This 'n That 'n History

Saxophonist Ben Webster was born in Kansas City in 1909. He performed here with Bennie Moten’s and Andy Kirk’s orchestras and recorded with both. But he first gained international recognition after moving East, as lead tenor in what was arguably Duke Ellington’s greatest orchestra in the early 1940s.

At least one member of that early ’40s Ellington band is still alive. And living in Wichita, Kansas.

Perhaps this is common knowledge, but I didn’t know. Herb Jeffries, singer with the Duke Ellington Orchestra from 1940 through 1942, and the voice on Billy Strayhorn’s composition, Flamingo, an Ellington hit which sold over 50 million copies, resides today in Wichita. This year, Jeffries turns 100 years old.

I discovered this fact on a radio report from the BBC, which sought Jeffries out to discuss his subsequent roles as a singing cowboy in black Western films. You can hear the story on the podcast of the program, From Our Own Correspondent, here. Scroll to 22:55.

(My favorite line from that BBC story: “Today, he’s largely forgotten but he’s not dead. He’s just moved to Kansas.”)

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Jazz grew in Kansas City in the late 1920s and early 1930s through a culmination of circumstances.

TOBA (Theater Owners Booking Association), the Black vaudeville circuit, started in the East and traveled as far West as Kansas City where it reorganized before heading back. Sometimes, performers found themselves stranded here in that reorganization. For instance, a piano player named Bill Basie.

The best known reason for jazz’s development here is that this wide open, gangster-run city of sin provided more opportunities for musicians to find work during the Great Depression, attracting the best from throughout the Mid- and Southwest.

Another accepted reason was the music program of Major N. Clark Smith at Lincoln High School. Regarded as a stern disciplinarian, Smith’s students graduated from his classes knowing music.

Saxophonist Bill Saunders, in the book Goin’ to Kansas City, recalled: “One day Major Smith told the class that music was melody, harmony and rhythm. Being a kid, I paid no attention. The next week, the first thing he said [was], ‘Saunders, stand up here and tell me what music is…. You don’t know, do you?’ He had a ruler and he said, ‘Put your head on the table. Music is melody’ BOOM! ‘Harmony.’ BOOM! ‘Rhythm.’ BOOM! ‘Now go home and tell your Mammy I hit you.’ But I know what music is.”

Among Smith’s other students was Walter Page, legendary bassist for the orchestra Count Basie brought out of Kansas City. Page remembered in a 1958 interview: 

“Major N. Clark Smith was my teacher in high school. He taught almost everybody in Kansas City. He was a chubby little cat, bald, one of the old military men. He wore glasses on his nose and came from Cuba around 1912 or 1914. He knew all the instruments and couldn’t play anything himself, but he could teach…. One day he was looking for a bass player and no one was around, so he looked at me, and said, “Pagey, get the bass.’ I said, ‘But….’ and he repeated, ‘Get the bass.’ That’s when I got started.”

I note all this after stumbling across this photo online. From The Lincolnian, here is the 1917 Lincoln High School Cadet Band and Orchestra. At the left, holding the bass, is 17 year old Walter Page. Standing centered in the back is Major N. Clark Smith.

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From the Kansas City Call of September 14, 1928:

“Local No. 627 of the American Federation of Musicians has 300 members in this city. Last year there were only 87….

“And why? Simply, it would seem, because under the leadership of its new president, William Shaw, well known here in musical circles, the Musicians Protective Union is doing more than giving itself the name – now it is living up to the name, and its members are profiting thereby as they have never profited in Kansas City….”

In this photo, from the 1940s, respected longtime Local No. 627 president William Shaw stands behind the table, facing the camera, reaching for the gavel. It was taken on the top floor of the union’s headquarters, in the building known today as the Mutual Musicians Foundation.

Here’s that building in a photo from the 1930s.

As pictured in the last full post, today this building might host an opera singer or, every weekend, jam sessions which span the night.

A Week Sans Post

My goal is to offer a new blog post each Monday. But family matters kept me away from both jazz clubs and the computer this past weekend. Hopefully, next week the new blog post goal will be met.

A Day in the Life of the Mutual Musicans Foundation

It closes at sunrise.

So let’s place the start of the day, last Saturday, at noon. Maybe twelve-fifteen. That’s about when Denyce arrived.

Denyce Graves, says The Kansas City Star, “has belted out grand operas at the Metropolitan Opera and opera houses around the world and has given command performances for presidents and Supreme Court justices….” She was in Kansas City to perform with the Lyric Opera.

