TONYA MOSLEY, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. Jazz pianist Bud Powell was born Sept. 27, 1924. Jazz historian Kevin Whitehead, says Powell's life was often a nightmare. He was shy and withdrawn, even before getting severely beaten by Philadelphia Transit Police in 1945. After that, he was in and out of mental health facilities for years and frequently treated with shock therapy. Folks who looked after him didn't always do right by him. But Kevin says Bud Powell's music is a different story. More than anyone, he set the style for jazz piano after World War II.

(SOUNDBITE OF BUD POWELL'S "DANCE OF THE INFIDELS")

KEVIN WHITEHEAD, BYLINE: Bud Powell live at New York's Birdland, 1953. In a way, all improvising is autobiographical, revealing a player's history, training, tastes and strengths. So we look to improvisers' lives to illuminate their art. But with Bud Powell, there's often a striking disconnect between the hectic life and orderly improvising. Some Bud watchers focus on the gloom. Like other pianists, he absentmindedly sang along with his right hand in solidarity with his instrument. But when Bud did it, some folks wonder, was that singing along, a cry of pain? It can sound more like laughter.

(SOUNDBITE OF BUD POWELL'S "BLUE PEARL")

WHITEHEAD: Encouraged by fellow pianist, Thelonious Monk, Bud Powell came up in the mid-1940s, a split second behind the bebop pioneers who were revolutionizing jazz, rhythm and harmony, complicating everything. First among revolutionaries was saxophonist Charlie Parker, with his quicksilver timing, offbeat phrasing and right-sounding wrong notes.

(SOUNDBITE OF CHARLIE PARKER'S "BUZZY")

WHITEHEAD: Parker's solo language, his whole feeling, was hugely influential. All of a sudden, trombonists, drummers, pianists - they all aimed a phrase with Charlie Parker's speed and elegance, Bud Powell included.

(SOUNDBITE OF CHARLIE PARKER'S "BUZZY")

WHITEHEAD: Bud Powell couldn't really be a Charlie Parker copycat since he didn't play a horn. A well-trained pianist with technique to burn, Bud sat up straight on the bench, not even glancing at the keys. While his right hand sang like a bird, his grunting or murmuring left hand went its own way. Earlier jazz pianists played busy bass patterns that drove the music's rhythm. Think of boogie-woogie. Bud Powell helped establish a new, more fragmented, punctuating role for left hand, a little revolution in itself. Rhythmic dialogue between hands propels the beat.

(SOUNDBITE OF BUD POWELL TRIO'S "BUD'S BUBBLE")

WHITEHEAD: Bebop drum virtuoso Max Roach, whose own centennial was in January. That's 1947's "Bud's Bubble," one of several Powell titles, alluding to his withdrawn nature, which did leave some audible traces on his music. Bud liked his minor keys, and the repetitions embedded in his 1953 composition "Glass Enclosure" do convey a boxed-in feeling.

(SOUNDBITE OF BUD POWELL'S "GLASS ENCLOSURE")

WHITEHEAD: Bud Powell's live and recorded work was inconsistent during and after the years he was in and out of mental health facilities. Sometimes he was released just in time to fulfill a nightclub engagement, and sometimes people assumed that to be true when it wasn't. Five later years he spent in Paris were memorialized in the 1986 movie "Round Midnight," about an expat American jazz man who arrives in rough shape and barely hangs on. But on the last album Powell made before heading to Paris, 1958's "The Scene Changes," he plays with clear authority and few missteps. This is "Crossin' The Channel."

(SOUNDBITE OF BUD POWELL'S "CROSSIN' THE CHANNEL")

WHITEHEAD: That last episode, where both hands played the same line in octaves, was a retort to older pianists who accused him of having a weak left hand. On the same date, Bud Powell cut the pointedly lighthearted tune "Borderick," which he'd improvised one night to amuse his 3-year-old son. A seldom discussed tune at odds with the tragic Bud stereotype, it reminds us Bud Powell's music contained light and joy, as well as dark clouds. Call it a triumph of exuberance over bleak experience.

(SOUNDBITE OF BUD POWELL'S "BORDERICK")

MOSLEY: Kevin Whitehead is the author of "Play The Way You Feel: The Essential Guide To Jazz Stories On Film," "Why Jazz?" and "New Dutch Swing," which has just been reissued. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF GERALD CLAYTON'S "SOUL STOMP") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

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