Walter Parazaider, Chicago Co-Founder, Flutist and Sax Player, Dies at 81
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- Walter Parazaider died Wednesday at 81 after a six-year battle with Alzheimer's disease, according to an announcement from his daughter Felicia on Facebook; his wife JacLynn told TMZ the couple had been married 59 years.
- Parazaider played reeds for Chicago across a 50-year run (1967–2017) and is most recognizable for his flute solo on "Colour My World," though he was primarily a saxophonist.
- He is credited with proposing the then-radical idea of making horns an integral part of a rock band, which he pitched at the band's founding meeting at his parents' kitchen table on February 15, 1967 — a concept he said "we blazed the trail" on and that remains rare to this day.
- Parazaider retired in 2017 shortly after Chicago's 2016 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction, having publicly revealed his Alzheimer's diagnosis on the band's website in 2021 and having previously battled heart issues.
- With his passing, trumpet player Lee Loughnane becomes the final original member still active in Chicago; Robert Lamm and James Pankow have already retired from the group.
- Felicia Parazaider imagined her father reuniting in the afterlife with guitarist Terry Kath, whose 1978 accidental shooting death nearly ended the band; Parazaider once said the loss left him feeling "hit with a sledgehammer."
- Despite selling over 100 million records, Parazaider acknowledged Chicago never got the respect its experimental origins deserved: "I don't think we get the respect we should. Maybe that's the mother hen in me."
Why it matters: Chicago pioneered a sound format — horns as full members of a rock band — that Parazaider himself said was still rare nearly six decades later, and the group has sold over 100 million records. With Loughnane now the only original member still performing, the band that rewrote rock's lineup blueprint enters a new era down to its last founder, and the band Parazaider co-built loses the man who insisted horns belonged in the room in the first place.
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