On Saturday, she chose to explore Kansas City’s connection to jazz.

So she visited the Mutual Musicians Foundation.

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Count Basie jammed here. So did Lester Young, and Mary Lou Williams, and Jo Jones. This was their union hall. Charlie Parker met Dizzy Gillespie upstairs.

Today the Mutual Musicians Foundation is recognized as a National Historic Landmark for its contributions to American history.

Musicians still rehearse here. Weekend jam sessions still last the night.

And a day can start with a visit from an internationally renowned Mezzo-Soprano.

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Downstairs, Denyce greeted guests, graciously introducing herself to every one. She examined the walls, covered with graphic panels explaining the Foundation’s ties to jazz history. She recognized names, asking about their association with this building.

Upstairs, engulfed by photos and portraits of musicians who performed here, Denyce chatted. She was told about youth programs and arranged for the children to be photographed with her during intermission of a Lyric Opera performance.

Then, when one young attendee summoned enough courage to take the stage and sing for her, tepidly, Denyce grabbed her phone to record his performance.

“This,” she said, “is how it begins.”

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Shortly after Denyce left, musicians walked upstairs to rehearse. Young musicians. These were the Foundation’s Young Jazz Masters.

Each Saturday, the Foundation offers free lessons to any student who cares to participate. This day, a group was competing in a student festival at the Gem Theater, just down 18th Street. But first they returned to the Foundation’s stage to practice.

For more than eighty years, young jazz musicians have practiced here, in this room. Charlie Parker was one.

Later, this night, the room will fill with people listening to live jazz. Every chair will be taken by guests who will have paid $10 each to come and party and drink and talk and hear and enjoy.

But right now, a future generation is on the stage, practicing.

In the Mutual Musicians Foundation, this is how it begins.

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About 1 a.m., the music starts. The doors open at midnight, but 1:00 is when the jam session starts. It will continue all night, just as it has virtually every weekend night since the early 1930s.

Matt Otto commands the stage on sax, with Andrew Ouellette on piano, Ryan Lee on drums and Karl McComas-Reichl on bass. Each one, an outstanding musician playing his best.

Other musicians wait in the back of the room to join the jam. These musicians are in their twenties. That’s the age Basie and Lester and Mary Lou and Jo were when they jammed in here.

By 2 a.m., the room started to fill.

By 3, empty seats were scarce.

At 5, the jam concluded.

By 6, the crowd cleared and staff – board members – started cleaning up.

*****

Somewhere around sunrise, Saturday at the Mutual Musicians Foundation came to a close.

This 'n That 'n Two Big Bands

It's true, the majority of the audience is of a certain age when they collectively gasp at the announcement that the next number will be Tiger Rag.

But put it in perspective. This was a special performance. Every seat sold was an individual ticket, not sales built on top of a season ticket base, and cost $40 or $50. The Kansas City Jazz Orchestra (KCJO) sold 800 of those seats for their April 4th show, A Tribute to Benny Goodman’s Historic 1938 Carnegie Hall Jazz Concert, in the Muriel Kauffman Theatre at the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts.

That’s a hundred more seats than were built into the brand new concert hall in the acclaimed SFJazz Center. That San Francisco auditorium couldn’t have seated KCJO’s crowd.

Some will hold their nose skywards at a concert full of music that was new 75 years ago. But they wouldn’t be the ones who heard a big band full of outstanding musicians, a couple of whom are also at home with the completely contemporary People’s Liberation Big Band. They wouldn’t be the ones who heard Doug Talley’s wonderful solo on Don’t Be That Way, sparked with phrasing foreign to 1938. And that was just the opening number.

They also wouldn’t be the ones who heard visiting guest Jerry Dodgion join the band for a couple of solos. Or who smiled when ailing artistic director Kerry Strayer took the stage to an accompaniment of cheers (and proceeded to solo wonderfully).

They also wouldn’t be the ones counting the cash on what was, from all appearances, a highly successful fundraising event for KCJO’s 10th anniversary year.

There is an audience for this music, an audience which will pay for a night where the goal is fun. And where the goal is met.

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Two nights later, it was The Blue Room’s turn to swing. Last week’s post pictured Bobby Watson’s 18th and Vine Big Band. This was a group originally assembled to join the Kansas City Symphony for a Pops concert. But this Saturday night, tuxes were traded for untucked shirts.

