Dean Benedetti
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Dean Benedetti was a supporting band-mate, and good friend of saxophone player Charlie Parker. Dean Benedetti is mentioned in Robert Reisners Bird: The Legend Of Charlie Parker. He began as a tenor player and band leader in California and sold his records to Mosaic Records. He quickly became addicted to heroin and rumor was started that Benedetti sold drugs to afford his expenses to send himself home. He moved home with his parents because of a muscular disease Mysasthenia Gravis. It quickly altered his playing conditions and he refrained from playing in public. Dean Benedetti died at age 34 on January 20, 1957, and continued working on his music until that day.
Benedetti is best known for giving up playing the saxophone after hearing Charlie Parker play. Considering Parker an unaparalled genius, and dismayed that his work was not being documented, Benedetti devoted himself to following Parker from club to club in California, recording his solos (and only his solos) on a primitive disc-recording device (once rumoured to have been a Nazi wire recording unit). These recordings were lost after Benedetti's death, and the stuff of jazz legend for 40 years until they were found, restored, and issued in a box set by jazz label Mosaic (interestingly, Benedetti's own label during his career as a musician) in 1991. More information about Benedetti can be found in Ross Russell biography on Charlie Parker entitled Bird Lives! which goes into much details about Parker as well as Benedetti role in Charlie's life.
