One morning in Parsons, Kansas

Abstract

It was swinging one morning in Parsons, Kansas, around ten o’clock on November 12th 1911, when I was born. This is my story, the life of a jazz musician. My father, Simeon Oliver Clayton, in his youth played cornet in Rockwall, Texas. Texas in those days had quite a few good musicians, almost as many I think as there were in New Orleans, but New Orleans had the fame for jazz. He told me many times of an old cornet that he once had but did not have a case for. He would just stick it in his overcoat pocket and carry it with him wherever he went. It was only natural that he would teach me to play trumpet. As Dad got older he finally ended up playing a sousaphone, which suited him, as he was a big man weighing about two hundred pounds. Dad was real talented and at an early age became interested in both music and writing. He was a very good poet and writer and once owned and was the editor of a newspaper called The Blade.