The Museum Perspective

For the past month this blog has reprinted articles from the thirtieth anniversary issue of Jam magazine. I’ve done that because long after the printed copies – available free all over town – are filed in closets and trash cans, these stories will show up in Google searches, something less likely to happen to the PDF available for download (here).

The issue asks, what is the future of jazz in Kansas City. This week, the is last excerpt, with the views of Cheptoo Kositany-Buckner, the new executive director of the American Jazz Museum.

*****

Next year, Kansas City is getting a major new free admission jazz festival.

Cheptoo Kositany-Buckner, the still-new Executive Director of the American Jazz Museum explains:

“We are launching the Kansas City Jazz Festival. It will start on Memorial Day weekend, 2017. It will be a collaborative effort with various organizations to launch something huge. We will bring artists from out of town but we also want to elevate Kansas City jazz and Kansas City music and made in Kansas City. The festival is about celebrating our own brand. I want it to be a legacy for generations to come. I want it to be something that families prepare to go to every year.

“There are a lot of jazz festivals that happen all over the world in major cities. People who love jazz go to these festivals, a lot of them. I want our festival to be one where people say, I must be in Kansas City for the Kansas City Jazz Festival.”

Those are mighty lofty goals for someone who has been on the job just a few months.

But nobody who has met Cheptoo Kositany-Buckner doubts that she will pull it off, including the mayor (as you can read in his interview in this issue). She inspires that confidence.

The Mutual Musicians Foundation is the most historic and revered building in Kansas City jazz. But the American Jazz Museum is the elephant in the jazz room. It’s where the most programs, education initiatives, a major club, a major festival – and, oh yeah, a museum – begin.

For starters, out of the $27.6 million bond issue proposed for the 18th and Vine district, over $2 million is targeted for the museum.

Some of those funds will go towards reimagining the Blue Room including, Kositany-Buckner says, “the furniture, the look and feel, the ambiance and the food issue. That has really been a challenge for us, not having food in the Blue Room. Audiences sometimes leave to go seek food somewhere else.

“Our sound equipment is old. I tell people that we are an organization that deals with sound. We need to have state of the art technology to stream music, to allow people to connect to the live music going on in the Blue Room. The entire experience, I think, will change.”

Other plans, Kositany-Buickner says, “will allow us to create a new feel when walking into the jazz museum. Having the ability to experience jazz when you come in there, whether it’s through exhibits or music or performance or different kinds of activities.”

She turned towards the museum atrium. “We plan to increase our public programming. We are bringing in artists who have written books about jazz musicians. The Gem at 500 seats is sometimes too much for some of the activities we want to do. We use the space now for jazz storytelling. Every First Friday we have over 250 kids in the atrium.

“There are people in the community who come into that space to meet. It’s a community room.”

Plans are already proceeding for exhibits.

“There will be a number of changing exhibits,” Kositany-Buckner said. “There are going to be major exhibits that will be in place for three months. That will mostly include art with the theme of jazz or African American culture. One of the visions that I have is for the jazz museum at 18th and Vine to be the place where quality art is presented east of Troost.

“The other part of the temporary exhibits are going to be mostly historical, looking at what is in our collections and building temporary exhibits out of that. They may be themed exhibits. For example, we have wonderful gowns from jazz musicians. We’d love to do an exhibit of all of those gowns. We have some of the Duke Ellington collection. We’d like to do an exhibit on that. I met with the Marr Sound Archives, with Chuck [Haddix], on a partnership to show some of the collections they have as temporary exhibits. Those could be up for a month.

“We’re also thinking about traveling exhibits. The idea is that some of the historical exhibits, we would build and launch them here. After that, we would be sending them out. After all, we are the American Jazz Museum. Our boundaries are not just Kansas City. It’s the world.”

Kositany-Buckner’s optimism is infectious. But at the same time, she understands the reality of how Kansas City’s jazz district is often seen locally.

“Part of the challenge that we have is a perception issue,” she explained. “There is a lot going on. Jazz storytelling was in place before I came here. Thousands of kids come through those doors for tours day and night. The Blue Room is jamming four nights each week. The Jammin’ at the Gem series is selling out. There is a perception that nothing is going on but something is going on. Part of the community has embraced 18th and Vine but the larger community has not. As we infuse the funding into 18th and Vine, we want to start a another conversation on changing that perception.

I’ll give you an example. Two months ago, a couple walks in here. Staff started talking to them. They’re from Norway. Because of the centennial of [the birthday of] Jay McShann, they skipped every city in the United States, everywhere, and landed in Kansas City to find out more about Jay McShann. They were excited about the museum and being in the vicinity where jazz was created. You should have seen them.

“We get people from all over the nation and all over the world and they love it. But Kansas City says, nothing is happening there. Something has to change.”

The district is starting to work cohesively. They are participating in First Fridays, the Crossroads street celebration, establishing the area as an eastern anchor.

“For First Friday, everybody was at the table. We all came together and said we want to do this. We’re excited. We feel it was successful. All of the businesses and the cultural institutions from the district sat down and planned that First Friday.

“So I know we can do it.”

All the Pieces

The difference in body language caught my attention first.

I sat in a meeting early this summer, in a conference room near 18th and Vine, that included several staff members from the American Jazz Museum. I noticed the way one sat angled in his chair, the edge in a voice when one spoke, the wayward gaze of another. We’ve all sat through gatherings on a bad day. This was different. There was an overarching sense of disgruntlement and defiance, not with the topic at hand but with something else.

Two months later, I sat down to talk with the new interim CEO of the museum for a Q and A in the next issue of Jam magazine. As I walked through the jazz museum offices, I was struck by a fresh feel of excitement, animation, a spark not present before. The difference was palpable. The body language had changed.

