KC Sax Player murdered years ago!

[sheldonm]

A friend of mine who knows very little about jazz stopped by my office a few minutes and told me he saw a program on tv last night about a KC sax player that was beaten to death many years ago but couldn't recall his name; anyone know?

Thanks!

Mark

Edited February 25, 2005 by sheldonm

[bertrand]

Charlie Parker was apparently beaten to death by Art Blakey, according to one web site!

Bertrand.

[Rooster_Ties]

There was an article about this in the Kansas City Star, just within the past year or two -- maybe on the 20th or 25th aniversary of the crime??

It was long before I lived here, but my memory is that somehow the trumpeter in Conan O'Brien's band, was a long-time standmate of his (they had a regular band together here in KC, maybe as co-leaders??). That trumpeter is Mark Pender, but for the life of me -- I can't seem to find anything out in any of the usual places I go searching for stuff like this.

Spontoonious will be around shortly, and I'm sure he'll know the name, and maybe even a story or two to share.

I'll look a bit more -- maybe I'll find something yet.

Edited February 26, 2005 by Rooster_Ties

[Rooster_Ties]

OK, I found it. And wouldn't you know, it was a search hit on one of Spontoonious' jazz columns!!!

SOURCE

"And then there was Steve Harvey, who's somebody I learned an awful lot from."

If you've seen the Kansas City episode of A&E's "City Confidential," you've heard Mark Pender talk about his friendship with Harvey, a gifted sax man and close friend who was murdered in 1980.

They played together in a band called Mass Transit, "laying down that P-Funk groove, then me and Steve blowing those long solos." They created a local following by playing anywhere they could.

"Steve's father was in the construction business and had these generators laying around. Steve would call me up and say, `Let's get everybody and go to Loose Park.' We'd bring a generator and set up and play."

The television show was faithful to Harvey's story, Pender says.

"The thing I would have liked to see was more attention on the action of Steve's parents. They were the ones who kept the case alive."

(Raymond Bledsoe, accused of killing Harvey, was acquitted in Jackson County Circuit Court. In a case considered a landmark, federal prosecutors later accused Bledsoe of violating Harvey's civil rights -- and won a conviction.)

Pender and Harvey left town together in the fall of 1979 to tour with organist Charles Earland. They landed in New York at the beginning of 1980, and Pender has been there since, through lean times and fat.

I'll see what else I can turn up...

Edited February 25, 2005 by Rooster_Ties

[Harold_Z]

Is "Pender", Mark Pender - the trumper player on the Conan tv show?

[Rooster_Ties]

Here's some more...

SOURCE

AARON BARNHART:

`Confidential' does justice to Harvey's story

Date: 12/10/01 00:01

This week jazz musician Stephen L. Harvey will achieve in death something he came tantalizingly close to doing in his lifetime -- being seen by a national audience.

Twenty-one years after the 27-year-old saxophonist was found murdered near the Liberty Memorial, Harvey's story is told in a moving and engrossing edition of the A&E series "City Confidential." The one-hour program airs at 9 p.m. Wednesday (12-DEC-2001) on A&E.

David Wallach, a former WDAF-TV reporter who produced the show for A&E, interviewed many of those who were close to Harvey, including his wife, Rhea and daughter Hope; fellow musicians Mark Pender, David Basse and Ida McBeth; and Alvin Sykes, who, along with Harvey's widow, undertook a lonely fight to have the killer brought to justice.

"City Confidential" is an unusual hybrid of travelogue and true crime. Thus the opening act isn't about Harvey at all; it's about Kansas City then and now; about the jazz scene that stubbornly hung on and gave sustenance to generations of artists and audiences; and about our town's violent streak and racial troubles, which intersected in the early hours of Nov. 5, 1980, not far from the torch that then burned atop Liberty Memorial.

Wallach (who makes a cameo appearance early on, pushing a baby stroller) also shows never-before-seen photographs of Harvey performing with Count Basie at a concert at 12th and Vine. He also does a laudable job of explaining the seldom-used federal statute that was used to convict Harvey's killer for hate crimes after an all-white jury had acquitted him of murder. ( )

The program sends out mixed messages, one moment touting the American Jazz Museum (although wrongly asserting that Harvey played there), the next moment ridiculing our Cowtown heritage. But Steve Harvey sent out mixed messages, too: In the months leading up to his death, he was splitting his time between Kansas City and New York, a place that seemed better suited to his ambition.

[Rooster_Ties]

Is "Pender", Mark Pender - the trumper player on the Conan tv show?

Yup, that's the same guy -- he's originally from Kansas City.

(I edited the quote up above, that I used from Spontoon's column, to include his Pender's first name.)

[7/4]

Is "Pender", Mark Pender - the trumper player on the Conan tv show?

Yup, that's the same guy -- he's originally from Kansas City.

(I edited the quote up above, that I used from Spontoon's column, to include his Pender's first name.)

http://www.markpenderband.com/mpb/

[Free For All]

Mark Pender's brother Tom (a guitarist) is in my jazz arranging class. FWIW.