Chester Boone

Listeners who hear trumpeter Chester Boone blasting away in the raucous, sometimes raunchy context of the Louis Jordan or Sammy Price bands might find it hard to believe that the origins of Boone's music were in his Sunday school class at home in Houston. This gig led to a job with Richardson's Jazz Band, a combo whose main job was playing for the bathers at a swimming pool. Boone then formed his own band in Houston, perhaps tired of ducking the splashes created by divers, and left Houston in the late '20s on tour with bandleader Dee Johnson. Several years later the trumpeter shows up in the lineup of the legendary Troy Floyd band, one of the great early territorial bands prowling the Texas, Oklahoma, and Arkansas hinterlands.