H ouston has never wanted for musical excellence, and it was no different in the late 1960s when a Houston high school band director from the city’s Northside took a roomful of teenagers and turned them into the best stage band in America.
That director was Conrad O. Johnson, better known to his students as “Prof,” a musician who led the music program at Kashmere High School in Houston’s Kashmere Gardens neighborhood. With Johnson at the helm, the Kashmere Stage Band became a funk powerhouse, winning competition after competition (a panel of judges named them the best stage band in the country at the 1972 All-American Stage Band festival in Mobile, Alabama) and recording music that still raises the hair on the back of your neck, the horns screaming.
So how did a group of teenagers who could not even vote yet become one of the best musical acts to come out of Houston? It traces back to one decision Johnson made about the music his students would play, which set the Kashmere Stage Band apart from every other school band in the country.
How did a Houston high school band invent its own sound?
Johnson’s understanding of music ran deep…