In Lieu of 1000 Words: People's Liberation Big Band on International Workers Day

Name a jazz big band with a score-in-waiting for the silent film Battleship Potemkin. Go ahead, name one.

Okay, I’ll name it for you: The People’s Liberation Big Band of Greater Kansas City.

Now, name a jazz big band which mocks then performs (actually, mocks and performs) selections by Kurt Weill, sung by two jazz vocalists and a renowned operatic tenor.

I’ll give you a hint: It’s the same jazz big band which performed selections to scenes from the silent film Battleship Potemkin at The Record Bar before a couple hundred people on International Workers Day, May 1st.

If you’re thinking this jazz big band show must have been half crazy, well, that’s part of the fun. And I think it’s more than half.

I’ve pictured The People’s Liberation Big Band of Greater Kansas City before (here). The whimsy behind some of the best big band music you’ll hear – best because of the outstanding talent taking that stage – makes their first Sunday of the month shows some of the most anticipated in Kansas City. Especially twice a year when they add special guests and features for jazz shows like none other you’ll find around here.

Guests like vocalist Shay Estes, superb Tulsa vocalist Annie Ellicot, and opera tenor Nathan Granner. And features like, well, a projector showing a silent film.

Maybe you had to be there for this to make sense. So let’s try this: Take a glance at the scenes below from The People’s Liberation Big Band International Workers Day show. It was as wonderful as it looks (as always, clicking on a shot should open a larger version of it).

The People's Liberation Big Band of Greater Kansas City, directed by Brad Cox, playing portions of their score to the silent film Battleship Potemkin. They have a complete score ready if a theater would show the film. Anyone?

Tulsa super jazz vocalist Annie Ellicot, Kansas City super jazz vocalist Shay Estes, and super jazz bassist and sometimes vocalist Jeff Harshbarger sing while The People's Liberation Big Band performs.

Opera tenor Nathan Granner joins Shay to sing jazz with the band.

Jeffrey Ruckman on accordian with Annie on vocals

Nathan, Annie and Shay sing

Annie Ellicot and Shay Estes enjoy the band

Annie sings, Brad Cox directs, both with intensity

Annie and Shay fronting The People's Liberation Big Band

The People's Liberation Big Band of Greater Kansas City on International Workers Day at The Record Bar

Commission Tales 5: Friends

Sometimes you wonder why you do it.

I wasn’t paid for chairing the Kansas City Jazz Commission.

First you do it because you believe in the cause, because you believe this organization deserves another chance to thrive.

You do it because you have experiences and you meet people you wouldn’t experience or meet any other way.

When your name and face become tied to the cause, you do it because you want to be tied to a cause which, ultimately, succeeds.

The full Jazz Commission held monthly meetings. I put them in City Hall, in part for the symbolism of this beleaguered commission meeting there.

Among the people who attended every month was Bennie Moten’s daughter, Zella Mae. I did not know her well. Zella Mae rarely spoke during the meetings.

One month, at the end of the meeting, Zella Mae stayed while I gathered the papers and supplies I brought with me. She stopped me at the door. There, Bennie Moten’s daughter clasped my hand between her two palms and said, “You’ve done more with the Jazz Commission than anyone since the start. Thank you. Thank you so much.”

You do it for moments like that.

*****

We had enemies in City Hall. But we also had friends.

On the phone was a woman I knew from my jazz festival days. She had been involved in civic groups and we met somewhere along the way and remained friends. I didn’t know her husband was an assistant city manager. It had been awhile since we talked, so I was a little surprised when she called.

A city commission was meeting at her home the next night. It would be a casual evening. They would have drinks and finger food. Among the people there would be the chairman of the Chamber of Commerce. Also there would be the chairman of the City Council’s budget committee who wouldn’t release the Jazz Commission’s funding and who wouldn’t meet with me.

Her husband suggested she invite me. Would I like to come?

I arrived early. The Chamber chairman and the budget committee chairman arrived together. During the meeting part of the evening, we stood on opposite sides of the living room. And during the mingling, they seemed to mingle away from me.

Towards the end of the evening, the assistant city manager tapped me on the shoulder and suggested I step into the kitchen. Now.

