Chicago’s Founding Sax/Flute Player Was 81

Walter Parazaider, a co-founding member of Chicago who was with the band from its start in 1967 through his retirement in 2017, died Wednesday, family members announced. He had been suffering from Alzheimer’s disease for six years.

Parazaider played reed instruments in the band for that 50-year run, and may be most easily recognized for his flute solo in “Colour My World,” though he was more often found on the saxophone. In the band’s earliest conception, he was the only horn player, and he is often credited as the one whose idea it was to bring an entire horn section in as full members of a rock band, a radical idea when Chicago Transit Authority was being founded in ’67, and still a rare concept to this day.

His daughter, Felicia Parazaider, reported the death in a Facebook post in the early morning hours Wednesday. “I didn’t get back in time. My father, my hero, is gone. He went peacefully about 20 minutes ago,” wrote the daughter, a minister and “radical sacred activist.” “There’s no more pain. No more struggle. I psychically knew I wasn’t going to make it back in time. And I knew that it would be just my mom and him. It’s how it was in the beginning. Just the two of them. And so it should’ve been in the end. Thank you for loving my father, even if you didn’t personally know him. I know that many of you loved him. I’m in shock and disbelief and yet not at all. This was the worst six years. The hardest season of my life. And I’m so grateful that my dad is not suffering anymore. I love you poppy, my Pal. You coloured our world. God bless you, you dear soul. I love you beyond thoughts and words.”

Parazaider had retired from the band in 2017, not long after the group celebrated its induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2016. At the time, he was said to be dealing with heart issues.

Parazaider had revealed his most debilitating condition in a statement on the group’s website 2021. “Five months ago, I was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease,” he wrote then. “Needless to say, my wife, daughters and myself were shocked and devastated. It has taken a while to process this news and the fact is, we still are. The good news is we have a wonderful medical facility here and I have a very good doctor. I am working hard and not going to give up. With new treatments and therapy, along with my family’s love and support, I feel very positive about the future. Thank you for your thoughts and prayers. I wish you and your families all the best in 2021 and always.”

He was a college student at Chicago’s DePaul University, earning his bachelor’s degree in classical clarinet performance, when he formed a band, the Missing Links, with guitarist/vocalist Terry Kath and drummer Danny Seraphine, and hooked up with their future producer, Jimmy Guercio. Then, under the name the Big Thing, Parazaider, Kath, Seraphine, trumpet player Lee Loughnane, trombonist James Pankow and keyboard player/vocalist Robert Lamm — set out to combine a core rock ‘n’ roll combo with a prominent horn section in a way that hadn’t been done before, with the arguable exception of Blood, Sweat & Tears, which came up in the same era.

“I think for some guys in the group, it was harder to cope with the success than others,” Parazaider said. “I don’t think there were any of us that sat down around my kitchen table that day in February of ’67 and said, ‘Hey, our goal is to be famous.’” He was referring to a meeting at his parents’ house on Feb 15, 1967 in which they formally conceptualized the band.

“We sat around my kitchen table and said: ‘Let’s make a band that’s the best in the world.’ My idea was to make horns an integral part of a rock band,” he told Classic Rock. “In that sense, we blazed the trail. We had lofty ideas and hopes. We were young and ignorant.

In 1968, they were joined by Peter Cetera, changed their name to Chicago Transit Authority and signed with Columbia Records. Their debut album, a two-LP set, came out the following year. The group’s moniker had been shorted to just Chicago by the time they released a sophomore album.

Founding member Kath accidentally shot himself in 1978,, not long after “Chicago XI” came out in 1977, and his loss has often been cited as one of the reasons the band subsequently pursued a more balladic direction. Their work with producer David Foster put the spotlight more squarely on songs sung and written by Cetera in the early 1980s, before the singer went solo in 1985. Jason Scheff, son of Elvis Presley’s bassist Jerry Scheff, replaced Cetera as bassist/singer until 2016.

“Terry and I were teenage friends and it was devastating for me,” he said of his partner’s 1977 death. “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.”

Lamm and Pankow have retired from the band. Loughnane is now the final original member still on board.

The group’s commercial success in later years eclipsed the band’s experimental origins. “I don’t think we get the respect we should,” he admitted. “Maybe that’s the mother hen in me. But when I think about it, what do I want? Selling over a hundred million records is amazing.”

When her father’s time appeared to be at hand a few days ago, Felicia Parazaider imagined him being reunited with Terry Kath in the afterlife soon. “My dad is making the journey home,” she wrote. “It looks like 1-3 days of his beautiful being blessing us in this earthly plane. And then he’s probably going to play some music, laugh that great big laugh, don that magnificent smile, free of pain and suffering finally, in the next place. Maybe with Terry, my Uncle, his folks, all his relations. Mitakuye Oyasin. This is it. The moment I feel I have been readying myself for these last 6 years. Maybe my whole life. So if you love my father, do something for me, play some music. Anything. And play it loud. He loved doing that. Let’s bless him up y’all.”

His wife, JacLynn, told TMZ that “we were married for 59 years and we had 59 wonderful years.”