Walter Parazaider, a founding member of Chicago and the saxophonist whose flute helped define one of the band’s best-known songs, died early Wednesday at 81 after a six-year battle with Alzheimer’s disease.
His wife, JacLynn, said he had “put up a good fight with Alzheimer's and unfortunately it ended tonight,” adding that the couple had been married for 59 years and had “59 wonderful years.”
Parazaider helped form Chicago in 1967, when the group was first known as the Chicago Transit Authority, alongside Robert Lamm, James Pankow, Peter Cetera, Danny Seraphine, Lee Loughnane and Terry Kath. Kath died in 1978 at 31, leaving Parazaider among the last links to the band’s original lineup.
The band became a legendary rock/jazz fusion act, and Parazaider’s flute was featured on Chicago’s 1970 hit “Colour my World,” one of the songs that gave the group its signature sound. He also remained part of the band’s early identity as the musicians moved from a local Chicago outfit into a national act with lasting reach.
His death closes a chapter on one of the band’s founding voices and leaves Chicago with another loss from its original era. What remains unresolved is only the same one that follows many such deaths: how long the band’s earliest history can be carried forward by memory alone.