The opening number, Satin Doll, was an arrangement by KCJO’s artistic director. Solos by trombonist Jason Godeau, trumpeter Hermon Mehari, saxophonist Steve Lambert, pianist Roger Wilder, bassist Bob Bowman and leader Bobby Watson established this big band as second to nobody.

Only one member of Bobby’s band also claimed KCJO’s stage. The two nights offered a chance to hear a broad sampling of Kansas City jazz talent swing. The two nights offered the chance to hear two bands excel.

Even so, maybe it was looseness unencumbered by black suits and spit-shined shoes. Maybe it was playing in a genuine jazz club rather than a plushly seated shrine to the arts. Maybe it was playing right on top of the audience, tripping over the front row tables, rather than seeing an orchestra pit of space separating the audience from the stage. Maybe it was the interactions with a younger crowd. Maybe it was just having a drink in hand.

But while Thursday night was unquestionably fun, Saturday night was a blast.

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Two weeks ago, I wrote about young musicians who, beyond the Mutual Musicians Foundation, have never known the connections to Kansas City’s jazz past. Many play a more progressive, contemporary music, and draw an audience to jazz clubs.

A week and a day after Bobby Watson’s 18th and Vine Big Band performed, the insanely progressive People’s Liberation Big Band of Greater Kansas City premiered new compositions at The Record Bar.

The range of jazz which can draw a respectable audience in Kansas City today, including more people than they built seats for in San Francisco, speaks broadly to its vitality in this city. Sure, it’s a niche. No jazz artist is going to fill The Sprint Center. But Kansas City can boast an active and diverse jazz community.

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Several tidbits:

•  This Saturday night, Beyond the Blues is a fundraiser for Mental Health America of the Heartland. It features performances by the Blues Notions, Todd Wilkinson and Mille Edwards. More information is available here.

•  Kansas City Kansas Community College and The Kansas City Jazz Orchestra team up for the 12th annual Jazz Camp, June 3rd through 7th. Among the faculty:  Doug Talley, Steve Molloy, Everett DeVan, Rod Fleeman, Mike Ning and James Albright. Students can sign up now. More information is available here.

•  Johnson County Community College has announced the lineup for their 2013-14 Performing Arts Series. Among the notable dates: Saturday, January 25th, 2014, when Arturo Sandoval plays Yardley Hall at 8 p.m. as part of Jazz Winterlude.

Bobby Watson's 18th and Vine Big Band at The Blue Room

About a month and a half ago, when they performed with The Kansas City Symphony, they wore tuxedos. This time, Bobby said, they were wearing their slippers.

I didn’t actually see anybody in slippers at The Blue Room last Saturday night. But with Bobby Watson’s 18th and Vine Big Band, I saw a stage filled with a who’s who selection of some of Kansas City’s best jazz musicians. I saw jazz legend Joe Chambers play vibes then drums. And I heard Bobby Watson swing a big band to rival any since Basie left town.

Face it: When you look over a stage and see musicians like Horace Washington, Steve Lambert, Charles Perkins, Gerald Dunn, Jason Goudeau, Hermon Mehari, Al Pearson, Roger Wilder, Bob Bowman, Ryan Lee – I’m not naming everybody – and Bobby Watson out front, you’re seeing a premiere mix of young and veteran Kansas City jazz talent in 2013.

You’re about to hear the big band Bobby assembled to play with the Symphony.

And then they start swinging a packed Blue Room with Kerry Strayer’s arrangement of Satin Doll.

Follow that with a version of Corner Pocket that may make you wonder if the roof’s coming off.

And that’s just the appetizer, because then Joe Chambers joins the band.

If you’re sorry you missed it, well, you should be.

But at least I can show you how a bit of how it looked. Below are photos from last Saturday night at The Blue Room with Bobby Watson’s 18th and Vine Big Band. As always, clicking on a shot should open a larger version of it.

Bobby Watson with his 18th and Vine Big Band, plus Joe Chambers on vibes

Joe Chambers

Bobby Watson

Charles Perkins

Al Pearson

Gerald Dunn

Hermon Mehari

The 18th and Vine Big Band

Watching Joe Chambers solo

Bobby Watson's 18th and Vine Big Band

Jazz Beyond Links

One of his favorite stories was of New Year’s Eve, 1932. He paid Kansas City vice squad members $10 each to raid his club at 12:30 and 3:30 a.m., to clear the joint out and turn the crowd.