That’s just one of the changes Ralph Reid is shepherding through the American Jazz Museum. Following 35 years at Sprint, retiring as Vice President for Corporate Responsibility and President of the Sprint Foundation, Reid brings unique experience and a new outlook. He’s focused on how the museum’s brand is perceived, a key to the success of any corporate behemoth or civic institution. And his words suggest a comprehensive vision, of recognizing the museum’s role in selling the complete 18th and Vine district.

That’s especially important following last week’s announcement at the Negro Leagues Museum. The museums’ back yard is about to change. In a joint venture between the Kansas City Royals, Major League Baseball and the Major League Baseball Players Association, the country’s seventh MLB Urban Youth Academy will be built in Parade Park. From Mayor Sly James’s website (here):

The Academy and park improvements will be developed in two phases:

•  Phase I includes two full-size baseball fields, including one with permanent and portable bleachers for tournament play; two youth baseball-softball fields; a half-mile walking trail with views of the baseball and softball diamonds; relocated basketball courts; relocated and renovated tennis courts, and a new playground near the community center.

•  Phase II includes the indoor training facility with a turf infield, batting cages, pitching mounds, restrooms and concession facilities for the diamonds; a Great Lawn that will serve as a front yard for the Academy and as a shared event space, and additional parking.

Here’s the layout, with the museums highlighted in yellow (clicking on the image should open a larger view):

Phase 1 is scheduled to be completed in a year. Fundraising continues for phase 2 with the hopes that the training facility will be standing a year later.

This development brings with it the potential to transform the 18th and Vine district. The district never did and never will thrive on jazz alone. In the 1930s, jazz was the soundtrack to vice. It needs a new companion.

But this district faces special challenges. I’ve quoted often from a 1979 study commissioned by the Black Economic Union and funded by the Ford Foundation which said, in part, that even then people feared coming into the area. The city needs to address an image ingrained for decades and underscored just this past Sunday when, at 2:40 a.m., four people were shot at 18th and Highland, one seriously (news reports here and here). These incidents must end. This isn’t The Plaza where stories of woebegone youth surprise. This is what too many people anticipate here, so they don’t come. The five o’clock news cannot open with reports from the district of “an uptick in crime” and a resident saying, “This is a horrible street to live on” while you ask parents to send their kids to play baseball in the neighborhood park.

Because the possibilities here are incredible.

If the city can stymie the stories of violence, the coming of the beloved and Snow White-sweet Royals, with Major League Baseball, can bestow the district with equivalent of the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval. They can draw a new audience. Will it be a large enough crowd to entice new restaurants and shops? That’s the hope.

I suspect Mayor James has been pushing for East Crossroads development incentives in part because this revitalization is coming. That’s another element necessary to begin to dispel languishing fears: the district needs a not-so-scary-to-nonurbanites connection to the rest of the city.

I’m aware of two clubs which at least sometimes book jazz being courted to East Crossroads. Could this city, in a few years, boast of Green Lady Lounge accompanied by some new jazz cohorts jamming in an area that leads to an 18th and Vine district with The Blue Room, the Mutual Musicians Foundation broadcasting its new radio station and a Major League Baseball facility training future major leaguers? Many discussions are preliminary. Money needs to be raised. So much could yet fall elsewhere or simply fall apart. But today, all of the critical pieces are dangling for that vision to be a possibility.

The vision. I spoke with Ralph Reid just two weeks after he took over leadership of the American Jazz Museum. He was uncomfortable attaching the word vision to his ideas and plans. Yet, Reid’s Sprint experience in community outreach and his time spent on the boards of other major not-for-profit organizations brings the experience and vision needed at the jazz museum during a time of district transitions. He’s another critical piece.

A few weeks ago, on KCPT’s Kansas City Week in Review, I watched as the panelists speculated on whether Ralph Reid might consider staying on at the museum past his designated interim role. I thought, I know the answer to that. I asked him that question earlier in the week. And the answer is…

…in the next issue of Jam, available around town starting later this week.

(I can be such a tease.)

Wrapping the Show and Tell

In September, the American Jazz Museum celebrates 18 years since its opening. For the last eight of those years, Greg Carroll has served as CEO. Last week, Carroll “resigned” from that position.

Greg Carroll didn’t build the American Jazz Museum. He didn’t stock it with Ella Fitzgerald’s dress or Charlie Parker’s plastic saxophone. But run an institution for eight years and you leave your imprint.

For starters, Carroll leaves the museum with an exceptional staff. Staff that has turned the Blue Room from losses to profits. Staff that has moved the museum’s marketing from stodgy print ads to a twenty first century internet presence, and public relations efforts that recognize and build on the institution’s unique presence. Staff that reaches into the community to pull in students and educate. Staff that has raised over $240,500 from public donations to fund general operations. That’s not enough money to pacify the city, apparently, but it’s more than any other Kansas City jazz organization has raised, ever.

Carroll turned a too grand festival into a tighter event that fits the crowd size 18th and Vine will attract. I disagree with its broad range of music styles. The pop group War playing “Cisco Kid” doesn’t fit a jazz and blues festival. Worse, it sends the message that jazz and blues alone can’t sell enough $25 tickets to fill the museum’s back yard. I don’t buy that view. And it’s an inappropriate message to be sent by the American Jazz Museum. But give Carroll credit for reviving the money losing and, for a year, dead Rhythm and Ribs Festival and re-conceiving it as the profitable Kansas City’s 18th and Vine Jazz and Blues Festival.

The museum under Carroll has been a founding and driving force behind KC Jazz Alive, uniting nearly all Kansas City jazz organizations in a way rarely seen in this community. The second annual Charlie Parker Celebration will span ten days next month, culminating with the resurrected Twenty-One Sax Salute at Parker’s gravesite on what would have been Bird’s 95th birthday. I was dubious when first told of the multi-day celebration last year, but it was a grand success thanks in large part to the support of that professional museum staff.

Special events like a festival and celebration are key to drawing people into a district too many still consider a precarious trip. It’s not, but it’s an image 18th and Vine struggles to overcome. That’s not new. A 1979 study on repurposing the armory building at 18th and Highland noted that even then many were afraid to come to 18th and Vine after dark. It’s not the museum’s fault.

