By the age of just 34, Charlie ‘Bird’ Parker, who died on 12 March, 1955, had reached the pinnacle of the jazz world.

Nicknamed ‘Yardbird’ or more commonly simply ‘Bird’, Mr Parker was a pioneer of bebop during the Second World War, then became the first jazz musician to collaborate with classic orchestras. Many of his compositions and concerts are rated as the best jazz recordings of all time.

But persistent drug and alcohol abuse made him unpredictable and eventually led to his early death.

Charles Parker Jr was born on 29 August, 1920, in Kansas City, to Charles and Addie Parker. His father was a pianist and singer who performed on the vaudeville circuit.

During his youth, blues, gospel and jazz were thriving in Kansas. Mr Parker’s musical talent was late to flourish and he was thrown out of the school band for his dreadful alto sax. However, his passion for music spurred him on to practise religiously, sometimes up to 15 hours a day.

Redeemed and now an adept player, he returned to the local scene, playing with bands in jazz clubs, further developing his skills. At 17 he joined Jay McShann’s swing-jazz band and toured the Southwest, Chicago and New York and made his first recordings with them.

He moved to New York in 1939 and took menial jobs while trying to find work as a musician. He worked with jazz legend Earl Hines for seven months and it was during late night jam sessions that Mr Parker and other musicians began to establish what would come to be known as bebop.

Bebop, a strand of jazz characterised by fast tempo and complex harmonies, was unpopular with older jazz musicians but appealed to war-time young people. Mr Parker, one of the leading figures of the movement, began collaborating with trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie in 1945. They were recorded by Savoy records and toured in LA.

However, the following year he had a nervous breakdown and was committed to Camarillo State Mental Hospital for six months.

The stay in hospital did him good. He came out convalesced, sober and invigorated and produced some of his best recordings in a prolific period with his “classic quintet” (which included Miles Davis on trumpet). Some of his most well-known compositions, including Anthropology, Confirmation and Yardbird Suite, were conceived during this period.

A musician who always explored the diverse range of his genre, in 1949 Mr Parker made some of his most unusual records when he collaborated with chamber orchestra musicians to produce a collection of jazz numbers with string arrangements akin to Tchaikovsky and Stravinsky. Mr Parker later said that Bird With Strings was his favourite of his albums.

By the 1950s Mr Parker was the leading force in jazz and it was his music that young saxophonists would strive to learn. However, he was also becoming unpredictable again.

Mr Parker died in 1955 at the Stanhope Hotel in New York while watching Tommy Dorsey on television. The cause of death was a bleeding ulcer caused by his substance and alcohol abuse.

He was survived by his wife Chan, stepdaughter Kim and son Baird. In 1984 he was posthumously awarded a ‘Lifetime Achievement’ Grammy Award. A 10-foot bronze memorial was erected in his memory at the American Jazz Museum in Kansas in 1999. The famous New York club Birdland was named in his honour and opened in 1949.