Walter Parazaider – Visionary and original master from the beginnings

Vale Chicago’s founding father, Walter Parazaider 1945-2026

It won’t be the biggest celebrity death headline this year, but if you know you know, so yesterday, with the announcement of Walter Parazaider’s death, it was a day to feel sad.

And now more than ever is a time to celebrate everything that the band Chicago was founded on and for many years was true to.

Chicago – the band that I have loved so deeply and more lately have criticised mercilessly – was famously founded on a group handshake in Walt Parazaider’s family home in February 1967. Their first rehearsal was in the basement, playing Steve Winwood’s “I’m A Man”. They were hot and so was the chilli Walt’s mother served the boys to sustain them. That’s where and when the rock and roll band with horns was birthed, first named Chicago Transit Authority, then shortened to Chicago, although by then they were settled in Los Angeles. The three original founders who were already bandmates in an earlier incarnation, The Missing Links – Walt, Terry Kath and Danny Seraphine – were veracious in their devotion to their craft and pure class from the get go. Danny was ousted from the band in 1990 and has remained pure class, and might have had every reason to be angry with Walt, but when the news broke he posted this:

The outpouring from fans is befitting of Walt’s significance. They’re saying he is now with his musical brother Terry, who has been gone for 48 years. Terry might be saying, “Man, what the hell took you so long? I’ve been saving your place.” I don’t actually believe in rock and roll heaven, but I do believe their spirits will reconnect. Walt had a slow and sad demise from Alzheimer’s disease. He openly announced that diagnosis, then bowed out of public life honestly and gracefully. His daughter Felicia kept us all connected with the journey through her beautiful and generous social media posts, photos, videos, heartfelt writings and struggles. We didn’t ask for the truth, we didn’t need to, because it was always freely given. Thank you to Felicia and the Parazaider family for such kindness.

Thank you to Walt for creating something that became bigger than anything he or his bandmates might have imagined. For bringing them all together, for shining with his glorious woodwind playing, especially on the deep tracks on the second and seventh albums, innovative, exhilarating and beyond exquisite, and every contribution to even the most commercial hits, I am eternally grateful.

Thank you also, Walt, for being the first overseas rock stars I met, you and Jimmy and Bobby first, then the other guys as they meandered down to the lobby of the Boulevard Hotel in Sydney in January 1979. You with your permed hair, your thoughtful questions about what my life was like as a teenage girl in Sydney, your kind curiosity and sweet presence that I took with me through my decades of loving your work and seeing you play live with your band.

Thank you also for being on stage at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Induction, even if you did feel the need to be obsequious about your manager in your speech. We know it was sincere. Thank you for just being there, performing for the last time with the guys, celebrating that landmark achievement. Thank God I was there, too.

By then, in 2016, Walt had reduced his live performing to a minimum anyway; he was not on stage with the band on their Australian tour in 2010, but until then and for a while after he would show up on stage in Los Angeles or New York, major cities, not always, but with other health conditions already plaguing him, just when he could. So I have some terrific photos from the shows I saw in his later performing years, many of which are featured elsewhere on Debbie Does Music and in this post. The earlier ones from my many Chicago concerts in the nineties are prints that aren’t scanned, and they are in storage in Sydney right now. But there are enough on my hard drive today from 2012 to 2016 to illustrate this tribute.

The last member of the original Chicago Transit Authority to be performing with the band that calls itself Chicago as it tours around claiming to be “America’s Band” is Lee Loughnane, who said in one of the documentaries about Chicago that he had not seen Walt since his diagnosis and retirement. I hope he found his way to see the founding father of the band that gave Lee his career so he might have got some closure… and perspective. But that is none of my business. Nothing that goes on with that band now is my business no matter how many words I have written about its diminished state of existence. So whether or not Robert Lamm or Jimmy Pankow found their way to say goodbye, I hope they feel at peace with themselves about all of it, losing Walt, losing their band, losing their grip. A grip that Walt graciously let go of in order to retain his reputation and dignity.

Meanwhile, on this 50th anniversary of the release of Chicago X, the first Chicago album I bought before reaching back into the catalogue and learning how to sing horn parts, I honour the true legacy of the band, the gift that Walter Parazaider gave the world, and the wonderful soprano sax solo in “Just You ‘n’ Me” that he performed at that Sydney show in January 1979. You can hear my shrill scream as the song starts, from front row centre, my true happy place.