In 1974, a writer for Atlantic Monthly described Milton’s like this:

“For more than 20 years, Milton Morris’ dark vault of a bar has been a way station for suburban kids who sensed there had once been some ineffable richness to this city and that if any of it still existed, Milton would know where.”

I was one of those suburban kids.

A 1989 cover story in The Kansas City Star’s Sunday Star magazine described Milton Morris like this:

“Milton Morris was about five feet, six inches, and though most people today remember a skinny little man, he once weighed close to 240 pounds and looked very much like the comedian Lou Costello. Back then, as late as the 1960s, he drank a case of beer every day, usually Heineken’s.

“In his later years his drink was Cutty Sark with a splash of water. He drank from his own special glass, a 14-ounce ‘Texas size’ highball glass. Though his choice of liquor had changed, his consumption remained prodigious. He drank at least a fifth of Scotch each and every night. He smoked huge Macanudo cigars – $2 each – and bought six or eight boxes at a time. He truly loved those cigars….

“Milton talked something like a hip W.C. Fields, sprinkling his conversation with musician’s jargon. When a patron left the bar, Morris always muttered, ‘Later.’ His advice to one and all: ‘Drive fast, talk back to the cops – and tell ’em you know me.’

“The last part of this oft-repeated slogan took on new meaning to those underage drinkers astute enough to notice an interesting pattern. There were times when the phone rang and then [Milton’s wife] Shirley quietly walked around the bar telling the underage customers they had to leave. Such calls were always followed – after a decent interval – by a police visit.”

For many of us, Milton Morris was the link to Kansas City’s illustrious past of gangsters and jazz. He sold “medicinal” whiskey from a drugstore at 26th and Troost during prohibition.  When prohibition ended, he opened the Hey Hay Club at Fourth and Cherry. He employed Count Basie and Charlie Parker and Ben Webster and Jo Jones when they called KC home. And until his death, he told us stories about the Kansas City that was, stories often grounded in dubious truth, from a stool at the front of Milton’s Tap Room at 3241 Main Street.

Next November will mark 30 years since Milton Morris passed.

This past Friday night, I enjoyed Eddie Moore and his group The Outer Circle at Take Five Coffee + Bar in Leawood. The audience was fairly small. I suspect more Kansans were watching, then mourning, KU’s NCAA Tournament basketball game than were out listening to music. But the performance of Eddie Moore on keyboards, Matt Hopper on guitar, Dominique Sanders on bass and Matt Leifer on drums was outstanding, riffing on Eddie’s original compositions.

Most, perhaps all, of these musicians were born after Milton Morris passed.

For many of us, Kansas City jazz began with that link to the past. It was a given. It was part of Kansas City’s jazz life. Kansas City and booze and mobsters and the origins of swing would always clutch a historical bond.

Which sometimes leaves it striking to hear jazz in Kansas City musically unbound and unlinked.

But that shouldn’t surprise when recognizing that jazz in Kansas City today is dominated by young musicians, most born after some of those most vital links were gone. These musicians could not have heard, first hand anyway, the stories I was told. Their interest in jazz is more purely musical, without taints of the the culture and history which fascinated me.

(It also shouldn’t surprise when realizing I was hearing the music in a location which was probably a wheat field an hour outside the city in Milton’s day.)

Friday night’s music fits just one definition of Kansas City jazz: It is music composed and performed by outstanding Kansas City jazz musicians.

True, Matt Hopper’s guitar sometimes riffed on the blues. But mostly, this group’s music held a contemporary, fresh feel while maintaining that accessibility some modern jazz performances lack. It doesn’t rage. Rather, it offers a hook to reel a listener into a vivacious, progressive feel.

It’s not music I would have heard in Milton’s. It doesn’t obviously tie back to Kansas City’s gangster-and-jazz past.

It is jazz by terrific musicians still evolving and growing the music three decades beyond the direct ties to the past I knew. It is a statement on jazz’s continued vitality in Kansas City some thirty years later.

Looney No More

The Modern Jazz Quartet (MJQ) headlined the 1985 Kansas City Jazz Festival. A stage was built on the south lawn of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art (the lawn was more open then, with less landscaping and no Bloch building), just in front of the portico, facing what was then Brush Creek Boulevard. MJQ almost didn’t go on. The airline lost Percy Heath’s bass. But they found and delivered it to the festival grounds shortly before the group was scheduled to perform.

