# Where is the Charlie Parker Memorial Foundation’s Music School now? Video, Photos

- Link: https://jazzblues.eu/2022/09/17/where-is-the-charlie-parker-memorial-foundations-music-school-now-video-photos/
- Published: 2022-09-17T00:02:42+01:00
- Author: https://JazzBlues.EU

**Singer and musician LaVerne Washington’s music is known all around the world. 
Her songs have been described as “undercover soul gems from the Midwest.” **

The Kansas City native partially credits her success to what she learned at the 
Charlie Parker Memorial Foundation in the 1970s. Now, she’d like to know what happened
to the local music school that once drew some of the greatest names in jazz.

### ‘Off the streets, into the arts’

The Charlie Parker Foundation was founded by musician Eddie Baker in 1971. It was
a place for inner city kids to get “off the streets” and “into the arts,” as the
slogan said.

![Eddie Baker, a well-known Kansas City musician, stands by a tree in a white coat
and bowtie. Baker was responsible for opening the Charlie Parker Memorial Foundation.](
https://i0.wp.com/flatlandkc.org/assets/uploads/2022/09/Eddie-Baker-1-427x640.jpg?
resize=640%2C959&ssl=1)

Eddie Baker founded the Charlie Parker Memorial Foundation in the 1970s. (Charlie
Parker Memorial Foundation)

Jazz greats such as Dizzy Gillespie, Mary Lou Williams, Count Basie and even Ella
Fitzgerald regularly cycled through the school. If Baker asked, they would come.

“I was able to just walk in and listen to a lot of them playing or teaching, and
I just absorbed as much as possible,” Washington said.

Jazz and blues were revived in the classrooms where professional musicians taught
eager students, for free. Students like the McFadden brothers.

“I was practicing all the time, so they’d tell me something to do and the next week,
I got it,” said Ronald McFadden, self-described as “the better of the McFadden brothers.”

The more ambitious students such as Ronald would be invited to play in showcases
for the Kansas City community, performing on the same program as some of the most
famous jazz musicians in the world. These experiences prompted many students to 
pursue music as a career.

“It was a dream for somebody like me,” he said.

While Ronald was a student, his brother Lonnie went to the building regularly for
jam sessions.

“The biggest thing that I liked about Eddie Baker starting the Charlie Parker Academy
is that it made the rest of  Kansas city aware of who Charlie Parker was,” Lonnie
said.

Parker’s legacy and style of music were embedded into the curriculum, even though
the now-jazz legend was fairly unknown at the time.

![](https://i0.wp.com/flatlandkc.org/assets/uploads/2022/09/IMG_4977-1170x704.jpeg?
resize=640%2C385&ssl=1)

The McFadden brothers are a staple in Kansas City’s jazz scene and credit the Charlie
Parker Memorial Foundation for helping them hone their skills as jazz performers.(
Contributed)

### Why Charlie Parker?

In the early 1970s, Charlie Parker’s name didn’t quite mean what it does now.

Kansas City musician Carroll Jenkins, who helped run the Charlie Parker Foundation,
put it like this:

“Charlie Parker was famous more in the sense that he was infamous to his own people
here in Kansas City,” Jenkins said in an archived interview from 1976. “He wasn’t
very well accepted. He was a genius who came up with something new and different
and confounded the critics … They didn’t understand.”

Parker was often ridiculed in his time, and it wasn’t until later that his talent
was more widely recognized.

“Parker was a genius at improvisation,” Jenkins said. “He could think faster than
any man alive.”

Despite this genius, Charlie Parker had largely fallen out of Kansas City’s memory
in the 1970s. Music history and education hadn’t yet revived the soul of Kansas 
City’s 18th and Vine jazz hub.

When Jenkins and Baker thought of the best way to honor the Bird’s memory, they 
settled on community service.

“Our best bet was that the best service to the community would be in the area that
Bird himself was in, the arts with an emphasis on music,” he said.

Jenkins says every time the foundation asked a renowned musician to teach at the
school, they always said, “Yes,” as soon as they heard it was in Charlie Parker’s
name.

Even though the funk greats were dominating the top 40, musicians in the ‘70s still
had a lot to learn from jazz.

To Lonnie McFadden, jazz teaches you not to simply learn a song and copy it, but
rather how to play with the rhythm and make it your own.

“And that’s what it’s about,” he said.

## Watch Kansas City PBS’s documentary:

“Bird: Not Out of Nowhere” was produced by KCPBS documentarian Brad Austin.

### Resurrection

Despite the Parker namesake, funding was a constant struggle for the Charlie Parker
Foundation. Former students recall Baker’s neverending hustle to find the dollars
to keep the school alive.

“It just kind of petered out after Eddie got sick and he didn’t have the drive that
it took,” Ronald McFadden said.

Though former pupils have kept the academy’s historic legacy alive, much of the 
paperwork and photos documenting the Charlie Parker Foundation were destroyed in
a flood.

Greg Richter is a former student of the school and now works for the Charlie Parker
Memorial Foundation. He recalled Baker closing and resurrecting the foundation several
times through the ‘80s and ‘90s as funding flowed in and out.

At around that time, it appeared as though this would be the final curtain call.
Then Eddie Baker’s son stepped in to reinstate the latest iteration of the [Charlie Parker Memorial Foundation](https://www.kcartsoutreach.com/).

Today, the foundation continues its mission to provide music education for inner
city kids.

“Jazz is immortal,” Jenkins said back in ‘76. “It will never die as long as there
is a person on earth that can play it.”

![LaVerne Washington is a musician from Kansas City who wanted to learn a bit more
about the Charlie Parker Memorial Foundation. (Contributed)](https://i0.wp.com/flatlandkc.
org/assets/uploads/2022/09/LaVerne-Washington-1170x790.jpeg?resize=640%2C432&ssl
=1)

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