Avery Parrish

AVERY PARRISH d1959. American jazz pianist, composer and arranger. He wrote and recorded "After Hours". In August 1942 he was injured in a car crash that killed Marcellus Green, one of Erskine Hawkins's trumpeters. They were in a group of five in the vehicle (driving between Pittsburgh and Chattanooga) to gigs when it overturned. He left Hawkins later that year and moved to California. He was involved in a bar fight in 1943 and was hit in the head by a bar stool which put him in hospital for a few months. This left him partly paralyzed and he was unable to play music for the rest of his life. He died aged just 42 of unknown causes on December 10th 1959. A contemporary report stated that he "had been found lying in Harlem streets five days before he died at the Harlem Hospital. There were no marks of violence on his body". Author and music executive Arnold Shaw stated that Parrish suffered "a fall down a flight of stairs". At the time, he had been living with his mother on Saint Nicholas Avenue and "working as a porter for a local bottling company".  He was buried in Ferncliff Cemetery New York. In 1979, he was inducted into the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame