Good Job (He Was a Beautiful Player)

[Dialogue]

Fletcher: I told you the story about how Charlie Parker became Charlie Parker, right?

Andrew: Yeah. Joe Jones threw a cymbal at his head.

Fletcher: Exactly. Parker's a young kid, pretty good on the sax. Gets up to play at a cutting session. And Jones nearly decapitates him for it. And he's laughed off stage. Cries himself to sleep that night, but the next morning, what does he do? He practices.

And he practices, and he practices with one goal in mind: Never to be laughed at again. And a year later, he goes back to the Reno, and he steps up on that stage and he plays the best solo the world has ever heard.

So imagine if Jones had just said, "Well, that's okay Charlie- Ahh, that was alright. Good job."

And Charlie thinks to himself, "I did do a pretty good job." End of story. No bird... That, to me, is an absolute tragedy. But that's just what the world wants now. People wonder why jazz is dying.

I tell you, man, and every Starbucks "jazz" album just proves my point, really; there are no two words in the English language more harmful than "Good job."