Charlie had a smile like a lighthouse. He had this smile that would just shatter you. I mean he loved to laugh and live life. He just used to think, 'man, I'm gonna run it through, and I'm not going to end up like those other cats beaten by life.
Bird soars gracefully when he play it seems so effortless and natural for him, as natural as a humming bird in fast tempo or as majestic as an eagle, each note as definite as a wing beat. Iused to sit in with Bird most every time he played in NYC, from 1944 until his death in 1955.

BIRD use to come up my house, a fifth floor walk-up loft on 4th Avenue and 8th Street
I'd say, 'Hey, Bird' and he'd usually say, 'Hey, Tony', nice and cheerful, and drink up whatever I had around, maybe orange juice, maybe a bottle of Harper's somebody'd gave me because I didn't have money to buy no bottle. Man, my electric light was off all the time, couldn't pay the bill, and Conn - Edison was like right across the way, lit up all night with millions of bulbs, and I didn't have one in the house. So Bird comes up - 'Hey, Bird' - but he just kept coming towards me not saying anything.
He put his two hand on my throat. 'Tony, if I ever hear you use drugs I'll kill you with these hands'. Bird would never let me in the club without my clarinet. I had to blow with him. Bird could've been anything he wanted. He talked to my mother once for an hour. She was 63. What had black Charlie Parker from a Kansas City ghetto, jazz musician, genius, gonna talk to a 63-year.old Sicilian woman about? I asked her but she couldn't remember. I wanted to choke my mother, man! I once had a girlfriend and her mother was a white woman - I mean WHITE like she didn't know black people existed.
Charlie was at my house, and she was there with her five-year-old kid, and the little boy looked at him and said 'Your skin is brown! Bird went into the whole story, 'Yes, there are many people in the world…' Then this woman got into astrology and Bird took that over like she musta thought Bird was an astrologer, you know.
One time, I was living over café Society and I decided to cook some veal scaloppini for Bird. The lid fell off the pepper right into the works. I knew Bird had ulcers, so I warned him about the pepper, not to eat the meal, but he said he had these pills for the ulcer. I said, 'Don't eat it, man. I don't wanna be walking down the street with people pointing and spitting me, saying, 'He killed Bird'. Bird said, 'Don't worry Tony. I'm gonna take three pills'.
It was cool, but I never cooked that meal again.
©Tony Scott