In the long-ago summer of 1969, I was 14 and seriously ramping up my modest record collection. Six months earlier, I had abandoned the practice of buying 45-rpm singles and embraced the idea of owning albums instead. I bought LPs by The Beatles and Simon and Garfunkel, and I became drawn to the music of more boundary-expanding artists like Cream, Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix, Steppenwolf and Blind Faith.

My friend Steve was similarly tuned into new bands that weren’t Top 40, and he’d periodically show up at my house with albums he thought I might like. One such record was a double album called “The Chicago Transit Authority.” Its most noticeable characteristic was that it had very prominent horns — trumpets, trombones, saxes — on pretty much every track. This was a substantial departure from the guitars-bass-drums-organ lineup of most bands at that time. No rock band I knew at that point used horns beyond the occasional sax solo.

I was totally taken by this music. Growing up in a household with a father who often played Big Band, swing and Sinatra records, I loved the sound of a vigorous horn section, but as a kid of the ’60s, I also loved rock and roll. Now, on this “CTA” album, I had a merger of these two things — a rock band with horns. How cool was that?

The opening track, the aptly named “Introduction,” had lyrics that came right out and explained the group’s mission: 

“We’ve all spent years preparing before this group was born, /With Heaven’s help, it blended, and we do thank the Lord, /So this is what we do, sit back and let us groove, and let us work on you…”

Boy, they worked on me, all right. The great melodies, the infectious rock beats, ferocious electric guitar solos, strong lead vocals and harmonies, and the dominant, thrilling horn parts combined to create something really dynamic. I simply couldn’t get enough of this stuff: “Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?,” “Questions 67 and 68,” “Someday,” “South California Purples,” “Listen,” “I’m a Man” and especially the exhilarating “Beginnings,” still one of my all-time favorite songs.

Critics were intrigued by the group. One wrote, “Few debut albums can boast as consistently solid an effort as the self-titled ‘Chicago Transit Authority.’ Even fewer can claim to have enough material to fill out a double-disc affair.” FM radio gave some of the tracks enough airplay to earn the debut album a #17 perch on the US albums chart in 1969, but neither of the singles they released (“Questions 67 and 68” and “Beginnings”) made any impact on Top 40 charts. They toured across the country, headlining mostly smaller venues or, sometimes, as warm-up acts for more established groups.

In early 1970, only eight months after the release of “CTA,” the band made the unheard-of move of releasing another double album as their second release, this time titled simply “Chicago” (because the real CTA, the metro rail system in the Windy City, insisted the band cease and desist in the use of its name). Again, the seven-piece group bowled me over with instantly likable songs (“Movin’ On,” “The Road,” “In the Country,” “Wake Up Sunshine, ” “Fancy Colours”), smart arrangements and solid musicianship across the board. The chief difference this time was that the group soon found themselves riding high on Top 40 charts in 1970 with three big singles from that album: the exuberant “Make Me Smile” (#7), the guitar-driven rock classic “25 or 6 to 4” (#4) and everyone’s favorite prom slow-dance tune, “Colour My World” (#7).

So who were these guys? For the most part, they preferred to remain mostly nameless and faceless, letting the music and the group dynamic do the talking. If they had a frontman, it was either keyboardist Robert Lamm, guitarist Terry Kath or bassist Peter Cetera, all of whom took turns as lead singer on Chicago’s repertoire of songs.

This month, in 2026, I learned that the true founder of the group was sax/flute player Walter Parazaider, who died June 17th at age 81. It was he who, inspired by the Beatles horns-heavy 1966 song “Got to Get You Into My Life,” became enamored of the idea of creating a rock ‘n’ roll band with horns. Not just the occasional use of sax, mind you, but a permanent three-man horn section who would be an integral part of virtually every song.

Born in suburban Chicago, Parazaider began playing the clarinet at age 9 and, by his teen years, he and his parents and music teachers had their sights set on having him pursue a career as a professional orchestral musician. He even earned a degree in classical clarinet performance from nearby DePaul University. During his college years, though, he was pulled away from classic by a newly-developed affection for jazz music, and also dabbled in rock and roll once he picked up the saxophone.

He formed a college band, The Missing Links, with future Chicago bandmates Terry Kath and drummer Danny Seraphine, also meeting eventual producer Jimmy Guercio on the DePaul campus. Once they joined forces with keyboardist Bobby Lamm, trumpeter Lee Loughnane and trombonist Jimmy Pankow and changed their name to The Next Big Thing, they began talking seriously about their musical path. Said Pankow years later, “We had a get together in Walter’s apartment on the north side of Chicago. It was Walter, Danny, Terry, Robert, Lee, and myself, and we agreed to devote our lives and our energies to making this project work.” Bassist Cetera was the seventh and final member to join a few months later.