MJQ musicians Milt Jackson, John Lewis, Percy Heath and Connie Kay remain among the most respected names in jazz history. We were thrilled to book them that August. But their often intimate music demanded a listener’s attention. Maybe, we later realized, that wasn’t the right type of act for a large, outdoor stage.

Everyone in the crowd who listened heard a magnificent show. But the reviewer for The Kansas City Star compared the Modern Jazz Quartet’s performance to Muzak. Tom Leathers, publisher of The Squire, then a popular Johnson County weekly, wrote that we should give up on jazz and stage a free festival Kansas City would appreciate, one with country music.

The same month, a concert at The Music Hall to raise money for building an International Jazz Hall of Fame in Kansas City, with ticket prices up to $150, attracted just 500 patrons. Afterwards, the Count Basie Orchestra, which in 1984 publicly announced plans to relocate to Kansas City, reconsidered its intention to move.

A May, 1987 cover story in The Kansas City Star’s Sunday Star magazine proclaimed its version of “The truth about Kansas City jazz.” An editorial inside declared:

“Who gives a honk. Jazz is and has always been – in my lifetime, at least – an esoteric music form. If it can’t exist in the free marketplace perhaps it should disappear. Sort of America’s musical dodo bird. Let jazz buffs (who as a whole are sort of looney anyway) buy old records and dream of what might have been.”

A few months later, I would take over as chairman of the Kansas City Jazz Commission after a former treasurer of the Commission was accused of (and would later plead guilty to) stealing city money from the Jazz Commission. The chairman of the City Council’s Finance Committee made plans to give the Jazz Commission’s funding to other civic organizations.

Meanwhile, City Hall and underfunded organizations feuded over whether that International Jazz Hall of Fame should be located at 18th and Vine or at 83rd and Holmes.

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Last Saturday night, in March of 2013, The Gem Theater at 18th and Vine was nearly filled for the Monterrey Jazz Festival 55th Anniversary Tour. Across the street, Everett DeVan and a pair of vocalists entertained at The Blue Room. Downtown, Grand Marquis defied the snow at the Kill Devil Club while Bram Wijnand’s trio played the downstairs speakeasy at The Majestic. A little bit south, in the Crossroads district, jazz filled the Green Lady Lounge. And quite a ways south, in Leawood, Rich Wheeler’s quartet filled Take Five.

The night before, one of the best jazz groups you’ll hear, Matt Otto’s sextet with Shay Estes, Gerald Dunn, Jeff Harshbarger, Michael Warren and T.J. Martley, played The Blue Room.

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There was always an edge back then. Back when I discovered the jazz community, jazz in Kansas City seemed teetering on crisis, constantly.

Jazz is an integral piece of Kansas City’s history. And to those of us who abhorred the identity of a cowtown, jazz and barbecue represented Kansas City’s international renown. That’s why it regularly captured the community’s attention.

Today, though, a welcome calm prevails.

The situation isn’t perfect, certainly.

Jardine’s closed. But other clubs opened.

The community hosts two minor and no major jazz festival, and each of the last two years one succumbed to storms. But we have two jazz festivals.

There’s not sufficient opportunities for this city’s plethora of outstanding jazz musicians to perform. But we welcome an abundance of talent in part because Bobby Watson’s UMKC program keeps turning out magnificent young musicians.

Many of our elder statesmen of jazz, the men and women who created the music, have passed. But the Mutual Musicians Foundation still jams every weekend night, and sponsors its own free program teaching kids on Saturday mornings. At the Foundation, a culture of jazz lives.

18th and Vine remains in many respects an incomplete restoration. But it’s a district showcasing museums and offices and nightlife and wonderful new housing.

In Kansas City today, we enjoy jazz without a feeling of crisis.

Nobody associated with the community is stealing from the city. Nobody is feuding over a Hall of Fame. Nobody is suggesting the festivals be replaced with country music.

And to the best of my knowledge, nobody at The Kansas City Star has compared jazz legends to Muzak or declared jazz fans to be looney for over twenty-five years.

Not publicly, anyway.

Postless

I try to post new thoughts each Monday in this blog. But a busy weekend ended without time to muse on Kansas City jazz. So this week, I take a pass on a new post. I'll simply note to check out the calendar links in the right hand column of this page. They will reveal some outstanding jazz to be heard in Kansas City this week.