News stories on the American Jazz Museum routinely sheathe it in a disappointing – that’s a euphemism for failed – redevelopment project. No question, 18th and Vine needs restaurants and shops. But when shown an early concept for rebuilding the district in the late 1980s, my reaction was that people will not flock to an oasis surrounded by a moat of industrial buildings and blight. Today there’s not nearly the blight that dominated the area back then, but it still takes a knowledge of the neighborhood or a leap of faith to drive 18th Street from the Crossroads to The Paseo. It’s safe. But few sights along the way reassure.

News stories suggest the city expects the museum to depend on it less for sufficiency. Yet, look at the city budget. The Liberty Memorial has $771,501 coming. Union Station is in there for $308,400, and the Kansas City Museum for another $408,305. The American Jazz Museum was budgeted to receive $466,094. Some of those other institutions have dedicated taxes flowing their way. Good for them. But why is it reasonable to expect the American Jazz Museum to thrive with less support than the others? News reports say the museum was expected to be more self-supporting by now. Well, city, the entire district was expected by now to have shops and restaurants and oodles of people walking its streets noon to night. The museum is an anchor but alone it will never be the jazz district’s salvation.

Nonetheless, the museum can do more to pull the public into Kansas City’s rich heritage. Exhibits are interesting but stale and offer little incentive for a return visit. And consideration needs to be given to how, outside of Blue Room and festival programming, this museum of jazz can tie into an increasingly vibrant and exciting Kansas City jazz scene.

A wonderful new web site, Inside Jazz Kansas City (here) offers the musicians’ perspective on what is going on in Kansas City jazz today. In an opening day column for the site, trumpeter Clint Ashlock wrote this:

“We have many flagship groups that are as we speak developing a NEW Kansas City sound - something that hopefully our city will speak of soon with as much reverence as it does Basie, Williams, Parker. There are great things happening in Kansas City jazz right now. We have something exciting brewing, and venues who are starting to really support it. It's a really cool time to be here, right now.”

This is a growing, evolving jazz scene. Who ties it all together? Who examines the history, the up-the-Mississippi-from-New-Orleans-but-something-different-happened-here story of jazz, its expansion into bebop and fusion and all the other sidebars, its influence on rock, then its continued recasting into newer sounds and ideas and experiments? In Kansas City today, a fan can be immersed in jazz. But who is embracing the complete story? Who is wrapping their show-and-tell around the ongoing advancement of the music?

New leadership brings fresh opportunities to reimagine the American Jazz Museum.

A Week of Good News, and an Outlier

Two signs of a healthy Kansas City jazz scene stood out last week: A general manager with a track record of success coming to The Broadway Jazz Club and unprecedented donor support for the American Jazz Museum.

Since it opened nearly a year and a half ago, the jazz community has desperately wanted to see The Broadway Jazz Club thrive. Not just for the additional opportunities to hear jazz, but because it embraced the concept of a dinner jazz club, a niche unfilled in Kansas City since the demise of Jardine’s.

But The Broadway Jazz Club wasn’t located just a little north of the Country Club Plaza, Jardine’s onetime neighborhood. It was in Midtown. You didn’t see Nichols Fountain as you approached Broadway. You saw a Sprint store with bars on its windows. Plus, the success of Take Five Coffee + Bar meant Johnson County jazz fans no longer needed to drive into town for dinner and jazz. Some of the best music is now in their back yard.

The club closed for the first couple weeks of January for upgrades. It reopened with a clearly diminished music budget, mostly duos and trios, largely comparable to the jazz that not-a-jazz-club The American Restaurant booked. You could hear complete bands at the Green Lady Lounge, at The Blue Room, at Take Five. There were exceptions, but too often The Broadway Jazz Club felt like listening to a pianist with a brass or woodwind player on a stage and in a room intended for much more than that.

Recently, Green Lady Lounge proprietor John Scott has quietly consulted with the owners of The Broadway Jazz Club. Scott knows the area. Before Green Lady, he owned a gym – still operating, with a different owner – in the rear of the faded strip mall across the street. And he grasps how to run a neighborhood club spotlighting jazz. In the last year and a half he has opened a second stage in Green Lady’s basement level while tripling the club’s revenues.

Starting June 1st, John Scott takes over as general manager of The Broadway Jazz Club. After a couple of weeks closed for adjustments, Broadway will reopen as Broadway Kansas City. Initially, the club will operate just Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights, and Wednesdays when the 12th Street Jump radio program records there. Broadway will be less the-second-coming-of-Jardine’s and more a club which embraces the neighborhood Scott understands, but with the live jazz he adores. He envisions a bigger sound to fill the room, tighter shows, and the same professional presentation that is a hallmark of Green Lady. It’s wrapping Kansas City’s heritage in a more appealing light and comprehensively branding it with a different feel than you’ll find in Johnson County. Not better, not worse, but unique. And if you want to sample this style of unique, you’ll need to come into Midtown.

The jazz community hasn’t felt this excited about the future of Broadway since it opened.

We can feel equally excited about the future of the American Jazz Museum. With proposed cuts to its city funding half restored – museum supporters have always done an exceptional job of raising a ruckus at City Hall – last week the museum announced record private donations.

Its fifth annual PEER Into the Future fundraising lunch on April 20th attracted nearly 240 guests and raised more than $112,000 in private donations. Add over $128,000 in donations prior to the luncheon and the museum has so far raised over $240,500 for general operations.

That’s extraordinary. Don’t kid yourself. There’s an elephant in the Kansas City jazz room, and it’s the American Jazz Museum.

You can criticize elements of the museum. It should be larger. The permanent exhibits need to evolve to entice repeat visits. But recognize that they do a superlative job of fundraising, better than any other Kansas City jazz organization in the thirty-plus years I’ve known the scene.

(PEER, by they way, stands for Performance, Exhibition, Education and Research, which are the museum’s key missions.)

