Kansas City Jazz - A Little Evil Will Do You Good - Con Chapman
Buster Smith and Other Altos B.B. (Before Bird)
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 foundation for the development of Charlie Parker is laid by earlier altos in the Southwestern tradition, including Alvin “Fats” Wall and Henry “Buster” Smith, who would become a musical mentor to Parker. Smith was a member of the Blue Devils who became a partner with Count Basie in an early iteration of the group that morphed into Basie’s big band, but he and Basie parted ways before the latter achieved national fame in another might-have-been in the history of Kansas City jazz.