A violent racist incident in 1945 left Powell with a head injury that brought on the first of many nervous breakdowns. Plagued after the brutal event by mental illness, he spent much of his adult life in mental hospitals. During the late 1940s and early 1950s, Powell appeared intermittently in various New York nightclubs, headlining with other leading bop soloists such as Charlie Parker , Dizzy Gillespie , Sonny Stitt , and Fats Navarro . Around this time he...