Charlie Parker played his last two
gigs at
Birdland, with
Kenny Dorham,
Bud Powell,
Charles Mingus and
Art Blakey, on 4-5 March. In the second gig, Powell was severely
inebriated, and staggered off the stage in the middle. As he was leaving, Mingus told the
audience "Please don't associate me with any of this. This is not
jazz:
these people are sick."
Parker died a week later in the hotel suite of Baroness Pannonica de Koenigswarter, of lobar pneumonia and cirrhosis of the liver.