The Bernard "Step Buddy" Anderson Collection was gifted to LaBudde Special Collections in 1997 by the Kansas City Jazz Ambassadors. The collection captures Anderson’s life and career from 1944 until his death in 1997, but also includes correspondence dating back to 1930. The collection is particularly strong in Anderson’s literary and musical creative output, most of which was created between 1958 and 1993. Encapsulated is a wide range of writings from jazz compositions to musical stage works to books and articles on jazz and music. His project Smack-Dab Caps explores audio-visual combinations of music and slides through his innovations of illustrated songs and symbolic sounds (self-coined terms).

The collection is divided into eight series: personal materials, manuscripts and writings, compositions, Anderson projects/affiliations, newspaper/magazine/book clippings, awards, and miscellaneous materials; the last series, photographs, is made up of nearly 3000 images in 35mm slide, print and negative formats, taken mostly by Anderson, that document a wide variety of subjects from music scenes to street scenes.