Kansas City Jazz - A Little Evil Will Do You Good - Con Chapman
Jay McShann and the Last of the Great Kansas City Bands
Kansas City Jazz - A Little Evil Will Do You Good - Con Chapman
Con Chapman [+]
Music writer
Con Chapman is the author of Rabbit’s Blues: The Life and Music of Jonny Hodges (Oxford University Press, 2019), winner of the 2019 Book of the Year Award by Hot Club de France, and a 2020 Certificate of Merit for Best Historical Research from the Association for Recorded Sound Collections. His writing on jazz has appeared in The Boston Globe, The Boston Herald, Syncopated Times, and Brilliant Corners, among other publications.
Description
The development of Jay McShann from a natural on the piano to the leader of the group that threatened to displace Count Basie as the city’s top dance band is detailed. McShann’s group was innovative and provided Charlie Parker with his first recording opportunity, but they were pigeon-holed by success backing rhythm and blues vocal numbers and as a result their more innovative bop-flavored music did not receive the attention it deserved. The band broke up when McShann was inducted into the U.S. Army during World War II, a fate he could have avoided had he responded to induction notices as he would have been medically disqualified due to flat feet.