Bud Powell should be a household name
Late one January night in 1945, a young black man stumbled drunkenly toward Broad Street Station in Philadelphia. He was exhausted after playing a long set in a grotty club half a mile away. The naturally nervous musician often used alcohol to settle his unbearable over-excitements and debilitating despairs. On this occasion he had one too many. His awkward gait caught the attention of two policemen. They went to shoo him away, but instead of escorting him peacefully along, something about the twenty-year-old vexed the pair and they began to bash him about the head repeatedly with their truncheons. When the seriousness of his injuries became apparent, after he’d been slung into a frozen cell, he was taken to a hospital to recuperate.
