Jazz fund marks 10 years of helping performers

KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- Madison R. Reed, known to local jazz fans as Ray, kept news of his cancer to himself until doctors told him he had six months to live.

The popular crooner always could be counted on to lend his support and velvety voice at fundraisers for ailing peers in the jazz community. So, the day after Christmas last year, when Ray Reed at 67 drew his final breath -- his coda, so to speak, meaning the concluding passage in a piece of music -- the community stepped forward to help with his burial.

It did so through the Coda Jazz Fund, which last week marked its 10th anniversary.

"Ray was thankful the money was there when his time had come," said longtime friend Glenda Williams. "Of course, he helped raise some of that money."

The Coda fund since inception has helped 38 career performers who lacked the means to pay for their own funeral services, burial plots, cremations or the simplest of headstones.

On those headstones have appeared names such as band leader Oliver Todd, Claude "Fiddler" Williams, local bassist Milt Abel and blues artist Annetta "Cotton Candy" Washington-Shefton. Many date to the glory days, when Kansas City was a center of the jazz world.

"I could've bought his headstone," said Todd's widow Bernice. "But this one was a gift from jazz, where Oliver put all his energy."

The end-of-life hardships that await even the hardest-working jazz stylists might surprise audiences who admire their snappy attire and prodigious talent in the spotlight. But the musicians' peers seldom are surprised.

"It's been an old story," said saxophonist Bobby Watson, director of jazz studies at the University of Missouri-Kansas City.

"Especially in their elderly years, these performers will go through the same struggles that millions of people go through who aren't in the public eye. Some musicians don't send up that flare for help. A lot of times their community takes it upon itself to do what it can," Watson said.

Health benefits are rare, and the pay for career musicians often is meager, said Coda organizer Pam Hider Johnson.

"Those passions and desires to play music, to entertain wherever they can, are always there with them -- and some [club owners and event promoters] take advantage of that," Johnson said.

"They become cheap bait."

When they're facing death, or have died, word spreads fast of their needs.

A funeral director phones a jazz instructor, who calls performers, who tell friends.

"Whatever you think can't be done, someone will come along and do it," said Celeste Rogers Reed (no relation to Ray), formerly an event planner with The Kansas City Star. During the fund's early years, she organized Coda benefit concerts co-sponsored by the newspaper and showcasing, to packed houses, saxophonist Watson and flugelhorn artists Chuck Mangione and Clark Terry.

Celeste Reed, who remains on the Coda committee, said the fund, in its decade of existence, has provided at least $150,000 in funeral costs and end-of-life support.

At Watkins Heritage Chapel, Coda-supported services usually include spirited jam sessions during visitation, said executive director Marion Watkins.

"We've buried most of the musicians around town going back to Charlie Parker," and in many cases, funds for respectable services have been strained, Watkins said.

As president of the Mutual Musicians Foundation in the 1990s, Watkins stressed the need for members to prearrange for funeral expenses and to direct a portion of their dues to burial funds.

The Coda Jazz Fund helped fill the remaining gaps for career musicians who qualified for assistance, typically in the amount of about $3,500 per burial.

"To offer a few thousand dollars takes away some of the strife of a loved one's passing," said music teacher Toni Oliver, who often is the first in Coda's network to hear of a local jazz artist's passing.

"When I get a call, then I initiate additional calls" to recruit musicians to perform at the homegoing ceremonies, said Oliver, founder and chief executive officer of the Oliver School of Music.

"Those jam sessions are hot -- reminiscent of the old days. Spontaneous, combustible," like much of jazz itself, she said. "We put aside any of our differences and pull together as a family."

Coda rescue

The widow of Claude "Fiddler" Williams recalled recently how "he was such a well-respected and loved player all over the world.

"But he wasn't a saver," Blanche Williams said.

Claude Williams' storied career dated to the 1920s. Before staking his identity to the violin, he played guitar for the first commercial recordings of Count Basie's band and earned Guitarist of the Year honors in Downbeat Magazine polls.

In his final years, he had Alzheimer's disease but could still remember the notes to the most intricate jazz pieces.

But the Kansas City fiddler and his wife encountered setbacks that depleted their finances.

Blanche Williams was diagnosed with colon cancer, then breast cancer, and she had to spend down a life's worth of her retirement savings so the couple could qualify for Medicaid.

"As I was packing for the hospital, I was also packing for him to go into the nursing home," said Blanche, today a resident of Santa Cruz, Calif.

Upon her husband's death in 2004 at age 96, "Coda came to my rescue," she said.

"He just loved playing for the people, and I was so thankful he was able to have a dignified and heartwarming service," Blanche added. "The musicians came out in force, all to pay tribute."

Roots in history

The reason for Coda reaches back through jazz history.

"If you're an enthusiast of the music, it might surprise you" that many popular performers die broke, Oliver said: "But if you know about the musicians' lives, you understand: Most aren't well paid."

In 2001, then-Star columnist Steve Penn observed how the family of local guitarist Sonny Kenner was selling his CDs to raise money for Kenner's funeral. With the help of Randall D. Smith, former deputy managing editor for the newspaper, the Sprint Foundation and other corporate sponsors, the Coda Jazz Fund was established in early 2002 as a charitable organization sanctioned by the Greater Kansas City Community Foundation.

Organizers at the time knew of only one other established fund, in New Jersey, dedicated to providing funerals and burial assistance to jazz musicians.

"I sit in on six not-for-profit boards," said Sherman Titens, a marketing professional in Leawood and longtime member of the Coda committee. "The other five are what you might expect -- mostly white, high-end executives who print up these dry agendas and minutes.

"The committee for Coda is, like, `Hey, what's going on?' They're truly a diverse group from all walks who just know how to get the job done."

Among the first people Coda reached out to assist in 2002 was the widow of band leader Todd -- a keyboardist, singer and trumpeter so trusted by the legendary Parker that "Bird" stored his prized saxophone in the Todd home when he visited Kansas City.

Today in the home, posthumous honors and city proclamations citing Oliver Todd's contributions cover the walls of the room where he played piano.

"My husband never got the recognition he earned when he was living," said Bernice, 91. "And I've told my friends that, really, none of us do, do we?"

Bernice used insurance money to bury her husband after he died in his sleep in July 2001. But his grave was unmarked until the Coda group donated a headstone.

"He's got a lovely grave" at Forest Hill Cemetery, Bernice Todd said.

In the same section holding the remains of her husband, saxophonist Ben Kynard was laid to rest this summer.

Kynard's passing came with no need for Coda to step in. He wrote tunes for Todd's band and, working with Lionel Hampton, composed the standard "Red Top."

"Close as they are" in the cemetery, Bernice Todd chuckled, "they could be having jam sessions."

For singer Ray Reed, Coda's mission went beyond easing old players into their final resting places. He believed that the future of local jazz depended upon musicians of all ages helping one another pass the torch.

"To keep jazz going in Kansas City," said Reed's sister, Romania Hill, "Ray believed the musicians had to help each other out -- whether they were already established or coming into the scene, or leaving this world. He believed in that with his heart and soul."

In early 2011, he checked himself into a hospital knowing that surgery performed two years earlier detected a spreading cancer. When told that tumors were forming in his brain, he let those around him know how to arrange his burial without taking on a lasting financial burden.

He filled out his own application for Coda funds before he died.