The Chamber chairman was standing at the sink, washing his hands. The budget committee chairman stood next to him. I walked up and introduced myself to the Chamber chairman. Cordially, we talked. He asked me about the Jazz Commission. I described the people involved. I described our plans. The budget committee chairman joined the conversation. What would we do with the city funding? I laid out how we could parlay it into more funds and stage events to benefit the city.

The conversation ended and we shook hands. The Chamber chairman and the budget committee chairman left. I had the chance to say everything I would have said in a meeting in City Hall. The Jazz Commission was no longer a nebulous body, in the budget committee chairman’s view, wasting city dollars. We had a face which he now knew. He knew our plan. I felt good.

Less than a week later, the councilman who had first befriended us phoned me. The budget committee chairman came to him with a new deal. $15,000 of the $20,000 budgeted for the Jazz Commission would go to the Commission and $5000 would go to another community group. I hesitated for just a moment. The councilman quickly added, “This is the best deal you’re going to get. You need to take it.” I did.

The funding would come up at the next budget committee meeting. The councilman suggested I bring supporters to speak in favor of it. As it turned out, they weren’t needed. The committee chairman introduced the funding, he introduced me, I spoke, reporters took notes, it passed unanimously. The committee chairman smiled the entire time, as if we were friends. The next week, the funding passed the entire City Council. The City Council continued to fund the Kansas City Jazz Commission each year I was chairman, and beyond.

*****

Our former treasurer pled guilty and agreed to repay all of the stolen money. The incident would be removed from the person’s record when repayment was complete.

On a regular basis, we received checks from the county, passing along to the Jazz Commission the money being repaid. I don’t remember now how long it took. A year? Two years? But I remember seeing the letter from the county which accompanied the final payment, telling us that the full amount was restored.

By that time, the Kansas City Jazz Commission had moved on to new battles, but also to stage successful events and to contribute to the city.

By then, the events which precipitated those checks felt like they happened a long time ago.

Commission Tales 4: Damage Control

Books and magazines on the shelves, a desk littered with pens and papers, and a telephone with a red light flashing for messages unheard.

In 1987, the Kansas City Jazz Commission kept an office in the Lincoln Building at 18th and Vine. But our executive director had left for a job in California. The new vice chairman, treasurer, secretary and I were looking over what we’d inherited.

The audit report was out. Our former treasurer was being prosecuted. Our executive director was gone. But we had an office. An office with a phone which kept flashing an annoying red light.

The vice chairman opened a desk drawer and rifled through some papers, then pulled one out. Startled, she blurted out, “Look at this.”

It was documentation for nearly half of the Jazz Commission expenditures which the City Auditor’s audit, and the article on the front page of the newspaper, and the news stories on TV, said were undocumented.

I called the auditor the next day. He said that he took the documents the outgoing executive director gave to him before leaving for California, and whatever expenditures were not covered by those went into the audit report as having no documentation.

Wasn’t any effort made to find the rest of the documentation? I asked. We found paperwork for half of what the audit said was undocumented with just a couple minutes of scrounging through the office. Why didn’t the auditor’s office call us and ask us to look for the remaining documentation?

After the executive director left, the auditor said, no effort was made to find anything more. All the “missing documentation” could be in the Jazz Commission office, he conceded. He never explained why neither he nor his staff called us before the report was released to see if we’d care to check.

And in part due to that, the Jazz Commission was being raked across the public coals.

*****

An editorial in the newspaper chastised the Jazz Commission. An editorial cartoon pictured us as buffoons falling out of a pub crawl bus.

The Jazz Commission’s first chairman sent a message, through a mutual friend, that we needed to meet with the editorial board at The Kansas City Star.

Fortunately, two members of our executive committee knew what the editorial board was. I wasn’t one of them.

But they quickly explained that this was all of the staff writers, editors and cartoonists who contribute to the newspaper’s editorial pages. One of the executive committee members who already knew this arranged the meeting.

The vice chairman, treasurer, secretary and I went. We were ushered into a conference room in The Star’s building at 18th and Grand, and The Star staff members entered. We were greeted warmly.

I brought copies of the documentation we found in the Jazz Commission’s office and handed them out. I explained how this accounted for half of the expenditures which the audit report claimed were undocumented. Then we discussed the Commission, our goals, our plans, what would happen if we never received our city funding.