This 'n That 'n Uncommon Similarities

You’d think they have nothing in common.

Last Sunday morning I completed compiling quotes for last week’s post recalling Count Basie’s big band as it uniquely developed in Kansas City. Then Sunday night, at The Record Bar, I took in the quirky and unconventional People’s Liberation Big Band of Greater Kansas City (PLBB), a 21st century musical collaboration with a big band sound that couldn’t be more unBasie-like.

In one city, over seventy five years apart, two big bands epitomizing big band extremes. Opposites. The definition of dissimilarity.

Until the similarities start to strike.

Two big bands built in Kansas City.

Two big bands built on unique arrangements capturing and spitting right back out the youthful voice and attitude of their respective eras.

Two big bands built with musicians clearly enjoying themselves before audiences sharing in the joy.

Two big bands built with some of the most outstanding musicians of their time.

Dave Scott guested with PLBB last weekend. And hearing the band shift from their own accessibly eccentric compositions to Scott’s original but more conventional big band voicings, spoke to the magnificent and versatile talent stacked on that stage. Solos by Matt Otto, James Isaac and Rich Wheeler – for starters – only underscored that impression.

Here are some of Kansas City’s finest musicians coming together, imbuing big band jazz with a contemporary sense of fluke and fun, performing some of the most memorable solos you’re going to hear, and leaving a happy audience with a collective smile.

So did that last sentence describe the People’s Liberation Big Band or Count Basie’s Kansas City big band?

Wildly different sounds, yes. But more similarities than you may have thought.

(And among the similarities, I didn’t even bring up big, burly bassits.)

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PLBB’s big, burly, bassist, Jeff Harshbarger, and PLBB’s Rich Wheeler also make up half of Kansas City’s Turkish jazz combo, Alaturka. Beau Bledsoe on guitar and oud and Brandon Draper on percussion comprise the other half.

When I first wrote about Alaturka (here), Sait Arat’s nearly unhuman playing of the darbuka grabbed my attention most. But when Sait departed, Brandon Draper’s percussion took the void, and the group’s sound started to evolve.

On Alaturka’s first outstanding CD, Taman Abi, simply not being able to see Sait play brought a different focus to the music than seeing the group live. On recordings. Beau’s guitar and oud gained prominence.

Each member carries a pivotal piece of Alaturka’s voice. The first time I heard Brandon with the group, at Jardine’s, I heard that voice refocusing. In January at Jazz Winterlude, I heard a completed evolution. This is Turkish music by jazz musicians. Brandon contributes a percussive feel different from Sait, one with equal measures of expert support and wonderful surprise.

Last night at the Record Bar, Alaturka released their second CD, Yalniz. In Yalniz we hear a blending on Turkish stylings and jazz improvisation where every musician shines.

Here you’ll find a beautiful conversation between tenor, guitar and percussion on Children's Songs No.1 followed by a wonderful blending of all instruments on Nikriz Saz Semaisi.  All of the musicians, within a Turkish mold, contribute to setting this recording apart: Beau's solo and guest vocalist Nihan Yesil on Divane Aşık Gibi, Rich’s inviting yet commanding tenor on Faint, Brandon’s defining percussion on Ciftitelli Zenkov, Jeff’s solid bass upon which each song builds.

With Yalniz, Alaturka melds four of Kansas City jazz’s finest musicians – Beau Bledsoe, Jeff Harshbarger, Rich Wheeler and Brandon Draper – together at their best.

I don’t see Yalniz available online yet, but I suspect when it is you’ll be able to find it here and here.

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Vine Street Rumble is a new Kansas City jazz combo, led by Kent Rausch, recalling traditional Kansas City swing. Their premiere outing is Monday, March 11th at Californos in Westport at 8 p.m.

Vine Street Rumble. People’s Liberation Big Band. Alaturka. The diversity of jazz in Kansas City today is unprecedented. The talent of jazz musicians in this city is amazing. The number of young musicians here speaks to the music’s future, as do new clubs opening and finding an audience.

The days when Basie dominated Kansas City music have long since passed. But jazz still lives in Kansas City.

Built in Kansas City

Trombonist Dicky Wells:

“So I think the real difference between the Basie band and most others was the way they broke down arrangements the way they wanted them. Sometimes, Benny Carter’s bands sounded almost too perfect. That’s the funny thing about jazz. You may rehearse until you’re hitting everything on the head, and here comes a band like the Savoy Sultans, raggedy, fuzzy-sounding, and they upset everything. ‘What am I doing here?’ you wonder. But that’s the way it is. That’s jazz. If you get too clean, too precise, you don’t swing sometimes, and the fun goes out of the music….