The museum is a central player in KC Jazz ALIVE, an organization working to bring together a too often divided jazz scene, with too many organizations and every group out for itself. Separately, club owners are talking with each other. The owners don’t see themselves as competitors, but as crucial to maintaining a thriving audience for jazz.

Yet, there’s an outlier which appears intent on moving its own direction and not working with others in the jazz community. The Mutual Musicians Foundation is unquestionably the most historic building and institution in Kansas City jazz. They are educating school age music students at no charge each Saturday morning. They are sponsoring an educational jazz festival centering on KC swing next month. If they can raise the money to erect a tower and begin broadcasting by June of next year, they will be home to this city’s only jazz radio station.

The Foundation is no relic. It is sponsoring vital programs.

But the Foundation declines to participate in the unity enveloping the rest of the jazz community. The organization chooses to estrange itself despite other groups repeatedly reaching out to its members.

The rest of the jazz community is not competing with the Mutual Musicians Foundation. On the contrary, I repeatedly hear how this community wants to embrace the Foundation’s history and help celebrate its successes. More than that, I suspect some of the same donors who have supported the American Jazz Museum will also wrap their financial arms around the Foundation when it moves beyond presenting itself an an aggrieved institution.

Because supporters of Kansas City jazz are recognizing that the scene flourishes most when we work together.

A Quarter Century Later

Twenty six years ago last Wednesday, the plan was announced that would lead to construction of today’s American Jazz Museum and Negro Leagues Museum complex.

The announcement was the culmination of intense negotiation and compromise.

Eddie Baker, a musician and executive director of the Charlie Parker Foundation, had advocated an International Jazz Hall of Fame in Kansas City since 1977. But not at 18th and Vine. That neighborhood, he felt, was too closely tied to Kansas City jazz to be the location for a museum embracing all styles of jazz. In 1983, after the Jewish Community Center announced plans to move to Johnson County, Eddie promoted their soon to be vacated building at 82nd and Holmes as the perfect location for the Hall of Fame he envisioned. In 1983, the Kansas City Council passed a resolution stating that a Jazz Hall of Fame in Kansas City would be located in the 18th and Vine district. In 1984, Count Basie Enterprises donated $10,000 from Basie’s estate (Basie died in 1983) for a Jazz Hall of Fame that met Eddie’s vision. In 1986, Eddie trademarked the name International Jazz Hall of Fame so nobody could use it without his permission.

On March 11, 1989, at a press conference attended by Dizzy Gillespie (who was in town for a show at the Folly), the city announced that an agreement had been reached to build the museum and jazz institute that Eddie had championed in the former public works buildings at 21st and Vine. The city accepted Eddie’s dream as the plan. Eddie accepted the 18th and Vine district as the location.

That compromise fell apart. The city allocated $20 million to the project. Cost estimates grew to $32 million. Space was slashed in half and the location moved. Eddie withdrew his support and permission to use the name International Jazz Hall of Fame. Count Basie Enterprises denied use of Basie’s image except for photos already in the public domain.

The museum known today as the American Jazz Museum opened in September, 1997.

Battles over the museum were typical of the infighting prevalent in Kansas City’s jazz community in the 1980s and the 1990s.

*****

A poster of the 11th Jazz Lover’s Pub Crawl in 1992 lists 31 locations where jazz could be heard that night. Don’t misunderstand. That doesn’t mean jazz could be found in over thirty clubs and hotel bars each night. Many clubs booked jazz just this one evening because the Crawl was so popular they would see little business if they didn’t.

Still, 31 places to hear jazz in Kanss City, even for one night, is remarkable.

In 2011, Jardine’s closed. That left The Blue Room, The Majestic, Take Five, the Mutual Musicians Foundation and on some nights The Phoenix or The Record Bar as all the clubs in the area with jazz.

*****

2015:

Young musicians dominate Kansas City’s jazz scene. They know the standards, sure, but they’re invigorating jazz with fresh sounds and ideas. And they’re finding opportunities to play. I'm told some young New York jazz musicians have discussed moving to Kansas City. They're hearing stories about gigs and a more agreeable cost of living.

A second live recording made at Green Lady Lounge is scheduled to be released next month, with owner John Scott planning more. A page on his web site sells CDs by Kansas City jazz musicians. He wants to bring back into circulation local CDs that have been unavailable. He’s an evangelist for today’s Kansas City jazz. He wants it to be known worldwide, because the music is that good.

New club owners are building audiences. Take Five is bringing jazz to a part of the city that never before heard it live. And they’re drawing Blue Valley High School students, part of tomorrow’s audience, to the shows.

Planning has started for the second Charlie Parker celebration. An expanded bus tour, encompassing more historic sites tied to Kansas City jazz, is being discussed. Events that pull together more of the metropolitan area seem likely.

The celebration is the hallmark event of KC Jazz ALIVE, an organization that has unified an unprecedented portion of KC’s jazz community. Not every group is a part of this organization. Some outliers seem determined to plot their own direction. At one time, the Kansas City Jazz Commission was appointed, in part, to bring a fractured jazz scene together. I chaired that commission for two years in the late 1980s, so I understand the challenge. And I marvel at the amount of harmony, though still fragile, that I’m seeing.

(By the way, I sucked at unifying the jazz community.)

Integral to the Parker celebration and KC Jazz ALIVE is the American Jazz Museum. They are devoting staff and other resources to promotion and education. They employ thousands of jazz musicians each year. They are educating young people and exposing them to our internationally renowned heritage.

The Charlie Parker Foundation, which Eddie Baker directed, advocated the education of youth in jazz, developing opportunities for our stellar musicians, and promoting our incredible jazz heritage to the public. The American Jazz Museum may not be the institution that Eddie imagined. But in 2015, it is doing more to perpetuate the Parker Foundation’s goals than any other jazz organization in Kansas City.

I’m not sure whether that’s ironic or beautiful.

