March 12, 1955: Charlie Parker Dies

March 12, 1955: Charlie Parker dies. For those who knew him, it was a tragedy, but not a shock.

Charles Parker Jr. -- apparently, his entire name -- was born on August 29, 1920 in Kansas City, Kansas. His father was a big influence, being both a musician and an alcoholic. Charlie took up the saxophone at 11, and dropped out of school at 15 to become a professional musician.

In late 1936, Parker and a Kansas City band traveled to the Ozark Mountains for the opening of Musser's Resort, outside Eldon, Missouri. The caravan of musicians had a car accident, and Parker broke 3 ribs and fractured his spine. A doctor prescribed morphine, which led to him becoming addicted to heroin, and also increasing his drinking to ease the pain.

A failed audition with Count Basie, then based in Kansas City, Missouri, led to him practicing 15 hours a day, until he became a master of improvisation. He married Rebecca Ruffin in 1936, and they had 2 children, but his growing substance abuse led her to leave him in 1939. He was still a teenager.

In 1940, he began working with pianist-bandleader Earl Hines, known as "Fatha" (as in, "Father"). It was in this band that he met John Birks "Dizzy" Gillespie. His nickname came not because he was seen to be crazy, the way baseball pitcher Jay "Dizzy" Dean was. In fact, he was among the most intelligent men ever to record music. Rather, "Dizzy" referred to the speed of his trumpet playing.

By 1945, Parker and Gillespie had developed the subset of jazz called "bebop," and became darlings of America's intellectuals and hipsters. The writers of the "Beat Generation" loved jazz, especially bebop, and wrote extensively about it, especially On the Road author Jack Kerouac.

But their work also led to a lot of imitation, as the sincerest form of flattery, or perhaps of outright theft. Charles Mingus, bass fiddle player and one of the greatest composers of jazz tunes, titled a song "Gunslinging Bird." He added "The subtitle was 'If Charlie Parker was a gunslinger, there'd be a whole lot of dead copycats.'" What he meant was, Parker didn't appreciate it, and, given a gun, would have taken matters into his own hands.

In spite of his drug use, he was never arrested. His nickname, "Bird," was short for "Yardbird," which suggested prison time, but he never spent more than the occasional night behind bars. However, he did suffer from mental illness, and in July 1946, he set the bed sheets of his Los Angeles hotel room on fire, then drunkenly ran naked through the lobby. He was committed to the Camarillo State Mental Hospital for 6 months.

Sadly, after his released, he didn't stay clean for long. He continued to record and play concerts, teaming up with the greats of jazz, frequently with Gillespie. But the drinking and the heroin took its toll. In 1955, Baroness Pannonica de Koenigswarter, a member of the Rothschild family, put him up at her suite in the Stanhope Hotel, at 995 5th Avenue on the Upper East Side. He was found there on the night of March 12, 1955, dead in a chair facing a television set, with the Dorsey Brothers' Stage Show on CBS airing.

The coroner determined that the cause of death was lobar pneumonia and a bleeding ulcer, but also found advanced cirrhosis and evidence of a previously undiagnosed heart attack. He estimated Parker's age to be between 50 and 60 years. In fact, he was 34. Gillespie paid for his funeral.

Parker's death came on the 33rd birthday of Jack Kerouac, who was deeply saddened by it. Kerouac would die as a result of his own alcoholism, on October 21, 1969 -- which was Gillespie's 52nd birthday. Gillespie, who never used a drug heavier than marijuana, lived until 1993.

The Stanhope Hotel is now a condo apartment complex, officially known by its address, 995 Fifth Avenue. A plaque was placed outside his final permanent residence, at 151 Avenue B, on the Lower East Side, facing Tompkins Square Park. Avenue B from East 9th to 10th Street is now Charlie Parker Way.

From 1948 to 1955, my mother and my grandparents lived around the corner on East 9th Street. When I watched Ken Burns' Jazz miniseries in 2001, and found out that Parker lived around the corner, I mentioned it to my mother and my grandmother. Neither of them had any idea of who he was. Neither was a jazz fan. On a 2015 trip back to her old neighborhood, Mom saw the street sign and the plaque. It's entirely possible she saw Charlie Parker in her neighborhood a hundred times, and had no idea that he was one of the most beloved musicians on Earth.

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March 12, 1955 was a Saturday. Baseball All-Star Ruppert Jones was born on this day.

Baseball was in Spring Training. Football was out of season. There were 3 games played in the NBA:

* The Syracuse Nationals beat the Fort Wayne Pistons, 112-92 at the Onondaga County War Memorial (now the Upstate Medical University Arena) in Syracuse, New York.

* The Rochester Royals beat the Boston Celtics, 105-103 at the Edgerton Park Arena in Rochester, New York. Bill Sharman scored 37 points for the Celtics.

* And the Minneapolis Lakers beat the Philadelphia Warriors, 86-78 at the Minneapolis Auditorium.

All 6 of these teams are still playing in the NBA, but only the Celtics are in the same city. The Pistons moved to Detroit in 1957. The same year, the Royals moved to Cincinnati; then to Kansas City in 1972, where they became the Kings; and again in 1985, to Sacramento. The Lakers moved to Los Angeles in 1960. The Warriors moved to San Francisco in 1962, and have been known as the Golden State Warriors since 1971. And the Nationals moved in 1963, becoming the Philadelphia 76ers.

The NHL's entire "Original Six" were in action:

* The New York Rangers beat the Toronto Maple Leafs, 2-1 at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto.

* The Montreal Canadiens beat the Boston Bruins, 2-1 at the Montreal Forum.

* And the Detroit Red Wings beat the Chicago Black Hawks, 3-2 at the Olympia Stadium in Detroit.

And in English soccer, Arsenal beat Birmingham team Aston Villa, 2-0 at the Arsenal Stadium, a.k.a. Highbury, in North London.