The conversation was friendly but professional. One Star staff member, before asking a question, wondered if the discussion was on the record. Since a reporter in the room was taking notes, everything I said assumed it was (which was also the consensus of the room).

The next day a story ran towards the back of the newspaper, near the obituaries. About two thirds of the way through it said we claimed to have documentation for some of the questioned expenditures. A few days later, an encouraging editorial supporting our efforts appeared. That helped. Future editorials would grow even more supportive.

At the end of the meeting, we chatted informally for a few moments, then The Star staff filed out of the room.

I looked around the table. All of The Star staff members had left the paper, the documentation, which I’d distributed. They took all of the pens and pads they brought into the room, but a single sheet of paper sat before each of their chairs. I stopped a moment, then walked around the table and picked each one up.

Oddly, I felt compelled to leave The Star’s conference room in the same shape as I found it.

*****

Behind the scenes, the council member who first befriended us and the chairman of the budget committee talked, but the chairman still wanted to give our funding to another civic group. I heard details which led me to suspect that the chairman and the mayor’s assistant who leaked the audit report to the press were also discussing the Jazz Commission. But I couldn't confirm that. Neither would speak to me.

Then one afternoon I received a phone call. A friend had an idea. This might work. This might lead to the Jazz Commission’s funding being released.

I was invited to the meeting of another commission.

The story concludes in the next blog post.

Commission Tales 3: Angry Chair

I was lucky.

Because however much I may recount these Jazz Commission stories from my perspective, I was part of a team. The Jazz Commission’s vice chairman, treasurer, secretary, other members and I solved the Commission’s problems collectively. We didn’t always agree. Not everyone left the group amicably. That doesn't matter. Together, a team of wonderful, dedicated jazz fans resuscitated the Kansas City Jazz Commission.

*****

I was also lucky because, I discovered, the Jazz Commission had friends inside and outside of City Hall. We needed them.

The Commission’s former treasurer was being prosecuted for stealing $6400 of city funds from the Jazz Commission. We were audited by the City Auditor and the unfavorable result was leaked to the newspaper. An attorney testified before a City Council committee that the Commission should be denied city funding, and nobody from the Commission showed up to defend us, angering the committee chairman. Meanwhile, two Commission chairmen resigned within a couple months of each other and our executive director took a job in California.

The new vice chairman and I decided to start by visiting the City Council office of the committee chairman who didn’t like us. The Commission’s funding was stuck in his committee. Neither of us knew how City Hall worked. This seemed to be the best place to begin finding out.

The committee chairman’s assistant was friendly. She smiled. Could we visit with the councilman? He’s a busy man (translation: no). How can we discuss with him the Commission’s budget? You might send him a memo (translation: you can’t). Could we do anything to see the Commission’s budget brought up in committee again? A councilman needs to do that (translation: no, you can’t). Thank you for your help. You’re welcome (translation: go away, losers).

I don’t remember now if the vice chairman needed to leave after that or if the next day I returned to City Hall alone. But the next logical step seemed to be to try to meet another councilman on the budget committee. I went to the office of a freshman council member. He greeted me immediately. He liked jazz.

Sometimes when you meet someone, you hit it off immediately, as if you’re lifelong friends. You don’t know why, you just do. That was the case between me and this council member. As we talked, as I laid out plans for the Jazz Commission, the councilman was engaged. He would be our advocate in the budget committee.

But there was a problem.

The committee chairman had developed a plan to give all of the Jazz Commission’s funding to another civic group. Away from the City Council, that group was this councilman’s law client. The chairman thought that assured him of this councilman’s support. But it didn’t. Well, it probably didn’t.

The councilman took me into the office of another freshman council member who was also part of the budget committee. He introduced us, laid out my case, and she was on our side. They both suggested I return after lunch, with the Commission’s vice chairman, when the committee would publicly meet, and speak before the committee.

They didn’t tell the committee chairman they suggested that.

After lunch, before the budget committee, the council member who befriended us reintroduced the Jazz Commission’s funding. The committee chairman was surprised. This wasn’t on his agenda. The two council members I’d met said there were two people from the Jazz Commission in the room who would like to speak. The committee chairman was surprised and not happy. This wasn’t on his agenda. We spoke. With controlled anger, the committee chairman asked why we had not testified before.