Kansas City's 18th and Vine Jazz and Blues Festival 2014

The event’s name, Kansas City’s 18th and Vine Jazz and Blues Festival, at nine words, is semi-officially the longest title of any jazz festival anywhere. On Wikipedia’s page of jazz festivals around the world (here) – a listing of hundreds of jazz events – only two others are as long as eight words: the United Kingdom’s Glenn Miller Festival of Swing, Jazz and Jive and Northern Ireland’s City of Derry Jazz and Big Band Festival. Two are seven words long. The rest run three to six words. Organizers, there’s nothing wrong with a succinct title.

Especially when organizers at the American Jazz Museum present such a stellar music event. Staging and sound at the festival’s three venues clustered around 18th and Vine (the outdoor Main Stage and the indoor Blue Room and Gem Theater) were excellent. The flow through the grounds is well planned and executed. The friendliness and helpfulness of volunteers makes you feel like the event’s most important guest. The assortment of food and other vendors adds a welcome variety that other festivals lack. The one element out of organizers’ control, beautiful fall weather, capped the day.

Don’t believe me? Take a look at the photos below of local acts from each of the venues and the jazz and blues headliners on the main stage. As always, clicking on a photo should open a larger version of it.

The main stage with Hearts of Darkness

Hearts of Darkness commands the main stage early in the afternoon

The Groove Axis with Houston Smith on sax in The Blue Room

Book of Gaia. Left to right: Michael Warren on drums, Eddie Moore on piano, D'Andre Manning on bass, Nedra Dixon, vocals, Pam Watson, vocals, Angels Hagenbach, vocals, Karita Carter on trombone.

Book of Gaia in the Gem Theater

The vocalists: Nedra Dixon, Pam Watson and Angela Hagenbach

Blues headliner Lucky Peterson

Lucky Peterson mugging on the main stage

Lucky Peterson, with guitar, leaving the main stage...

...and joining the audience.

Lucky Peterson surrounded by hundreds of fans

Lucky Peterson

Jazz headliner Roy Hargrove. Dig those shoes.

 

Roy Hargrove enjoys his quintet, with Larry Willis on piano, Justin Robinson on sax, Ameen Saleem on bass and (not seen) Willie Jones III on drums.

Justin Robinson and Roy Hargrove

Unexpectedly, Roy Hargrove sings

Pianist Larry Willis

Roy Hargrove on the main stage

The Luck of the Medallion People

They really lucked out, I mused, those people behind the medallions.

I was looking at the medallions, oversize circles with brass letters glistening in the sun, sloppily embedded in the sidewalk in front of the American Jazz Museum. By themselves, they add little to the jazz district. Kansas City once boasted more medallions than this embedded along 12th Street in front of the Marriott. But if these medallions prove to be the start of a walk of fame, of jazz legends lining Eighteenth Street, reminding visitors of the historic names who once walked right here, they will become a welcome attraction at 18th and Vine.

Despite falling in the middle of the 17 day Charlie Parker Celebration, the medallion unveiling and accompanying concert were not actually part of it. In fact, medallion organizers initially declined to participate in the Celebration in part because they didn’t want to reveal whether any of their medallions would include Parker (as if a set of medallions honoring six of the greatest names in the history of Kansas City jazz wouldn’t include Charlie Parker).

The medallion people got lucky. Their event coincided with one of the greatest promotional efforts I’ve seen in thirty-plus years of following Kansas City jazz, and the prominence of their sloppily-embedded medallions was elevated because of it.

Kansas City’s Charlie Parker Celebration included a few original, generally educational, events. A trolley touring Kansas City sites associated with Parker sold out. The 21-Sax Salute at Parker’s gravesite, a lapsed tradition recognizing his birthday, was revived and welcome. There was a Charlie Parker puppet show at the Gem Theater for kids. But mostly the Celebration threw a unifying theme over already scheduled jazz acts in clubs, restaurants and a shopping center, and declared them two weeks of performances honoring Charlie Parker.

I was dubious. This only works if a continuous promotional effort can sell that theme to the public, and build recognition of the 17 days as something more grand than the sum of its parts.

The Celebration was officially sponsored by a new organization, KC Jazz ALIVE. But to its credit, and to the credit of CEO Greg Carroll, the American Jazz Museum threw its full weight and staff behind the effort. Don’t underestimate the value of having paid staff available to smartly and relentlessly promote. This was public relations-style marketing through social media including Facebook, through scheduling appearances on TV and radio talk shows, through preparing schedules and posters. This kind of promotion doesn’t require a huge budget. But it requires a tremendous commitment of time, and that’s a resource few volunteer organizations can muster.

The 2014 Charlie Parker Celebration was a masterful success. In general, events promoted as part of it saw greater attendance than they normally would. The promotion raised the awareness of jazz and where to hear it in Kansas City, raising hopes for a longer term benefit to the jazz community. An article in the Business Journal online declared jazz is not dead. And the marketing built awareness not just locally, but in the online version of national jazz publications Downbeat and Jazz Times as well. Organizations that chose not to participate were marginalized during the 17 days. Whether that impacts them going forward remains to be seen, but hopefully even they will benefit from the good will this Celebration generated.

And let’s recognize the prominence the Celebration has brought to the American Jazz Museum. Sixteen years ago, this museum opened as the compromise jazz museum, the jazz museum nobody really dreamed of except the people who just wanted to get it done. Previous museum administrations did not always succeed in cultivating the museum’s image or in integrating it into the community at large. Instead, it often stood as a symbol for a 26-million-dollars-spent-then-never-redeveloped-as-promised 18th and Vine. The characterization is unfair, but when it’s in the press repeatedly, how do you shake it?

You shake it by building bridges into multiple Kansas City communities. You shake it with a fundraising effort that brings in $120,000 in donations to fund general operations from individuals in Kansas City. You shake it by reaching out to the business community for sponsorships. You shake it by hiring people who know how to write grant proposals and build admiration in the foundation community. You shake it by replacing woeful promotional efforts with an expert in utilizing 21st century media. You shake it by not letting your admired successes – The Blue Room and The Gem – at all slip.

