friendship, something i never knew so that is a great book today i think it will be billed for baseball fans this summer. so that is my list and i'm looking forward to reading them all. >> he was one of the finest american musicians and he was what is often called a genius or the word genius is used by the data that is the advertising now. but charlie parker is with the word genius means.

he not only was there a remarkable what instruments but embodied what the power is which is the ability to be able to play and hear. much of his early life was learning how to hear because a jazz musician has the context that it's improvising and to add to that the digital speed that is going on all around them. some charlie parker became of that ability to the it's not magic, but people don't usually know that that is what a person has to do. >> is all jazz improvisers? >> no but a majority of it is.

some people have written composed pieces and which every note that you hear has been previously written and the players are actually performing this written conversation -- composition they don't make anything up they just covered it with different nuances and so the artistry is like that of an actor. if you play hamlet you are going to say to be or not to be. but it is the way you say it that makes it artistic. a jazz musician is like an actor

that has been reacting to other actors and makes up his own part and it has to go with what the other people are saying to him so it makes sense. the achievement itself been is that human beings can actually respond that quickly to each other and to order. the chaos is not the problem. it's still a bunch of lies but when you get a baseline and a piano part that sounds good and horn part that sounds good that is remarkable. but people have to learn how to do that. and charlie parker had to learn how to do it like everybody

else. >> where is he from and where did he live? >> from 1920 to 1955. >> 35 years? >> no, he didn't get to 35. he died at 34, six months or so before his birthday. but he grew up in the wild west because he grew up in a totally corrupt town in which the mayor was no good. i meant me corrupt as an achievement of that is what people think then the mayor of kansas city that were there, he was a very successful major.

the mafia was there and one of the guys in the book says well in kansas city, people didn't have locks on their doors because they stayed open all the time committee never closed. so whatever you wanted you could get that. if you wanted to gamble, you could get a. whenever you wanted, legal or illegal it was always available to the use of charlie parker grew up in that world and part of what he learned when he was a kid was whatever happens in life and there's always the opposite version of it so when he was a kid he had so many things come to him so fast he learned people

live one way during the day and another and so one of his jobs when he was 15-years-old they put on shows upstairs on saturday night so she's sitting there on the bandstand seeing these women dance around, said on tables and move money. then they would stand up and the money would be gone. they would see women have sex with other women and with other men and he's sitting their playing while all of this is going on. so he didn't grow up in the world that [inaudible] he definitely was and when he left, so it's kind of startling

to realize in our era that there were people that lived even more extreme than modern american people do. there was no place necessarily that you and i could immediately go speak to if you lived in kansas city in 1935 you could have done it and so that is part of what the story is. and all of these guys created this music in the middle of all of that. and that's part of the -- there's still something the human beings respond to that has nothing to do with the context that may be completely corrupt

because that is one of charlie parker's big influences. they used to work outside of his club in kansas city and they would tell each other i like the saxophone he plays to me we are talking about people who live reputable lives but there was something beautiful. they might have lived under garbage most of the time but some kind of way there was something that allow them to respond to something beautiful. >> [inaudible] at the time that charlie parker grew up? >> it was fairly segregated.

>> was that an issue? >> it wasn't really an issue after dark because they will tell you that while you could actually live in an integrated world when it was early in the morning after hours and the was treen louisiana and new orleans it was in a lot of places. in fact, the local government were resistant to the jazz world they didn't say you're white,

you shouldn't know him or you're jewish, you shouldn't know him. that was all second base stuff in the jazz world. if you could play, you could play. and if you couldn't play, you couldn't play. if you couldn't play, they didn't need it any easier for you. if you could play, then it wasn't a liability. that was all second base stuff. >> stanley crouch, his new book is "kansas city lightning: the rise and times of charlie parker." he's also the author of the all american scan a game and columnist at the daily news. what do you write about at the daily news? >> well, american life. this country is a constantly remarkable occasion because no matter how bad things get in america, there is always something good that happens.

it may not be the one you want, but it will remain over time. the steady women's liberation, segregated of racism and all of these things might have been strong for that certain times, but the opposition continues to grow. it basically overwhelms. now the problem is never completely overwhelmed. but even segregation today that is how much ground they lost over the years so that's one of the things i'm most fascinated by is how americans continually find out a way to judge each

other on a human basis. it doesn't mean we are going to like anybody or that you're not going to like them. but it means that you are better off to deal with a human being as a human being that the person is a variation on the stereotype because i was arguing with my daughter at 15 you're not giving me an opportunity. you don't understand me. i said well look [inaudible] i said well people have always felt the same way because they

have always known what being human is. everything that you and i are excited by and some people long before we were born and actually felt when we encounter this and then we feel that we are spoken for previously. the country remains a symbol to everybody in the world of the best way to go. >> why did charlie parker die at 34? >> welcome he lived a very self-destructive life as he became a drug addict when he was

about 17. he had such an incredible well that he was able to master the saxophone and a play jazz and then from then he was able to find his own way to go and was so powerful that it influenced a lot of other people. >> and we have been talking with stanley s.p.a., a columnist for the new york daily news. this book is coming out in september of 2013, "kansas city lightning: the rise and times of charlie parker." this is book tv on c-span2. making a transition from journalism to books is accelerating and completely overwhelming and frightening that wonderful. >> why did you make that choice? >> i had long wanted to been working on a book because of the freedom that is allowed to you

to die even to a topic and go off on tangents and have enough time to really explore. up next, jessica wapner come author of "the philadelphia chromosome" talks about the discovery of a mutant, is owned by a scientist in 1959 and the eventual realization decades later that the mutation is the cause of a certain kind of leukemia. this led to the first ever successful treatment of cancer at the genetic level and opened up a new field of cancer