“When I started the band,” Parazaider said in 2003, “I knew one thing – that the personnel we had in the band were really good musicians who were dedicated, trying to do something great. I knew that we would have some success.”

Lamm emerged as the chief songwriter, with Kath and Pankow contributing a few songs apiece on the first two LPs. Parazaider rarely wrote music, concentrating instead on developing horn arrangements and adding memorable solos (most notably the flute on “Colour My World” and sax on the 1973 hit “Just You ‘n’ Me”).

Back in late 1970, I had the good fortune to see Chicago perform in a gymnasium on the campus of John Carroll University, only a couple miles from where I lived, and was immensely impressed by their energy and tight ensemble playing. The band was performing relentlessly, up to 300 gigs a year, and this show had been booked before their success on the charts made them the bigger concert draw they would soon become.

It was astonishing to me when their next move was to release a third double album, “Chicago III,” in early 1971, and I was very disappointed with what I heard. Clearly, they had been overworked and stretched thin, because there weren’t more than two or three memorable tracks to be found. I bought it, and played it a fair amount, hoping the tunes would grow on me, but they simply didn’t match up to the songs on first two LPs. Three sides were taken up by grandiose “suites” filled with listless instrumentals, banal lyrics about eating Spam for breakfast (?) and meandering solos with little melody anywhere. If not for the vibrant singles “Free” and “Lowdown,” it would’ve been pretty much a washout. Even those singles charted only modestly (#20 and #35, respectively), and Columbia Records chose to go back to the debut LP and re-release “Beginnings” and “Questions 67 and 68” as singles, which did much better the second time around and kept Chicago’s star rising.

To make matters far worse, Chicago’s next move was a live album, which was in vogue at the time, but they turned a week-long stint at Carnegie Hall into a bloated four-album set completely lacking in the excitement I’d heard in concert only 10 months earlier. I think I listened to it only once, maybe twice, before getting rid of it. One of my worst album purchases ever.

The next summer, the band wisely focused on just nine quality tracks to comprise “Chicago V,” a single album that offered a return to solid melodies, integrated horn charts and great vocals. “Saturday in the Park” was one of the most popular singles of the summer of ’72, and just about as much fun as “Beginnings” or “Make Me Smile.” Still, the adventurousness and immediacy which had so enthralled me when they entered the scene in 1969-1970 seemed to be missing (for me, at least), even though “Chicago V” became the first of five consecutive LPs to reach #1 on the album charts.

I need to mention one nagging truth about Chicago that bothered me from the outset. They (mostly keyboardist Robert Lamm, evidently) had a penchant for making political statements in some of their songs that, while well-intentioned, usually came across as simplistic and lame. A typical example is “Dialogue (Parts I and II),” which was curiously popular as a follow-up single in the fall of 1972. With lyrics written as a conversation between an activist and a clueless college student, the track was designed to coax people to take to the streets and speak out against war, injustice, etc. Its awkwardness made me cringe, and still does.

From that point on, I basically lost interest. I can’t deny the continuous stream of hit singles were engaging, even infectious — “Feelin’ Stronger Every Day,” “Just You ‘n Me,” “Call On Me,” “Old Days,” even the Peter Cetera heartbreaker ballad “If You Leave Me Now.” But I couldn’t get motivated to buy the albums. I guess the sheen had worn off for me, and I’d moved on to other bands, other genres, although I still returned to the first two Chicago albums fairly regularly.

Chicago had always been one of those bands that remained an essentially faceless entity. Its members could go out in public and be unrecognized, and they seemed to like it that way. Still, I was among many music industry observers who assumed the band would hang it up in 1978 following the tragic death of Terry Kath, Chicago’s inspirational leader and best instrumentalist. He was messing around with a handgun one night and accidentally shot himself fatally. The idea that Chicago was “a rock and roll band with horns” pretty much died with Kath, as his fiery guitar work was the key ingredient in their rock band credentials. Indeed, no less a guitar god than Jimi Hendrix had been quoted back in 1970 as saying, “Terry Kath plays better than me.”

But no. The band chose to soldier on, hiring journeyman guitarist Donnie Dacus as the first of several replacements for Kath in the lineup. Chicago, whose Roman numeral-titled albums were a source of some ridicule by those who labeled their music “corporate rock,” endured a comparatively fallow period during which their so-so chart performance matched their tired formula on the records. By 1982, Columbia Records, their label from the beginning, let them go.

