Chicago Co-Founder Walter Parazaider Dies at 81 After 6-Year Alzheimer's Fight

Q: How did one man's revolutionary idea for a rock band with horns permanently alter the sound of music?

Walter Parazaider changed rock music by insisting that horns be part of the band’s core identity, not just studio decoration. Inspired by the Beatles’ “Got to Get You Into My Life,” he helped form the group that became Chicago in 1967 around a full brass and woodwind section, with saxophone, trumpet and trombone standing alongside guitar, bass and drums as equal voices. That idea was radical at the time. Rock bands had used horns before, but usually as backing players. Parazaider and his bandmates built arrangements in which the horns carried melodies, drove riffs and shaped the emotional character of songs. His own playing helped define that sound, from the flute on “Colour My World” to the soprano sax on “Just You ‘n’ Me.” The result permanently widened rock’s sonic vocabulary. Chicago proved that a horn-driven rock band could be both artistically ambitious and commercially dominant, selling more than 100 million records and producing a long run of hit songs and albums. Their success showed the industry that brass and woodwinds could be central to mainstream rock, not peripheral. The influence was lasting because Chicago normalized a richer, more orchestral form of rock. Parazaider’s concept helped blur the line between rock, jazz and pop, opening space for more sophisticated arrangements and inspiring later bands to treat horns as a defining sound rather than an occasional effect.

3 articles · Updated · The Daily Beast · Jun 17

Walter Parazaider, a founding member of Chicago, died in hospice early Wednesday at 81, his wife JacLynn said.
Six years after his Alzheimer's diagnosis, the saxophonist succumbed to the disease with his wife by his side.
Parazaider helped form The Big Thing in 1967; the group became Chicago in 1969, and he anchored its brass and woodwind sound.
He retired in 2016 after decades with the band and is survived by JacLynn—his wife of 59 years—and their two children.