Charles Parker, Jr.
“Yardbird” and “Bird”,
August 29, 1920 – March 12, 1955
Grammy Award
Hall of Fame jazz saxophonist and composer
Charles Parker Jr. was born in Kansas City, Kansas. He lived and was raised in Kansas City. He was the only child of Adelaide “Addie” (Bailey) and Charles Parker. He attended Lincoln High School. He dropped out of school just before joining the local musicians’ union. Parker began playing the saxophone at the age of eleven and by 1938 was touring nightclubs and other venues in the southwest. Drugs also became a recreational drug for him. He eventually became an addict which also contributed to his death later in life. In 1939, Parker moved to New York City where on November 26, 1945 he led a recording session for the Savoy label marketed as the “greatest jazz session ever.” During his career, Parker played a leading role in the development of bebop and his innovative approaches exercised enormous influence on his contemporaries.
Parker died on March 12, 1955, in the suite of his friend and patroness Baroness Pannonica de Koenigswarter at the Stanhope Hotel in New York City. The official causes of death were lobar pneumonia and a bleeding ulcer, but Parker also had an advanced case of cirrhosis and had suffered a heart attack. The coroner who performed his autopsy mistakenly estimated Parker’s 34-year-old body to be between 50 and 60 years of age.
Since 1950, Parker had been living with Chan Berg, the mother of his son Baird (who lived until 2014) and his daughter Pree (who died as an infant of cystic fibrosis). He considered Chan his wife although he never married her, nor did he divorce his previous wife, Doris, whom he had married in 1948. His marital status complicated the settling of Parker’s estate and would ultimately serve to frustrate his wish to be quietly interred in New York City.
Parker wished never to return to Kansas City, even in death. He had told Chan that he wanted to be buried in New York, the city he considered his home. Dizzy Gillespie paid for the funeral arrangements and organized a lying-in-state, a Harlem procession officiated by Congressman and Reverend Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. as well as a memorial concert. Parker’s body was flown back to Missouri, in accordance with his mother’s wishes. Parker’s widow criticized the dead man’s family for giving him a Christian funeral even though they knew he was a confirmed atheist. Parker was buried at Lincoln Cemetery in Missouri, in a hamlet known as Blue Summit, located close to I-435 and east Truman road.
Parker’s estate is managed by CMG Worldwide..
In 1955, Parker was posthumously inducted into the Down Beat Jazz Hall of Fame, in 1979 he was inducted into the Big Band Hall of Fame, in 1984 he was honored with a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, the United States Postal Service issued a commemorative postage stamp in his honor in 1995, and in 2002 the Library of Congress added his recording “Ko-Ko” (1945) to the National Recording Registry as a recording of “cultural, historical, or aesthetical importance.” HIs recordings “Billie’s Bounce” (1945), “Ornithology” (1946), “Charlie Parker with Strings” (1950), and “Jazz at Massey Hall” (1953) were inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame as having “qualitative or historical significance.” Much has been written about Parker, including “Charlie Parker” (1960) and “Bird: The Legend of Charlie Parker” (1962) and in 1988 the biographical film “Bird” was released. A memorial to Parker featuring a 10 foot tall bronze head was dedicated March 27, 1999. It is located in Kansas City near the American Jazz Museum.