GRGR(5) - Cherokee and bebop

[Michael Arnowitt]

In the discussion opener for GRGR(5):
10) Cherokee and Charlie Parker? (63.22-64.7) Ok, anyone want to go
    into Charlie Parker's history and the development of bebop? Ditto
    for how bebop takes an existing song and transforms it (I have
    been told that it is something to do with transposing but changing
    the harmonic relations at the same time - does this mean it
    actually falls into line as a transform along the lines of thsoe
    used by the serial composers i.e. a perm of the scale?). A bebop
    buff of my acquaintance (who has been a jazz freak since the days
    of Berlin's US forces radio in the 50s) tells me that Cherokee is
    a classic example of a bebop anthem. Parker had to use well-known
    tunes like Cherokee since what he did was so wild that the band
    could only follow if they knew how to play the number blindfold.
    It also fits this scene because it invokes cowboy and indian
    memories for Slothrop.

I doubt that bebop jazz improvisers used serial transformations (inversion,
retrograde, and retrograde inversion) as classical composers do ... but now
that you mention it, the notes of the tune "Cherokee" itself start out as a
little palindrome:

D - F - G - B flat - G - F - D

So notes 4 through 7 are a retrograde of notes 1 through 4.  Serial
composers like Anton Webern (one of Schoenberg's students) loved these sorts
of mirrors in their themes.

In fact, the rise and fall of the theme could remind one of the shape of a
rocket:

   Bb
 FG  GF
D      D

(kind of an A-shape...)

I have only heard "Cherokee" as an instrumental improv, never sung.  Does
anyone know the words?  I always imagined it was called Cherokee because the
beginning of the tune, quoted above, uses a pentatonic (simple 5-note) scale
stereotypically thought to be characteristic of tribal music ... 

Of course, Charlie Parker's improvising is anything but pentatonic, as
Pynchon mentions.  The contrast between the simple fake-Indian pentatonic
theme in basic whole notes and Bird's inspired and advanced torrent o' notes
is indeed striking.

I'm quite new to the list and have been especially enjoying the GRGR.  As a
classical pianist I'm used to the slow, deliberate examination of a text ...
"God is in the details," and all that.  Anyway, good to be on board -- have
been doing my share of "floundering in the channel" myself recently ...

Michael