Kansas City Jazz - A Little Evil Will Do You Good - Con Chapman
A Little Evil Will Do You Good
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 decline and fall of the Pendergast political empire is described, along with the concomitant end of Kansas City’s distinct jazz style as nightclubs and bars are closed by reformers following Pendergast’s conviction for tax evasion. Musicians who had made the city their home scattered as jobs disappeared, and without the critical mass necessary for the development of an indigenous regional variation, jazz itself moved on to the next big thing, bebop, which had been birthed in the city by a native, Charlie Parker.