In discussing the trajectory of jazz as a form of expression a few folks are always going to be touched upon. Before getting into that, though, it’s important to distinguish between disparate players and the time periods in which each played.

The intended purpose of King Oliver and his Creole Jazz band, for instance, is drastically different than whatever the goal of David Sanborn is today. Jazz was for a good long while thought of as a dance music. It may well have been, but the various tributaries that flowed into the genre eventually made it something else.

So despite King Oliver (most likely thinking) in terms of just simple entertainment and David Sanborn looking to extol the virtues of his heroes while attempting to exhibit his musical prowess, there were other folks in between that had their own ideas.

It’s debatable as to whether or not music should rightly be considered art - and if dance music qualifies as such. It has become pretty clear that jazz, at some point, though, became an art. The genre isn’t necessarily a movement per se, but there are sundry derivations that might help define it in such terms – variations on a theme, if you will.

It’s a contentious point to name a single player as the beginning point of when the genre gained this artful edge. Early player who solidified genre tropes should be recognized. And there must be someone prior to John Coltrane that would qualify as the beginning point.

That person might be Charlie Parker. Somewhere along the way jazz players became tired of the swing thing that so characterized the genre. In smaller combos, it would seem, players might be able to better express themselves instead of being drowned out in the maelstrom of sound.

It’s difficult to tell if Parker’s intention was to change the genre. He did, after all, come up in larger bands and was still able to acquire enough musical knowledge to improvise and construct charts that no one had dreamed of previously. But regardless of his intent, jazz wouldn’t ever be the same. His arrival affected the genre in much the same way that Coltrane’s Giant Steps would in a few decades.

Distilling Parker’s legacy, though, is a difficult task. Wrongly overshadowing much of his work, the sax player struggled with drugs. And while it might make for an interesting narrative for a film – Bird shouldn’t really count as interesting and just barely as a film, even if Forrest Whittaker is a tremendous talent – the abuse of heroin is really just a side note in Parker’s career.

Working to define him, though, are a slew of compilations. Savoy got in the act during the late ‘80s and issued a two disc set of Parker’s work. There would be a spate of more thorough round-ups, but there are only so many takes of any one song that a listener needs to be privy to. The Savoy Recordings (Master Takes) doesn’t answer the question “Is this art?” But the discs might point one in the right direction.