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=                            Chan Parker                             =
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                             Introduction                             
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Chan Woods (born Beverly Delores Berg, also known as Chan Richardson;
29 June 1925 - 9 September 1999), was a common-law wife of jazz
musician Charlie Parker. She later married musician Phil Woods.

She was born in New York City to an inter-religious couple; her
father, a producer of vaudeville shows, was Jewish, while her mother,
a dancer in Florenz Ziegfeld's Midnight Frolic, was not. Adopting the
name "Chan Richardson," Parker became a nightclub dancer. An early
jazz enthusiast, she was romantically connected in the 1940s and early
1950s with jazz musicians Johnny Bothwell and later Don Lanphere.

Chan met Charlie Parker in the 1940s, but their friendship was not
romantic until around 1950. Chan and Charlie lived together in a
common law relationship on New York's Lower East Side for the last
five years of Charlie's life, from 1950 to 1955. However, Charlie had
not formally terminated a prior marriage. Chan already had one child,
her daughter Kim, at the time they established their household;
together, Chan and Charlie had two more children, Baird and Pree.
Although they never legally wed, Chan took Charlie's surname, as did
all the children. Their relationship was dealt a severe blow with the
1953 death of their 2-1/2 year old daughter, Pree, from pneumonia
related to a congenital heart defect.


                        Later years and death                         
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Charlie Parker died just a year and a week after their daughter, in
1955, not long before he would have turned 35.
Two years after Parker's death, Chan married saxophonist Phil Woods
and moved to France, where she spent much of the rest of her life. She
had another daughter from his marriage, Aimée Francesca Woods
(1961-1993). In 1981, Chan helped write and edit a book of photographs
of Charlie Parker titled 'To Bird with Love' and later wrote the
autobiographical memoir 'My Life in E-Flat'. The second book was
published in 1999, the year of her death from cancer, aged 74, in
Étampes, France.

Just before her death, Chan was interviewed by Ken Burns, and she is
seen posthumously in Episode 8 of Burns' 2001 documentary 'Jazz'.

Chan Parker was the mother of jazz vocalist Kim Parker (b 1947). Chan
and Charlie's son Baird lived until 2014.


                            External links                            
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*[http://www.birdlives.co.uk/ "Bird Lives" website]


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Original Article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chan_Parker


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