might have played hell with the bookings, not just for me, but for the future of all the cats in the band.�

Jazz Education writer, Scotty Wright, reported that even famous African-American jazz musicians would suffer tremendous insults due to the color of their skin. As a result, there were a �heartbreaking number of musicians who turned to substance abuse, trying to block out the pain and indignity of their offstage existence, in order to be more open to and at peace with their art onstage.�

Heroin did to many jazz musicians in the 1930s and 1940s what psychedelics and tranquilizers did
to rock musicians in the 1960s. Depressing the nervous system, heroin creates an illusion of �fearlessness and confidence, making players believe they could accomplish daring runs with carefree abandon.�

The casualty list was high: Billie Holiday, Bud Powell, Charlie Parker and more.

Trusting psychiatry to �cure� their addictions was a fatal mistake.

In 1946, Holiday tried to kick her heroin habit, admitting herself to a private psychiatric facility, publicly claiming she was there for treatment of a nervous breakdown. She paid $2000 for a three-week �treatment��a huge sum for its time. Within a year of her �therapy,� however, she was arrested on drug charges and her working card�needed to perform in New York cabarets�was cancelled. Her drug problems continued to worsen and she died while under house arrest for drug possession in a city hospital in July 1959.

Charlie �Bird� Parker was born in 1920. By the age of 15 he was a working musician, bringing innovative ideas to jazz and later, with others, creating bebop, which was considered to reflect the pain and despair of ghetto Blacks. In 1946, �Bird� was arrested in Los Angeles for drug possession and was incarcerated in Camarillo state psychiatric institution. He narrowly escaped being given electroshock after a medical doctor, Richard Freeman, intervened, saying, �It could permanently impair Parker�s reflexes, reduce him to a manageable personality [and] a very average musician.� However, he was still prescribed powerful psychotropic drugs. After being discharged from the psychiatric facility, he returned to the same racist and drug-ridden environment he was raised in. On March 12, 1955, �Bird� died of a heart attack caused by a drug and alcohol-related condition. He was 34 years old.

Bud Powell did for the piano what Charlie �Bird� Parker did for the saxophone. He also helped create bebop. Born in Harlem in 1924, Powell was a child prodigy. By the time he was seven, neighborhood musicians would take him with them so others could admire his playing. He made his first recordings when he was 19.

In 1945, suffering the effects of a severe police beating, Powell was admitted to Belleview psychiatric facility for evaluation. On the admission form he wrote under occupation: �Pianist and composer of over 1,000 songs.� The psychiatrist diagnosed this as �delusions of grandeur� and put him in a straitjacket. Spending most of the year recovering from the beating and treatment he received, he suffered excruciating headaches, seizures and erratic behavior. In 1947, shortly after composing �Celia,� a tribute to his daughter, he was institutionalized for 11 months. While Charlie Parker had escaped electroshock because of the known irreparable damage it would do to his musical ability, Powell wasn�t as fortunate. Friend Jackie Maclean said, �Bud didn�t remember too much, actually, about his life prior to going to the hospital because of the [ECT] treatment they had given him � I�d mention names to him and he had to stop and think and ask me, �Who?��

Arrested in 1951 on a narcotics charge, Powell was incarcerated in Pilgrim state psychiatric institution for another 11 months and subjected to more electroshock; his health began to deteriorate rapidly. In 1959, he moved to France where he continued being given Thorazine, a powerful tranquilizer known as the �chemical lobotomy.�

By 1964 Powell was bloated, his eyes vacant and he walked with a shuffle that betrayed his drugged condition. He died on August 16 of that year from a combination of liver failure, TB and malnutrition. Five thousand people lined the streets of Harlem to honor him on his last journey.

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