Then you put the full weight of those successes behind a 17 day promotional effort that is mostly branding a bunch of already scheduled shows, and you play a key role in making that Celebration an unexpected success.

The 1980s visions of what a jazz museum should be – I've posted the specifics before – will never be realized. But in 2014, I see the museum that was realized earning good will, increased respect, increased trust and increased prominence in Kansas City.

Heck, it doesn’t even get the blame for how sloppily those medallions were embedded in its sidewalk.

That’s on the medallion people.

This 'n That 'n Celebrating August

Two festivals bookended the month back then, the 18th and Vine Jazz and Heritage Festival early in August and the Kansas City Jazz Festival late in the month. Conveniently, both Count Basie’s and Charlie Parker’s birthdays fell during the month. Saks Fifth Avenue, then on The Plaza, hosted a classy jazz awards celebration on a Friday night. Other special events popped up from year to year.

So, in the latter half of the 1980s, the Kansas City Jazz Commission obtained proclamations from the Mayor’s office and from the Missouri Secretary of State – they were easy to get if you submitted the parts about your event written in their style – naming August as Jazz and Heritage Month in Kansas City and Missouri.

The Kansas City Jazz Festival eventually merged with the blues festival and moved to July. The 18th and Vine event moved into September. Saks ended the awards celebrations. And the Jazz Commission stopped asking for August proclamations.

This August may be time for somebody to ask again.

KC Jazz ALIVE, with its freshly-acquired not-for-profit status, has branded a compilation of events as an 18-day Kansas City Charlie Parker Celebration. It mostly promotes already-scheduled-with-no-idea-they’d-wind-up-being-connected-to-Charlie-Parker club dates. But give credit where it’s due. This is an inaugural effort to recognize one of the greatest icons in jazz history, in the city where he was born and raised, a city which until now couldn’t even see the benefit in saving his home or put the right saxophone on his tombstone.

From August 14th through the end of the month, over 18 days, KC Jazz ALIVE will promote the collection of concerts and events as recognition of one of this city’s most culturally important sons, even reviving the Twenty One Sax Salute at Parker’s gravesite at noon on August 30th. Boulevard Brewing has designed an impressive poster.

The 1983 revival of the Kansas City Jazz Festival was a two week collection of events under a single banner. So was the 1984 festival. This format has worked before in Kansas City. It has the potential to bring welcome attention to Kansas City jazz while honoring a legend who should have been honored decades ago.

Unassociated with the Parker celebration but falling within its 18 days is an August 23rd unveiling of a new American Jazz Walk of Fame along 18th Street, between Vine and Highland. Six bronze medallions will be embedded in the sidewalk honoring Count Basie, Mary Lou Williams, Jay McShann, Bobby Watson, Pat Metheny and, of course, Charlie Parker. Sounds much like the bronze stars that once faced a hotel on 12th Street. A concert by the Count Basie Orchestra in the Gem Theater will cap the event. It’s all organized by the Jazz District Renaissance Corporation (though word on the street largely places the office of Rep. Emanuel Cleaver behind the effort).

Last year saw the renovation of homes and the Rochester Hotel along Highland Street, finally surrounding the Mutual Musicians Foundation with the inviting environment it needed and deserved. These medallions will bring renewed focus to 18th Street. It’s good to see architectural enhancements spread throughout the district.

Next year, another event or compilation celebration highlighting dates early in the month could again warrant a proclamation honoring the month both Charlie Parker and Count Basie were born.

(Then the Prairie Village Jazz Festival explodes with jazz just a week into the next month.)

*****

KC Jazz ALIVE is on a roll. Their program at the Folly Theater to introduce musicians to opportunities to earn a living resulted in some musicians taking jobs that will allow them to make money and perform.

Some argue that artists should be able to earn their living as artists. And some artists do. But even Jay McShann drove a garbage truck to support his family. Whether we’re talking jazz saxophonists or poets or portrait painters, the reality today is that only the best of the best artists find full time employment in their art, and even then only those who understand how to successfully sell and market themselves.

KC Jazz Alive’s next step will be to help jazz musicians do just that, setting up a chance for promotional photos.

*****

The American Jazz Museum is also on a roll. They’re one of the key organizations behind the Charlie Parker Celebration. On Wednesday they will officially unveil the lineup for October 11th’s Kansas City’s 18th and Vine Jazz and Blues Festival (will someone slice and dice that name into something manageable?), even though if you follow the right orgs on Facebook, you’ve already seen all of the headliners’ names.

And on top of a successful PEER fundraising effort (noted here), they have won a $133,050 grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services to add staff to improve collections accessibility. Think easier access to the John Baker jazz film collection in the near future.

The Smart Museum

Tables and people filled every nook and cranny of the lobby. I’m sure if one more person had said they would come, space for them would have been found, but I don’t know where.

Normally, the American Jazz Museum is closed on Mondays. However, on this Monday, early in April, board members and friends of the museum had invited friends and associates to a free lunch, to hear presentations on how the museum and its programs are reaching out into and benefiting the community, and to ask for financial support.

We knew why we were invited. I walked in determined that I would not give a donation, it was just not in my budget at this time.

But when you’re sitting at a large table, and you’ve just eaten a good lunch that your hosts didn’t have to feed you, and donation cards are handed out, and pens are handed out, and you’re asked to make a donation, and you look around the table, and you see everyone else at the table, including the friend who invited you, filling out the cards and making donations, and you’re the only one at your table not using the pen you’ve been handed, and everyone else is using theirs, not just at your table but everywhere you look in that packed room, including people you know, some of whom might be looking at you not using your pen, and the lunch was good, and, well….

Don’t underestimate the peer pressure. I caved and made a donation.

This was for the American Jazz Museum’s PEER Into the Future initiative. PEER is an acronym for the museum’s mission: Performance, Exhibition, Education and Research.

