Selmer England 40ff40 Metal Alto Saxophone Mouthpiece: The Parker Piece (Extremely Rare)

Description

Here’s a little historical research on Charlie Parker’s mouthpiece and recordings done by the guy who is consigning this mouthpiece. I don’t know for sure that it’s entirely accurate, so if you’re a Charlie Parker history buff and you want to improve this or suggest changes, let me know! 

I have done some research into CP´s setup over the years (mostly pictorial evidence), and my conclusion is that he played all kinds of horns and mpcs in the 40´s but not so in the 50´s. From fall 1949 onwards he seems to have played very consistently a King Super 20 alto and a Selmer ff40ff metal mouthpiece. He had the Grafton plastic alto (#10265) as backup horn, but used the same mpc on that one. 

His King Super 20 was serial # 295173: https://www.si.edu/object/alto-saxophone-owned-and-played-charlie-parker%3Anmaahc_2019.10.1a-g

Note that the mouthpiece in the pictures is one that probably ended up in the case after Parker´s death. At the time of his death, the horn had been pawned, sold to somebody else and it took his widow a year and a half to find it and get it back, from a different city. When she got it back it had several mouthpieces in the case (but not the Selmer 40ff40), including a clarinet mouthpiece, an instrument Parker is not known to have played at all. I have never seen any pictures of him playing a metal Otto Link mouthpiece like the one in the pictures of the horn at the Smithsonian). I believe it was common to – at least try to – avoid pawning their favorite mouthpiece when having to pawn a horn.

The King had «Charlie Parker» engraved on the bell-to-bow ring and a silver bell with gold inlays. In this serial number range, sterling silver bell was an option on Super 20s, before the Silversonic was introduced as a regular model later. A very similar horn, engraved with «Chester Hazlett» appeared on eBay some years ago, with a serial # within 10 of Charlie Parker´s horn. This could indicate a short run of «artist» models made specifically for King endorsers, which I belive they both were, at that time. I have seen a picture of Parker with the horn that I believe was from November 27th, 1949, but in any case it appears in the pictures from the first Strings sessions November 30th 1949. He clearly played a different horn and mouthpiece at the Paris jazz festival in May of that year, so it seems he got the King and Selmer mouthpiece sometime between those dates.

On all pictures of him with the Super 20, where it can be identified, the mouthpiece is a Selmer 40ff40 Made in England. Of the pictures where the mouthpiece cannot be identified, I have never seen one where it is clearly NOT the Selmer. The same applies to pictures of him playing the Grafton, most notably on the Jazz at the Massey Hall where pictures show the Selmer mouthpiece. 

The original ligature with the Selmer 40ff40 was Otto Link STM-style with one vertically mounted screw on the bottom. It appears that he used the original ligature for about a year (at least until the September 1950 sessions with Coleman Hawkins), then a two-screw regular Selmer type lig and finally a one-screw-on-top lig (for example the Funky Blues sessions with Benny Carter/Johnny Hodges 1952).

Below are a few examples where the Selmer 40ff40 can be identified in pictures, in chronological order:

• Sessions with strings November 30th 1949:
  
• Opening night at Birdland, December 15th 1949:
• Benefit for Buddy Stewart at Birdland, March 24th 1950:
• Gigs at Birdland alongside Dizzy Gillespie July-August 1950
• Film session with Coleman Hawkins (Ballade/Celerity, miming to the soundtrack they recorded the day before), early September 1950
• Tour of Sweden and Paris November 18th – December 2nd 1950. Very clear pictures, two-screws-on-the-bottom-ligature replaces the original:
• Gig at Lindsay´s, Cleveland May 1951
• The televised Down Beat award clip with Dizzy February 24th 1952 (the only film of Parker playing, with the actual sound – youtube). A one-screw-on-top-ligature seems to have replaced the two-screw-lig from here on
• Gigs at the Tiffany Club in LA, late May – early June 1952 with Chet Baker:
• Session on June 5th 1952 with Johnny Hodges, Benny Carter and Flip Phillips (Funky Blues, etc). Very clear pictures:
• Hartnett studios session late January 1953:
• The Massey Hall concert on May 15th 1953:
• Gigs at Birdland late May 1953
• Gig at the Open Door, NY, September 13th 1953 (famous picture with Thelonious Monk):
• Gigs at the Bee Hive, Chicago, November – December 1953 (Selmer mouthpiece, but the horn is not the King nor the Grafton):
• Gigs at the Bee Hive, Chicago, February 1955:

I think there is a strong case for that from late 1949 onwards, unlike in his career before that point, he consistently played the same equipment – a King Super 20 with a Selmer 40ff40 mouthpiece, with the occasional use of a Grafton horn with the same mouthpiece.

In terms pictures with a different horn and mouthpiece in that period, I´ve seen very few. There are some from a package tour “West Coast in Jazz” where he played with Chet Baker, alongside the Brubeck Quartet in November 1953. He  allegedly borrowed Paul Desmond´s horn for some dates, but I cannot tell whether this is the horn and mouthpiece he is playing in the pictures I´ve seen.

Note that I´m not a scholar, these are merely my thoughts from looking at a lot of pictures and trying to draw some conclusions. My main sources are the books “Bird´s diary” by Ken Vail, “Charlie Parker i Sverige” (Charlie Parker in Sweden) by Martin Westin as well as online sources such as https://www.birdlives.co.uk/home .