“Forgive us,” I responded. “I work as Production Manager in a small graphics studio. She,” as I gestured towards the Commission’s vice chairman, “is a photographer. We’re quickly learning how things work in this building.”

The committee chairman said nothing. The fourth member of the budget committee looked bemused. Two reporters, who had not been covering what was expected to be an uneventful committee meeting, rushed into the room. The budget committee meeting was adjourned. The committee chairman looked towards the two council members who introduced us and angrily said something, then left. The reporters approached. What had they missed? they asked. What precipitated that outburst? What happened?

I later found out we were, momentarily at least, the talk of City Hall. And the Jazz Commission’s funding was back in play.

The two council members who brought us this far told us that we needed to meet individually with each of the other City Council members, just as we had met with the two of them, to build support for the Jazz Commission’s funding. They would delay reconsideration until we had that support.

We were definitely learning how things worked in that building.

*****

I, often with another Jazz Commission Executive Committee member, met with each of the other, mostly sympathetic, City Council members. All except one. The chairman of the budget committee would not see us. And he held significant say in when or if the Jazz Commission’s funding would be brought up again in his committee. He would not again be blindsided.

Then, one afternoon, the wife of an assistant city manager called me. I knew her from my days with the jazz festival. Her husband had a suggestion to help.

But first, we were told by a former Jazz Commission chairman that we needed to meet with The Kansas City Star.

More, in the next blog post.

Jazz, the Next Generation

The table for tomorrow’s history is being set during the day, each Saturday.

I’ve written about and photographed the Mutual Musicians Foundation at 1823 Highland (here and here). Once the black musicians' union building, today it is a National Historic Landmark known for all night jazz jams. It’s not just Kansas City’s most historic structure, but one of the most historic buildings in jazz history.

But not all of the significant activity there happens overnight.

Each Saturday, starting at 9:30 a.m., students receive music lessons from Kansas City’s accomplished jazz musicians. The program, headed by trombonist Osmond Fisher, is free to the students.

That’s right. There is no charge.

The day I was there, student ages spanned from 5 to high school. The band, dubbed Young Jazz Masters, rehearsed for a performance at the Gem Theater, less than a block from the Foundation, as part of the 18th and Vine Festival. That festival, co-produced by the American Jazz Museum and Penn Valley Community College, gave 45 student bands the chance over two days to perform and be critiqued on the Gem stage.

If you’re interested in the Mutual Musicians Foundation Saturday program, either with a student to participate or with a donation to support it, contact the Foundation at 816-471-5212 or Osmond Fisher at 216-256-8332.

For me, it was a treat to hear the Young Jazz Masters practice in a building which has hosted so much jazz history. And it was a delight to cheer them in the student competition.

How much a treat and how delightful? Decide for yourself through the photos below. As always, clicking one should open a larger version of it.

Young Jazz Masters, directed by Osmond Fisher, rehearse inside the Mutual Musicians Foundation

Students practice...

...While enveloped by jazz history

Taking instruction

The horn section starts at age 5 (and can blow)

Appreciating the solo

This horn player is dubious of the photographer

Young Jazz Masters rehearse prior to...

...Taking the stage at the Gem Theater. My prediction: This isn't the last time many of them will be on that stage.

Back at the Foundation. I don't usually post photos of people who mug for the camera, but who can resist a beaming multi-instrumentalist surrounded by history?

Commission Tales 2: It Leaks

It didn’t seem dumb at the time.

1987, and the Kansas City Jazz Commission was all over the news. Its former treasurer was charged with stealing $6400 in city money from the Commission. The City Auditor was auditing it.

I was the treasurer who succeeded the accused treasurer, not knowing when I volunteered what had gone on before me. But I learned the details, quickly.

So when the second chairman resigned from the Commission in the space of a couple months, and the executive director announced he would leave, I was the person remaining who knew most about what was putting the Jazz Commission on the front page. In my mind, I was the most logical choice to volunteer to be the next chairman.

So, with the encouragement of other Commission members, I wrote a letter to the mayor asking to be named chairman of the Kansas City Jazz Commission. It was delivered to the Mayor’s Office by the outgoing executive director with the message that the Commission supported this appointment.

Problem was, mayors typically don’t appoint as chairmen people they don’t know and, in my case, had never even met. The mayor (or his staff) contacted Commission members he did know and trust. They vouched for me. I was appointed the new chairman.

