Con Chapman breaks down his new book Kansas City Jazz: A Little Evil Will Do You Good

Con Chapman is a prolific author and a lawyer who has written two novels, 25 plays, and over 40 books of humor. Most impressive, perhaps, though, is his extensive research and writing on the history and culture of jazz music. Chapman has published dozens of articles on the subject since the 1970s, culminating in the forthcoming release of his most recent book, Kansas City Jazz: A Little Evil Will Do You Good.

The book opens with an anecdote of Count Basie waking up, hungover in his underwear, in a small boarding house in Missouri and hearing a band play jazz on the streets for the first time. The rest, as they say, is history.

Chapman profiles some of the most important and under-credited figures in ragtime, blues, and jazz music to come out of our home state. The book also places the development of jazz music into a greater historical context, taking into consideration how gender and race dynamics and ideas of propriety in the U.S. at the time were challenged by the new genre.

Chapman’s love of music initiated his interest in researching and writing about jazz history, though he didn’t take much special interest in the subject until moving away from Missouri.

“I grew up 100 miles from Kansas City,” Chapman says. “It wasn’t until I got to the east coast that I’d ever heard of Benny Moten, for example, who was one of the earliest, most important figures in Kansas City jazz. It’s kind of like the New Yorker who never goes to the Empire State Building. You know, familiarity breeds indifference.”

One lesser-known figure from the KC jazz scene who Chapman profiles in the new book is Wilbur Sweatman, who was key in helping transition ragtime music into jazz. Sweatman was a multiracial man born in Brunswick, Missouri, ninety miles from Kansas City and sixty miles from Sedalia, in 1882. Around 1903–1904 he recorded Scott Joplin’s “Maple Leaf Rag” and another song for the Metropolitan Music Store in Minneapolis, which are believed to be the first records made by a Black instrumental group. He was also known for his “novelty” number in which he would play “The Rosary” on three clarinets at once, though many (mostly white) spectators would dismiss this number as superficial or “low-brow,” Chapman explains.

Chapman’s book also details how public entertainment spaces were changing as jazz music developed, which influenced gender dynamics.

“The old-time saloon was a 100% male enclave,” says Chapman. “When prohibition came, they had to shut down both the bars and the retail establishments. And of course, the easiest transition was to convert a restaurant into a restaurant that served drinks on the sly. And now women came into the bars, and this was before jukeboxes, so you had to have live music.”

Another important theme in Chapman’s research is minstrelsy, or the appropriation of Black music, dance, and culture by white performers, for white audiences. Chapman discusses how this phenomenon can be traced back to blackface performances of jazz and ragtime, and the creation of “rock and roll” as a method to sell “race records” to white audiences. This tradition continues today with other forms of music and dance.

Author Con Chapman. // Courtesy photo

One of Chapman’s hopes for the book is that it may serve as an example of how to improve secondary education in jazz by focusing on regional variations in music.

“I’m working to try to create a junior high and high school curriculum that will take the music of Duke Ellington and Johnny Hodges and teach kids, this is your heritage, as opposed to taking a book of stock arrangements,” says Chapman. “I mean, some of the stuff you hear played at the high school band concerts, it’s just not good music.”

Chapman’s book will be released March 13. The book is available for pre-order online.