Remembering Steve Harvey

He was a rising young KC jazz performer when he was savagely murdered in 1980. Friends and musicians remember him as though it were yesterday.

On Wednesday, the A&E program "City Confidential" will devote one hour to the story of Steven L. Harvey, a rising performer in the Kansas City music scene who at age 27 was brutally murdered in 1980 near the Liberty Memorial. The program is a personal project of David Wallach, a veteran producer for A&E who learned about Harvey after moving here to work at WDAF, Channel 4.

What struck Wallach about the Harvey case was the tenacious effort by his parents and friends to bring the killer to justice. It took two trials, including a federal prosecution for hate crimes that is believed to be the first of its kind.

Because "City Confidential" is a crime-based show, most of the hour is devoted to the legal aspects of Harvey's murder. And the program tacks on a mini-travelogue of Kansas City. Wallach does a fine job with this, spotlighting the local jazz scene and noting that few cities can boast so many performers who play jazz for a living.

But these other agendas - imposed on Wallach by A&E - serve to diminish Harvey the man. Because his artistry never attained national recognition, viewers may come away from "City Confidential" more impressed by the legal pursuit of Harvey's killers than the smattering of details about his life. Even a slightly fuller portrait of the man makes clear why more than 100 of his fellow musicians performed at a benefit concert held shortly after his death.

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Steve Harvey grew up at 55th and Bellefontaine, one of three children in the home of Kathryn and Sherman Harvey, loving parents who would support Steve's career with room, board and transportation all his life. During his senior year at Southeast High School, Steve took part in a jazz lab where he met the other members of what would become Mass Transit, the group he kept throughout the 1970s.

Even though Harvey didn't sing, he was the group's undisputed leader. Musically his tastes were eclectic, his skills were dazzling and his showmanship was second to none. He had a whistle he liked to pull out and blow while exhorting crowds away from their cocktail tables and onto the dance floor. He practiced compulsively, not just on the alto sax, but on a variety of woodwinds. In jam sessions he was fearless. "(Steve) would sit in with every band," says Greg Richter, who played piano in a quintet with Harvey. "He always played whatever they were playing: Earth, Wind & Fire; bebop; Sinatra. He knew all the notes."

"He was an extremely fine player who was very entertaining when he let music overtake him," says Ida McBeth, who would see Steve at the Phillips Hotel and the old Drum Room.

By 1979 he was playing six, seven, eight places in one night. From the mid-1970s onward, Harvey's constant companion was Mark Pender, a raw but enthusiastic trumpeter from Grandview, who arrived on the Harveys' doorstep one cold January night after hearing that a group was looking for a horn player. Steve's dad opened the door, surveyed Pender's long curly hair and called out, "There's a white boy here!"

Pender found Mass Transit rehearsing in a spare bedroom. What happened next changed his life. "Steve shows up, pulls his saxophone out, and my jaw drops open," recalls Pender. "I'd never seen a young guy play that well. He was so nice and encouraging to me. He accepted me as a band member from that night. I joined and we kept growing closer and closer." They were kindred spirits, bound by mutual dedication to their craft. On stage, they traded joyous, energetic solos back and forth. Kansas City became their oyster.

But by 1979 Steve and Mark were thinking bigger. They accepted an offer to join the traveling band of jazz organist Charles Earland, which played for three months in the Midwest before finishing with some dates in northern New Jersey. The two men hoped their momentum would carry them across the Hudson River and into the New York music scene. It didn't work out that way. After the band reached Newark, N.J., Earland told Mark and Steve that with no other prospects in sight, they could go home.

Steve went home. He had two young children in Kansas City and he missed them terribly. Mark took an apartment in a rough neighborhood in New Jersey. One night muggers attacked him and stole his trumpet. As it turns out, he was the lucky one.

"A few days before he died, he called me," Pender said. "He was going to join me out here."

In the early hours of Wednesday, Nov. 5, 1980, Steve Harvey left a late-night jam at the Inferno Show Lounge and drove to Liberty Memorial with his saxophone. He often went out there alone, or took a friend along, and played until 4 or 5 in the morning. Harvey went to use the restroom near the memorial. A few moments later, 19-year-old Raymond L. Bledsoe walked in with a baseball bat, accompanied by two other men. They had come looking for gay men cruising Penn Valley Park, but Bledsoe settled on Harvey instead.

Wounded, he tried to flee. Bledsoe caught up with him in the park and hit him repeatedly with the bat, caving in his head. The murder weapon was never found.

A tip finally led police to Bledsoe's accomplices, who flipped, but with only their word against his, an all-white jury decided there wasn't enough to convict. Bledsoe walked - and then he talked, boasting to at least 30 people that he had gotten away with murder, as the program reports.

In response, Steve's parents (who have since passed away) pushed for justice. Kathryn Harvey and activist Alvin Sykes were relentless in their campaign to have Bledsoe retried on a federal civil rights charge. In 1983 the U.S. government took the case and, armed with the additional testimony, got Bledsoe sentenced to a life term at the penitentiary in Leavenworth.

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When a talented artist dies young, it is easy to invent a bright future for him. Harvey's friends have remastered the few extant recordings of his work; on them you can hear his crowd-pleasing skills, his commitment and his ambition.

"I think he'd probably have realized his dream and had a wonderful career," says Mark Pender. "He was just too talented not to." Indeed, that's what happened to Pender. He eventually toured with Steven Van Zandt and Robert Cray, played on the landmark Bruce Springsteen live album, and now has one of the most secure and enviable jobs in the music business, playing in the house band of NBC's "Late Night With Conan O'Brien."

On Wednesday, several of Kansas City's leading lights of jazz, including Ida McBeth, David Basse, Angela Hagenbach and Dave Stephens, will stage a benefit at the Uptown Theater. Wallach will show the "City Confidential" episode, and at his request, proceeds from the concert will go to Kansas City Hospice, which recently cared for his dying mother.

Of course, everyone will also be there to honor Steve Harvey, whose name still brings back memories and feelings. Perhaps no one has more of those than Gary Hider, who became best friends with him at the age of 11. He can recall Steve strolling down 63rd Street, serenading the traffic with his flute, or coming over to Gary's new house to confer a blessing with his saxophone.

Fond memories - until, as Hider says, "I get that real melancholy feeling," and he has to stop thinking about Steve. Not that he's ever really stopped thinking about Steve. "He died November the fifth, 1980," he says, "and I've missed him. Every day."

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