Charlie Parker

AKA:

Bird

Birth Name:

Charles Parker Jr.

Birth Date:

August 29, 1920

Birth Place:

Kansas City, Kansas

Death Date:

March 12, 1955

Place of Death:

The Stanhope Hotel, New York, New York

Age:

Cause of Death:

Pneumonia, a bleeding ulcer, cirrhosis of the liver and a heart attack

Cemetery Name:

www.lincolncemeterykc.com

Claim to Fame:

Music

Charlie Parker was a highly influential soloist and leading figure in the development of bebop jazz characterized by fast tempos, virtuosic technique, and advanced harmonies. Parker was a blazingly fast virtuoso and introduced revolutionary harmonic ideas into jazz, including rapid passing chords, new variants of altered chords, and chord substitutions. Often accompanied by the likes of Miles Davis, John Lewis, Dizzy Gillespie, Duke Jordan, or Max Roach, Parker's wild excesses never seemed—at least until the very end of his life—to interfere with his music.

Fun Fact

We have all heard the tales of his extraordinary capacity for drugs. But his addiction went way beyond and, unlike most addicts, Parker was also a glutton, an alcoholic, and a man of insatiable sexual needs. He would eat twenty hamburgers in a row, drink sixteen double whiskeys in a couple of hours, and go to bed with two women at once. At times, he went berserk, and would throw his saxophone out a hotel window or walk into the ocean in a brand-new suit. So it comes as no surprise in 1946 that he collapsed and spent six months in a state mental hospital in California.