Biography
Listeners first encountering the bold trumpet of Chester Boone amid the boisterous, sometimes bawdy ensembles of Louis Jordan or Sammy Price would scarcely connect those performances with the quiet beginnings of his musical path in a Houston Sunday school classroom. That classroom engagement opened the door to Richardson’s Jazz Band, whose regular assignment was entertaining swimmers at a local pool. Boone eventually assembled his own Houston group—perhaps weary of dodging cascading water from the diving board—and departed the city near the end of the 1920s to travel with Dee Johnson’s organization. Within a few years he appeared among the ranks of the storied Troy Floyd band, one of the premier early territorial orchestras that roamed the backcountry of Texas, Oklahoma, and Arkansas.
Sharing the stage in that ensemble was the formidable tenor saxophonist Herschel Evans. The two players formed a close partnership and left Floyd together, moving to the Grant Moore Band during an era when musicians shifted affiliations as casually as athletes whose contracts seemed written in vanishing ink. Boone’s travels next carried him to Chicago, where he rehearsed with Cassino Simpson’s freshly assembled outfit yet departed before appearing in any of its performances. Returning once more to Houston, he led his own unit at the Harlem Grill, where the chief occupational hazard involved avoiding splashes of barbecue sauce. The engagement began in 1932, and within several years the group’s popularity surged. In 1936 Boone enlisted with the Brown Skin Models, a touring revue that transported him to New York City and introduced him to a circle of rising bandleaders, chief among them Jordan.
While in New York he also participated in recording dates alongside the aforementioned Price and Lloyd Phillips. Early in the 1940s he joined Joe “Kaiser” Marshall; the next year he again attempted to lead his own band, an effort that yielded several recorded sides. Additional associations followed with Horace Henderson and Buddy Johnson before he spent three years in the dynamic Luis Russell orchestra. During the closing phase of World War II he toured the South Pacific islands with a USO unit. By the late 1940s Boone had stepped away from full-time professional activity, although he resurfaced sporadically on trumpet and vocals. In the 1950s he launched his own record company, the Nu Tex label.
Sharing the stage in that ensemble was the formidable tenor saxophonist Herschel Evans. The two players formed a close partnership and left Floyd together, moving to the Grant Moore Band during an era when musicians shifted affiliations as casually as athletes whose contracts seemed written in vanishing ink. Boone’s travels next carried him to Chicago, where he rehearsed with Cassino Simpson’s freshly assembled outfit yet departed before appearing in any of its performances. Returning once more to Houston, he led his own unit at the Harlem Grill, where the chief occupational hazard involved avoiding splashes of barbecue sauce. The engagement began in 1932, and within several years the group’s popularity surged. In 1936 Boone enlisted with the Brown Skin Models, a touring revue that transported him to New York City and introduced him to a circle of rising bandleaders, chief among them Jordan.
While in New York he also participated in recording dates alongside the aforementioned Price and Lloyd Phillips. Early in the 1940s he joined Joe “Kaiser” Marshall; the next year he again attempted to lead his own band, an effort that yielded several recorded sides. Additional associations followed with Horace Henderson and Buddy Johnson before he spent three years in the dynamic Luis Russell orchestra. During the closing phase of World War II he toured the South Pacific islands with a USO unit. By the late 1940s Boone had stepped away from full-time professional activity, although he resurfaced sporadically on trumpet and vocals. In the 1950s he launched his own record company, the Nu Tex label.
Singles
