Date: Oct 21st, 2008 · Tags: Jazz Music Links

If the mysterious Baroness Pannonica de Koenigswarter is at all remembered today, it is for her proximity to the deaths of two legendary jazz musicians. In 1955 Charlie Parker died on a sofa in her Fifth Avenue home; 27 years later Thelonious Monk died after secluding himself for years in her New Jersey house.

Both deaths made the baroness an immediate target of tabloid headlines and a long-term subject for scurrilous gossip.

A Rothschild heiress, she offered her home to countless jazzmen as a place to work and even live, while quietly paying their bills when they couldn’t find work.

It has taken the actual family she left behind a long time to arrive at a similar conclusion. “Not all members of our family were enthused about the life she chose to lead (especially our father!),” Shaun de Koenigswarter wrote. “But over the years, many of those who had initially disapproved.

Source:New York Times