This didn’t stop them from shopping around for another label and producer. Full Moon Records took the bait, and with notorious Canadian pop producer David Foster at the helm, Chicago re-emerged with an altogether different sound. Peter Cetera’s strong tenor had become the group’s primary lead voice, which was fine, but now the group was doing material written by outside songwriters, with almost no horns in sight. Veteran musician Bill Champlin joined the ranks, playing a substantial role in the soft-rock sounds favored by Foster and Cetera. The resulting album, “Chicago 16,” turned off older fans but found a new, younger audience who responded favorably to the ’80s version of the group. Cetera’s smooth “Hard For Me To Say I’m Sorry” put them back at the top of the singles chart.

On tours, Chicago was no longer packing stadiums or arenas, but they filled smaller halls with enthusiastic fans as they built their new audience. I was reviewing concerts for a Cleveland newspaper at the time, and saw them at the Front Row, an intimate theater-in-the-round venue, and was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the show. The new songs didn’t do much for me, but it sure was great to hear the old stuff, both the hits and deeper album tracks.

Lamm, who had been such an important singer and composer for the band, became almost invisible as Cetera assumed the role of Chicao’s pretty-boy front man singing songs co-written for him by Foster and others. These tunes charted well — “Hard Habit to Break,” “You’re the Inspiration,” “Along Comes a Woman” — but their success went to Cetera’s head, who left the band in 1986 for a solo career and chose not to maintain ties with the group. (Indeed, he was famously absent when the group was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2016.)

A guy named Jason Scheff, a bassist with a tenor voice eerily similar to Cetera’s, joined in 1986, and he and Champlin became Chicago’s primary singers for the next five years, and through the ’90s and 2000s as well. Scheff got off to a rocky start when Foster made the misguided decision to feature a radical, unpleasant reworking of “25 or 6 to 4” as the first single from “Chicago 18,” which justifiably stalled at #48. Still, it was newcomer Scheff’s vocals that carried “Will You Still Love Me?” and “If She Would Have Been Faithful…”, both Top 20 hits.

In the ’90s, Chicago took to touring as part of a double bill with other classic rock bands, taking turns as the evening’s headliner. I saw them perform with The Moody Blues in 1992 at a show when Chicago happened to have top billing, but The Moodies were clearly the better band that night, and we actually ducked out early on Chicago’s below-average gig.

Over the past 30 years, Chicago has toured periodically and released numerous greatest hits packages, a Christmas collection and even a winning tribute to Big Band music (a couple tracks are included in my Spotify playlist). But they’ve bounced around on four or five different labels, and their sporadic albums of new material (“Chicago XXX” in 2006, “Now” in 2014 and “Born For This Moment” in 2022) were met indifferently by press and public alike.

Lamm and the three-man horn section of Parazaider, Pankow and Loughnane continued as the core group, but a raft of personnel changes on bass, guitar, drums, percussion and vocals didn’t do the group much good. Sadly, Parazaider developed a heart condition in 2017 that caused him to retire from live performances, and his health deteriorated in recent years.

A few years ago, I watched “Now More Than Ever: The History of Chicago,” an award-winning documentary on the band, its successes and struggles, and I gotta tell you, it was an entertaining and eye-opening two hours well spent. It incisively tells the band’s story from initial rumblings up to the mid-2010s, and I urge anyone with even a passing interest in Chicago’s music to check it out.

I learned, for instance, that the excesses that plagued so many ’70s groups — The Eagles, Fleetwood Mac, Led Zeppelin — took their toll on Chicago as well, according to the documentary. Original manager/producer Jim Guercio had played fast and loose with the band’s finances, pouring them into a new studio in Colorado and failing to pay royalties. Cocaine use among the band was rampant and destructive, negatively affecting interpersonal relationships. New members didn’t join the lineup seamlessly.

Chicago has always had its detractors. A review of the documentary in The Chicago Reader described it this way: “It’s an altogether fitting testament to Chicago’s hippie self-absorption and dopey excesses, all far out of proportion with both the amount of listenable music Chicago produced and its musical importance.” Ouch. Unduly harsh, I think, but clearly, they weren’t universally admired.

But I’ll always have a soft spot for Chicago, if only for those first two groundbreaking albums that dared to fully integrate horns into a professional rock band. Thanks, guys, for bringing that dream to fruition all those years ago. And rest in peace, Walter.

**************************

The Spotify playlist below is, as you’d expect, heavy on the first two albums, but there’s also a hefty dose of material from their later work. Nearly every studio album is represented with at least one track in order to provide you with a representative cross section of Chicago’s entire career arc, running more than four hours.