Denton's Forgotten Giant

The book took me to Denton for the RevCon Record Convention, presented by KUZU-FM, on July 18. The town of Denton has long been associated with music thanks to the University of North Texas, which as North Texas State College created the first jazz studies program in the world in the late Forties. The list of renowned UNT/NTSC music alumni goes on forever, so instead we'll focus on a Denton native most people haven't heard of: tenor sax wizard Herschel Evans. Evans was born in Denton in 1909 and died of heart disease at twenty-nine. He spent parts of his childhood in Kansas City, became a professional musician as a teenager, played with Lionel Hampton in Los Angeles by his early twenties, and at twenty-six joined the Count Basie Orchestra, where he had a productive rivalry with Lester Young on classics like "One O'Clock Jump." Evans also recorded with Hampton, Teddy Wilson, and Harry James during his extremely short career. Evans' time on earth was brief, but he was a key part of a magnificent period in jazz history.