“You could compare it to a lot of kids playing in the mud, having a big time. When the mother calls one in to wash his hands, he gets clean, but he has to stand and just look while the others are having a ball. He’s too clean and he can’t go back. Same way when you clean up on that horn and the arrangements are too clean: you get on another level. You’re looking down on those guys, but they’re all having a good, free-going time.”

Drummer Jo Jones:

“At that time in Kansas City a local band had to to play opposite visiting bands, and when some met up with Basie’s raggedy band they got egg on their faces. They’d rather have paid us and had us not play. You ask Earl Hines about the night his band and ours played together…. Fletcher Henderson? McKinney’s Cotton Pickers? They never had a rhythm section. Chick Webb? Great, but never had a rhythm section….

“We worked at it, to build a rhythm section, every day, every night.... I didn’t care what happened – one of us would be up to par. If three were down, one would carry the three. Never four were out.”

Dicky Wells:

“I don’t think the Basie band had anything new except the idea of the two tenors. After all, Fletcher had swung just about everything that could be swung. Maybe Fletcher’s things were a bit more polished, but Basie had those tempos like Bennie Moten had….

“Basie’s two battling tenors were two of the best, and the crowd went for them. I heard them going like that at the Cherry Blossom when I was in Kansas City with Fletcher Henderson. Plenty of bands had two trumpet soloists, or two trombones, but not two tenors…. As soon as Herschel  [Evans] stood up, before ever he went down front, the people would start yelling. The same when Lester [Young] stood up. I think that started the tenor sax duet within a band. Before that it had been drums and trumpet.”

Trumpeter Buck Clayton:

“Our reputation, before we came east, was built on nine pieces, and I don’t think we ever had a bad night in Kansas City. But when we added five or six men it made a lot of difference. The band had to be enlarged to go on the road, but it slowed everything down and made it sluggish.... Then Benny Morton, Dicky Wells, Harry Edison and Earl Warren came in and it began to sound like a good big band.

“At first it was a disappointment, especially as compared with the band in Kansas City. Anyone who heard it there heard the swingingest band in the world. It was really a pleasure to play in it. Of course, we weren’t making any money to speak of, but things were cheap then and I think my rent was only about three dollars a week.

“We always had fun some kind of way.”

*****

On Saturday, October 31st, 1936, Count Basie’s band played a farewell dance at Paseo Hall, at 15th and The Paseo, before leaving Kansas City.

Count Basie:

“The first Halloween dance was at Paseo Hall that last Saturday night. We advertised it as our farewell dance. They always liked farewells and homecomings in Kansas city, so we called this our farewell thing. But actually we went right back into Paseo Hall that very next Monday night and played our last gig as the local union band. The big headline attraction that night was Duke Ellington….

“It was a very special night for everybody, because Duke had been coming to Kansas City for at least several years by that time, but this was the first time he was coming to play a dance at Paseo Hall. All the other times he had been booked into the big theaters downtown….

[At that time, Black patrons could not attend Kansas City’s downtown theaters.]

“But I didn’t get to hear him that last night in Kansas City, because we went on first, and we couldn’t stay for the main event because we were scheduled to leave for Chicago that very same Monday night. In fact our bus was parked outside, ready to pull out as soon as we finished our set and loaded our instruments. Our suitcases were already on board….

“We went on early, and of course, we did our best to liven things up in there, and we always did. But then when Duke’s famous musicians began arriving, the crowd couldn’t help showing how excited it was about having them there. So, as many friends and well-wishers as we knew we had in Kansas City, I don’t think there were many more than about a dozen people who came outside to see us off.

“But Duke himself came out…. I hadn’t yet had a chance to get to know him personally at that time…. But that last night he made it his business to come outside of Paseo Hall and give us his congratulations and wish us good luck, and he gave me a few words of encouragement and a big pat on the shoulder just before I got on the bus. He was beautiful.

“‘Go ahead,’ he said. ‘You can make it.’”

*****

Quotes by Dicky Wells, Jo Jones and Buck Clayton are from The World of Count Basie by Stanley Dance. Quotes by Count Basie are from Good Morning Blues, The Autobiography of Count Basie.