I don’t know if the luncheon was the culmination of a campaign or the entire initiative. But a thank you letter noted that PEER Into the Future 2014 reached its goal of raising $120,000 for general museum operations.

That is impressive. Other jazz organizations could learn from the American Jazz Museum.

*****

Part of its battle, from the start, is that this was never the museum that advocates of a jazz museum envisioned. In 1989, a complex was announced by the city with two grand halls and a theater embracing historical study, education and performance. In 1997, a smaller building opened, sharing space with the Negro Leagues Museum. Its collection was limited by funds, showcased relatively few musicians, and was derided in The New York Times by the Executive Director of The Count Basie Orchestra. To many who had pursued a dream since the 1960s, this was not the American Jazz Museum. This was the American Jazz Museum Compromise.

*****

A feature in the 913 and 816 sections of last Wednesday’s Kansas City Star highlighted jazz education opportunities for the young. The article opened with the American Jazz Museum’s monthly Jazz Storytelling program, aimed at introducing children to jazz. The program has been entertaining and educating children for a dozen years.

Just last month, the museum co-hosted, with Penn Valley Community College, the 18th and Vine Jazz Festival, giving middle school, high school and college music students the opportunity to learn from professional musicians and perform in the Gem Theater.

Educational outreach is critical to the survival of jazz. The American Jazz Museum’s efforts are under-recognized and under-appreciated.

The museum also reaches out to the community with its annual Kansas City’s 18th and Vine Jazz and Blues Festival. Never mind that the event desperately needs a more succinct name. And overlook for the moment that this is a self-proclaimed jazz and blues festival that seems afraid to book much jazz or blues. The last two years the event was stung by misfortune beyond its control (rain and the death of a headliner). But for the two years prior, museum officials showed the wisdom and foresight of taking an event that had covered Parade Park, then couldn’t sustain its weight through the recession, and downsizing it to where it turned a profit. If both the weather and headliners’ health hold out this year, the festival should again turn a profit.

*****

Part of it is animosity from the remaining dreamers. Part of it could be jealousy in seeing a professional staff while other jazz organizations run on the hopes of a few. I suspect some of it is simply leaders with conflicting ambitions who don’t like each other. But there are still pockets of the jazz community that look derisively on the American Jazz Museum. In doing so, they hurt themselves. This is an institution accepted by the community as a whole – I saw that in the packed lobby – which benefits Kansas City.

*****

Last Saturday night, I drove through sparse traffic in the Crossroads district. It was a holiday weekend. Kansas City goes out of town for holidays. I probably wouldn’t have any trouble finding a table at The Blue Room.

The Blue Room, a part of the museum, was packed. Students from Omaha lined the seats along the edge of the upper level. Other guests hailed from other cities and towns. I shared a table with a couple who spoke Russian (I don’t think they they were visiting from overseas, but I can't be certain; I don’t speak Russian).

The Blue Room is more than a jazz club. Standing at Kansas City’s most historic corner, it is a destination for visitors.

And let’s not forget that just a couple years ago, after Jardine’s expired, The Blue Room, solidly, reliably, stood as this city’s principal location for jazz and a drink, until new club owners had the opportunity to help fill the void.

For the record, on Saturday night, the Jazz Disciples delighted everyone in that room.

*****

The American Jazz Museum isn't ideal. When I walk through, I crave more space and more exhibits. But sixteen years after its opening, nobody else has built a monument to jazz more grand, or more smartly operated. It’s past time to recognize that.

Blueprints and Lost Clarinets

It’s pure coincidence. The Star ran a pair of articles examining the languishing development of 18th and Vine and the American Jazz Museum, 25 years after their announcement. Meanwhile, I was posting a brochure detailing the museum promised us at that time.

The Star’s evaluations of the district ranged from unflattering to downright appalling. But probably most appalling was the anecdote opening the second article:

“Back in 2004, the Woody Herman Society lent the jazz great’s clarinet and a few other things to the American Jazz Museum. But when it came time to return the stuff, the museum staff came up empty.

“It took three years to find the clarinet.

“Herman’s lifetime achievement Grammy award? Missing even longer, although museum staff eventually tracked it down in 2012 after the Woody Herman Society filed a police report and threatened a lawsuit.”

Later, the article notes: “...The American Jazz Museum is a signature institution that needs more revenue if it’s going to improve its own exhibits and programs.”

And when looking to improve those exhibits, don’t use the Woody Herman Society as a reference. I’ve never run a museum. But I can’t imagine that losing loaned historic artifacts is recommended for building donor confidence or winning accreditation.

Yet, disturbing as it is, that tale stands as but one impediment to the museum’s and the district’s growth. The articles touch on what I’ve maintained for decades is the district’s greatest hurdle: its isolation.

In 1987, two years before these articles begin, I was shown plans for the area. I had just taken over as chairman of the Kansas City Jazz Commission, and the then-director of the Black Economic Union (BEU) was recruiting my support.

In the BEU’s office, blueprints covered a table. These were the plans BEU was pursuing to redevelop 18th and Vine. The building known today as the Boone Theater (and then as the Armory building) and the Mutual Musicians Foundation were cornerstones. Structures along 18th Street, eventually torn down to accommodate the museums, would have mostly remained. New buildings would fill long-empty lots at 18th and The Paseo and at 18th and Woodland. Housing would dot but largely surround the core district.

It was a beautiful vision. But the vision was an oasis ringed by blight.

You cannot surround Disneyland with a moat and expect it to thrive. I saw plans for a magnificent island edged by blocks of decay. Driving through streets of industrial buildings and old structures ripe for demolition would not constitute a warm welcome. Surrounding neighborhoods were worse then, more dilapidated, before Bruce R. Watkins Expressway lapped 18th Street, removing some of the rot, and before anyone imagined the Crossroads as an artsy/restraunty district.

Except for people who already knew the area, I predicted that day, few would come.

