The Charlie Parker Memorial stands on 18th Street in the heart of the historic jazz district, a large green bronze portrait head mounted on a column outside the American Jazz Museum. Parker — universally known as Bird — grew up in Kansas City in the 1930s and took his first steps as a musician in the clubs along 12th Street and in the Vine Street neighborhood. He was playing professionally in Kansas City bands before he was a teenager.
The memorial marks the spot where his musical journey began. It is a popular stop for jazz pilgrims, and the surrounding blocks still hold the physical fabric of the neighborhood Parker knew: the same buildings, the same grid of streets where everything happened. The museum's permanent collection has extensive material on Parker, including recordings, photographs, and artifacts from his Kansas City years before he moved to New York and transformed American music.