Chicago Saxophonist Walter Parazaider Dead at 81

Tribute

The band formed in Parazaider's basement in 1967, and he remained a pivotal part of their sound until he was forced to step aside in 2018 to battle Alzheimer's

Walter Parazaider, a founding member of Chicago who played several wind instruments in the band, including sax, flute, and clarinet, died June 17 after a long battle with Alzheimer’s disease. He was 81. Rolling Stone has confirmed his death.

Parazaider’s long tenure in Chicago stretched from their earliest incarnation in 1967 until 2018, when he stepped off the road due to health issues. Along the way, he played thousands of concerts, appeared on nearly all of the group’s albums, and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2016.

“He had put up a good fight with Alzheimer’s and unfortunately it ended tonight,” his wife JacLynn told TMZ. “We are going to miss him.”

Chicago formed in Parazaider’s basement on February 15, 1967, when the group played together for the first time after coming together at Chicago’s DePaul University. “We sat around my kitchen table and said, ‘Let’s make a band that’s the best in the world,'” Parazaider recalled to Classic Rock in 2015. “My idea was to make horns an integral part of a rock band. In that sense, we blazed the trail. We had lofty ideas and hopes. We were young and ignorant.”

After becoming a popular live band around Chicago — fueled by the guitar virtuosity of Terry Kath, the vocals of bassist Peter Cetera and keyboardist Robert Lamm, and the crisp horn blend of Parazaider, trumpet player Lee Loughnane, and trombonist James Pankow — they began touring nationally. “We played at the Whisky A Go Go in Los Angeles in 1968 and afterwards there was a tap on my shoulder,” Parazaider told Classic Rock. “Jimi Hendrix looked me straight in the eye and said: ‘The horns are one set of lungs. And your guitar player is better than I am.'”

Chicago signed with CBS Records and cut their self-titled debut LP in 1969. It was their first time in a studio, and they were terrified. “We were sort of in a circle,” Parazaider said in the 2016 documentary Now More Than Ever: The History of Chicago. “And for myself, personally, I think maybe Lee and Jimmy, we didn’t want to look at each other since we were afraid if we looked at one of the other guys, we’d make them make a mistake.”

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Once they shook off the nerves, Chicago cut a masterful debut packed with songs like “Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?,” “Beginnings,” “Questions 67 and 68,” and a cover of the Spencer Davis Group’s “I’m a Man” that remain staples of their live shows. The album flew up the charts and earned the group a Best New Artist Grammy nomination. (They were known as the Chicago Transit Authority for their first album, but were forced to shorten it to Chicago before the second one due to legal pressure from the actual Chicago Transit Authority.)

Chicago were one of the most popular groups of the Seventies thanks to “Saturday in the Park,” “Feelin’ Stronger Every Day,” “Old Days,” and many other hits. In 1976, they hit Number One with the soft rock ballad “If You Leave Me Now.” Some of their older fans didn’t love the new direction, even if it brought them a larger audience. “The song was Number One in every country in the world,” Loughnane told Rolling Stone earlier this year. “If you mentioned ‘Chicago’ in Europe or Australia or anywhere else in the world to people, they would say ‘Al Capone’ or ‘If You Leave Me Now.'”

Tragedy struck the band on January 23, 1978, when Terry Kath accidentally killed himself while playing around with a gun he didn’t know was loaded. “Terry and I were teenage friends and it was devastating for me,” Parazaider said in 2015. “When I heard the news on the phone, I almost went to my knees. It was like being hit with a sledgehammer. We thought, ‘Maybe this is the way the band should end.’ We had fan mail saying: ‘Please, don’t stop the band now.’ That really helped us. But I have to be honest – there are some things you never get over.”

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The group soldiered on by hiring guitarist Donnie Dacus to take Kath’s place. “It’s a new band,” Parazaider told Rolling Stone in December 1978. “That’s not a cold statement. We’ve gotten past probably the lowest point in our lives. The way I feel now and the way I felt in February is like night and day.”

The group struggled to find relevance in the aftermath of Kath’s death, largely thanks to shifting musical tastes. But things changed in 1981 when songwriter/producer David Foster came into their orbit, helping them craft the massive hits “Hard to Say I’m Sorry” and “You’re the Inspiration.”

But Foster worked mostly with Cetera and largely excluded the others from the creative process. “I was like a young rattlesnake, all the venom, all at once,” Foster recalled in the Chicago documentary. “I wanted to make a great record, nobody is going to get in my way, and it’s going to be my way. They really resented that.”

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A more democratic Chicago emerged in the 1990s after Cetera left the band, and they parted ways with Foster as well. And even though their hitmaking days were behind them, they remained an incredibly popular live draw, playing upwards of 100 shows a year.

When they were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2016, Parazaider spoke first. “When we played together for the first time in my basement, we never thought we’d be standing up here at this time,” he said. “I’d like to thank my brothers up here for the incredible experience of creating and playing music with them.”