The way so many musicians slavishly imitated Coltrane, that’s the way it was with Charlie Parker – only even more so, if that can be imagined. Everyone that I knew changed totally. But they took the worst things of his playing-that harsh sound; it just didn’t come off the way they did it. The way he did it was great, Their way wasn’t good at all. I just would listen to ’em, say: ‘That’s a Bird imitator’, and that would be it; I would never care to listen to them again.
