In this series on the fast-changing, 100-year-old history of jazz, the alto saxophone genius Charlie Parker has featured to an extent that might seem at odds with his short life, and a period of creative intensity that lasted barely 15 years. However, Parker's revolutionary sound still exerts a profound influence on contemporary jazz, making him ideal for newcomers to this sometimes mysterious music.

Parker died 54 years ago, but he's still revered by jazz veterans, cutting-edge contemporary players, conservatoire students and open-minded music lovers. He lived long enough to see this process begin, because by the early 1950s he was already being treated as a jazz messiah by a disaffected post-war generation hungry for a new art. Young musicians copied Parker's solos and struggled to learn them, and his approach to rhythm and melody transformed not only sax-playing, but the style of many other instruments.

Perhaps Parker's last great moment was his 1953 appearance at Toronto's Massey Hall, because this show reunited him with some of the biggest stars of the new jazz he had done so much to bring about. Among those present were his old trumpet partner John Birks "Dizzy" Gillespie (a crucial theorist in bop's harmonic concepts as well as a formidable improviser), bassist Charles Mingus, pianist Bud Powell and drummer Max Roach. Though this was a bebop supergroup, attendance was poor because the gig clashed with the heavyweight fight between Rocky Marciano and Jersey Joe Walcott.

If Mingus hadn't recorded it (though his own bass part was inaudible and had to be dubbed in later) the gig might have ended up as little more than a jazz footnote. But the show was released later as The Quintet - Jazz At Massey Hall, one of the great recorded live shows in the history of the genre.

Parker had to appear as Charlie Chan on the credits because he was bound by a recording contract with Mercury Records, but here he's on scalding form, as are all his partners. He also played a plastic Grafton alto sax (an instrument later adopted by Ornette Coleman), secured at the last minute because he'd sold his regular instrument to buy drugs.

Parker was to die just two years later, on 12 March 1955, while watching TV at New York's Stanhope Hotel in the apartment of his friend Nica de Koenigswarter, the eccentric jazz-loving Rothschild heiress who adopted and supported many musicians in the 1950s.

He was 34, but because of the state of his drug-ravaged body, the doctors guessed his age to be between 50 and 60. There was a procession in Harlem, and a memorial concert after his death. Against his own wishes, Parker was buried in his hometown of Kansas City, instead of New York.

Next time, we'll move on to a cooler sound than Parker's, but one that couldn't have happened without him: The Birth of the Cool era, and the maturing of another jazz genius, Miles Davis.