Every night for the past month, Bill Chaney has been laying fire bricks for barbecue pits at an industrial scale. The struggles of trying to finish on time and coordinating his team of men may be stressful for some, but for Chaney, they are literal dreams.
Bill Chaney is 93 years old and built his last legendary barbecue pit years ago, but his mind is still on the job at night.
“I guess when people get older, their past comes to them when they’re sleeping,” says Chaney. “I just wake up smiling,”
By many accounts, Chaney has built more barbecue pits than anyone in Kansas City. He built the famous brick pits at Jack Stack, Smoke Stack, Smokehouse, LC’s, and Winslow’s. He says he’s nearly lost count of how many he’s built over the years but puts the number around 30.
“I’d build more if I was able,” says Chaney. “But the old man caught up with me.”
Chaney’s age may prevent him from building new pits, but technology has also changed. Most modern barbecue restaurants opt for what Chaney calls “barbecue ovens.”
“A lot of new places work strictly out of [gas] smokers,” says Josh Ghasemi, Smokehouse Barbecue director of operations. “We do it in a hickory pit, and we wouldn’t have it if it weren’t for Chaney; our business is built around that pit.”
Chaney says the pits he built took three bricklayers 30 days to build. Many barbecue aficionados swear by Chaney’s pits and say they can taste the difference.
“In the pits that I build, the grease drips and burns on the wood, putting that flavor back into the meat,” says Chaney.
“We do it in a hickory pit, and we wouldn’t have it if it weren’t for Chaney; our business is built around that pit.”
Josh Ghasemi, Director of Operations, Smokehouse Barbecue
Humble Beginnings to BBQ Legend
Chaney was born in 1931 near Jefferson City and moved to Kansas City as a child. His father and grandfather were the first men he saw barbecuing by simply digging a hole in the ground.
At 12-years-old, Chaney, who says he grew up dirt poor, started working part-time washing dishes at Arthur Bryant’s, perhaps KC’s most legendary barbecue restaurant. He received a quarter an hour plus a sandwich a shift. Once a year for decades, Arthur Bryant’s would close down for a week when Chaney would service and make repairs to their pit.
Out of school, Chaney began making a living as a shoemaker and general laborer. He struggled to get work because of his race, and because people assumed by his small stature that he wouldn’t be very productive at hard labor.
“I got into making barbecue pits because I couldn’t get hired anyplace else,” says Chaney. “I’m just lucky that somebody took a liking to me and taught me.”
Eventually, he found a few mentors who noted his hard work on odd jobs and brought him under their wing. Chaney eventually found full-time work at Standard Improvement Company, a Kansas City construction firm. As fate would have it, he also just so happened to work with the two gentlemen who built the pit at Arthur Bryant’s, who taught him the craft of building fireplaces then barbecue pits. He soaked in the information and learned how to design them, what bricks and techniques to use. This skill became Chaney’s calling card, as he perfected his craft over decades.
The History of Burnt Ends
He says that when he worked at Arthur Bryant’s, the brick pit got so hot that the pitmaster would have to throw water on the fire and move meat to prevent it from becoming too charred. This process was only so successful, and brisket would get burned around the edges.
The crisp edges were then given away, and eventually, the burnt bits became popular enough to be put on the menu as “scraps and fries.” These scraps were such a hit that they got a new name: burnt ends. Nowadays, burnt ends are the signature dish of KC barbeque.
An In Demand Pit Builder
At first, Chaney’s pits weren’t for commercial use. The first one was for a church in Harrisonville, and he made a few for individuals, including local baseball player and World Series hero Joe Carter.
Chaney met Carter through a personal friend and neighbor in Kansas City’s Santa Fe neighborhood: Satchel Paige. Chaney recalls fondly that the retired Major League ballplayer was a big storyteller and had a bumper sticker on his car reading, “Don’t look back. Something might be catching up with you.”
The first restaurant-build for Chaney was in 1957 for Russ Fiorella and his first barbecue joint, Smoke Stack BBQ. Chaney also built a pit for Fiorella’s son Jack for the original Jack Stack restaurant in Martin City around 1974.
Chaney maintained a relationship with the Fiorella family. As their restaurant business grew grew in size and number, Chaney came back again and again to build and service their pits. Today, Jack Stack in Martin City has been rated as one of the top restaurants in the country and ships its barbecue nationwide. The last pit that Chaney built was around 2000, for Jack Stack’s Freight House location in the Crossroads Art District.
“I built the pit, and then they built the restaurant around it,” says Chaney.
While Chaney has outlived many of the restaurants he built pits for, here are the locations you can still visit:
Fiorella’s Jack Stack Barbecue:
13441 Holmes Road, Kansas City
13645 Holmes Road, Kansas City
101 W. 22nd St. #300, Kansas City
4747 Wyandotte St., Kansas City
9520 Metcalf Ave., Overland Park
LC’s Bar-B-Q,
5800 Blue Parkway, Kansas City
Smokehouse Barbecue:
6304 N. Oak Trafficway, Gladstone
19000 E. 39th St., Independence