Coon Sanders Nighthawks Orchestra

As a boy in the early 1900’s, Carleton Coon (Coony), spent time around the Missouri River where he heard black men singing as they worked. He loved their songs, their music, and their rhythm, and taught himself to play bones—later drums. Joe Sanders loved to sing. The men met one day at Kansas City’s premiere music store, J.W. Jenkins, (Biddles Music Company in my novel JAZZ TOWN.) In 1918, they performed together in front of a crowd of 13,000 at a war bond rally led by Teddy Roosevelt. They formed a band and at the Muehlebach Hotel, began began broadcasting on radio station WDAF in Kansas City . They called themselves the Coon Sanders Nighthawks because they played from 11:30 p.m. until 1 a.m., and became so popular that they had a fan club of thousands. While playing an engagement in Chicago, Jules Stein of Music Corporation of America, (read more about him in JAZZ TOWN) heard them and put them under contract to play in New York. Coon died from an infected tooth at the age of 39. Sanders continued his career and died of a stroke in 1965 at the are of 70.