Oh, I was told, there were plans for more housing and more businesses to ring the district, beyond what I saw in the drawings on that table. But there weren’t more plans. There were unrealistic dreams.

It was obvious that 18th and Vine needed to connect with the rest of the city. Only then could the district anticipate a critical mass, a daily density of people needed for restaurants and retail to prosper.

18th and Vine’s planners needed it to be a core cultural and retail area surrounded by ongoing waves of homes and shops. That’s the Plaza. That’s Brookside. That’s Prairie Village. That’s Leawood’s Town Center.

That was 18th and Vine in the 1930s. And that’s what, in the 1960s, had decayed beyond revival and was removed through urban renewal.

18th and Vine once thrived with homes and movie theaters and service stations and bars and doctors and lawyers and accountants and undertakers and the offices of the Kansas City Monarchs. Jazz was an element that helped build a unique environment at a unique time. But so was gambling and vice and the confinements of segregation.

It’s not coming back.

Today, beautiful new homes along Highland Street are offset by the embarrassment of historic shambles a block over on Vine.

According to The Star’s articles, the Jazz Museum took in just $159,000 on admissions in its last fiscal year. At $10 per adult, less for children, that suggests 20,000, maybe 25,000 people paid to tour the museum last year. That’s the number of people they need to be drawing in one day at their annual festival.

But you can’t put Disneyland in a moat.

How inviting is it to drive past the shell of a building with the word Asylum rising from its roof? That’s the historic Wheatley-Provident hospital, and thank God it’s still standing. But it was last used as a haunted house in the 1990s. Two decades later it’s still branded with Asylum. Doesn’t anyone recognize the image conveyed? Doesn’t anyone understand how that hurts?

It’s just one example.

It’s critical that 18th and Vine and the American history captured in that district survive. But jazz and Negro Leagues baseball alone cannot carry the district. They never did. The area still needs to connect with the city. In isolation, I don’t know how it grows the traffic necessary to thrive.

Twenty five years later, nobody has figured out how to draw people from all of those other waves of homes in the metropolitan area to a museum that can’t find the historic artifacts loaned to it.

That last sentence holds a heckuva lot of issues to overcome.

What the Jazz Museum Was Going To Be, Part 2

On March 11, 1989, Dizzy Gillespie attended the official announcement in Kansas City of the International Jazz Hall of Fame. The complex unveiled that day would evolve into what we know today as the American Jazz Museum.

I was there, as chairman of the Kansas City Jazz Commission. A booklet was distributed, full of plans, illustrations and hyperbole for the press to reproduce and quote. Last week and this week I share that booklet, so you, too, can see what the jazz museum was originally going to be.

(Clicking on any image should open a larger and more legible version of it.)

This illustration shows Vine Street, looking north from 22nd Street, as it would look upon completion. On the left, the former public works buildings have been converted to the International Jazz Hall of Fame. On the right, the Vine Street castle is home to the Black Archives of Mid-America.

These two pages describe all of the elements that would comprise The International Jazz Hall of Fame.

The Site Plan

These architectural plans detail the two floors planned for The International Jazz Hall of Fame. 

Introduction to a section providing background on the 18th and Vine Historic District.

These two pages put the location in context.

The significance of 18th and Vine.

 

The booklet closes with The Black Archives of Mid-America.

What the Jazz Museum Was Going To Be, Part 1

Next March marks 25 years since the official announcement that an International Jazz Hall of Fame would be built in Kansas City.

As I recounted nearly four years ago, here, on March 11, 1989, Dizzy Gillespie joined a grand announcement, attended by politicians, civic leaders, the press and area jazz officials (I was transitioning from chairman of the Kansas City Jazz Commission to president of the Kansas City Jazz Festival at the time). Renovation would convert the public works buildings at 21st and Vine into the International Jazz Hall of Fame. Two wings would house jazz archives and embrace performing arts education, including the Parker-Gillespie Institute of Jazz Masters and the Mahalia Jackson University of Gospel Music. New construction would add a theater, offices, classrooms and a jazz radio station. The Count Basie Orchestra would relocate here and conduct workshops. A walkway would connect the Hall of Fame with the Black Archives, in the castle building across Vine Street.

Kansas City jazz fans had pursued the dream of a jazz museum, or a jazz hall of fame, at least since the 1960s. But the grand plan announced at this 1989 press event is the one that would evolve into the Jazz Museum / Negro Leagues complex we know today.

A brochure was distributed at the announcement, full of accolades and details. I still have my copy, autographed by Dizzy Gillespie.

And now I’ve scanned it.

This week and next, I offer the brochure that lays out in drawings, architectural plans, budgets and explanations, the International Jazz Hall of Fame announced in Kansas City in 1989.

(Clicking on any image should open a larger and more legible version of it.)

The front cover, autographed (in red) by Dizzy Gillespie.

The Table of Contents

Introduction Page

This illustrates the development as announced. The one-time public works buildings between 21st and 22nd Streets facing Vine would have been renovated. A walkway connecting the Hall of Fame to the Black Archives would have crossed the street, adorned with statues of Charlie Parker and Count Basie.

A statement from Eddie Baker of The Charlie Parker Foundation. The announced plan was the realization of the vision Eddie had long advocated.

A statement from Dizzy on behalf of The International Jazz Hall of Fame.

A statement from the Mayor.

In 1987, Congress had passed this resolution recognizing jazz as “a rare and valuable national American treasure.”

A statement from the Kansas City Jazz Commission.

The Hall of Fame was to be constructed in three phases. Here is the space that was to be built out in each stage and the schedule for the completion of stage one.

This was the announced budget. The Hall of Fame would be completed for just under $9 million, including a $3,250,000 endowment. Of course, that couldn't be done. The city spent $26 million opening the American Jazz Museum / Negro Leagues complex that was built instead.

Next, the Conceptual Design Section

Next week’s pages include more illustrations, more detailed explanations of each section of the Hall of Fame, and architectural plans which provide the greatest insight into the institution that was going to be built.