Good people – very good people – stepped forward to take the positions of vice chairman, treasurer, secretary, and advisory members, rebuilding the executive committee which would run the Jazz Commission.

*****

The City Auditor’s work was complete. The new vice chairman, treasurer, secretary and I were called in to meet with the auditor in his City Hall office, to receive a copy of the audit, and to discuss it with him prior to its release to the City Council.

Before the Jazz Commission, I didn’t even know the city had an auditor. I lived north of The Plaza but worked at a small graphic arts studio in Johnson County. Our new vice chairman was a photographer. Our treasurer worked in advertising. Our secretary had been active in civic affairs.

There we sat, mostly novices, as the City Auditor described to us the procedures lacking in the Jazz Commission’s operations, the records not found, the recommendations being made. This audit would be released to the City Council next week. It would be helpful if, in his presentation to the Council, the City Auditor could say we agreed to implement his recommendations. We did.

I took a copy of the audit. A copy would go to the the Mayor’s Office. Another copy would go to the chairman of the City Council committee which would receive it. The City Auditor’s office, of course, kept copies.

The next day the audit was leaked to The Kansas City Star. An article appeared on the front page. I didn’t know who leaked it.

At that time, Kansas City had both a morning newspaper, The Kansas City Times, and an evening newspaper, The Kansas City Star. While both were owned by The Star and shared the building at 18th and Grand, reporters for each newspaper competed. Both newspapers had a reporter covering City Hall. On this story, the reporter for The Star (who still writes for the newspaper) scooped the reporter for The Times.

The reporter for The Star found someone happy to jab another knife into the Jazz Commission’s already bleeding back, and see the audit in the press before we had an opportunity to prepare a response.

Coincidentally, the reporter for The Times covering the story lived in the same apartment complex as I did. Months later, after all the turmoil over the Jazz Commission subsided, the Times reporter was sitting out by the pool one weekend afternoon when I walked by. I stopped and we chatted. There were no hard feelings. He was a nice guy doing his job.

“Let me ask you,” he said, “because it’s bothered me. Did you leak the audit?”

No, it wasn’t me, I told him. I wasn’t anxious to see it in the newspaper. I’d wondered myself who leaked it.

“I didn’t think you had,” the reporter said. “But if it wasn’t you, who was it?”

We talked through who had copies. The City Auditor’s office, he said, never leaked reports. The chairman of the City Council committee receiving the report was not friendly with reporters, he said, so it wasn’t him. I didn't leak it. That left the Mayor’s Office.

I had been warned that the mayor’s assistant did not like the Jazz Commission. I never knew why. But I had been told that the individual had tried to undermine the Commission before.

The reporter and I looked at each other. That was it. An aide in the Mayor’s Office had leaked the audit report to The Star.

*****

Some of the City Council members on the committee controlling budget matters discussed Jazz Commission funding among themselves.

That funding was important to the Commission. Not only was it seed money that donors looked on favorably in deciding whether to give us grants, it largely paid for our executive director. Without that money, it would be difficult to hire a new executive director. We’d have nobody in the office to answer the phone, to write grant proposals, to plan pub crawls.

Never mentioned in the press but disclosed to me was that the chairman of the Council’s budget committee had devised a plan to give the Jazz Commission’s funding to another community group which happened to be a law client of another member of the budget committee. He assumed that gave him at least two votes on his four member committee to end funding for the Jazz Commission.

An unfavorable audit and our former treasurer going to court didn’t help.

We had problems.

More next month, in another blog post.

Commission Tales 1: Beginning of the End

I’m not going to mention the individual’s name, because this person satisfied the court order, repaid what was stolen, and the incident was expunged from their record. And this person is still active in the music community.

The Star wrote about it extensively at the time – I have some good stories about those stories, too – but they predate the record currently available online. No doubt, some people around at the time will remember who it is. But you will get no confirmation from me.

Still, if I was in a position to hire musicians, this is one – who I’ve actually never met – that I would not hire because of what they put me through. I’m not bitter, but I remember.

It was a helluva way to take over a Jazz Commission.

*****

I was active with the jazz festival first. The festival had its own issues, and its other officers held little interest in the Jazz Commission, even though the Commission’s board officially included a seat for the festival. So, when I expressed interest in that seat, nobody objected, and I was appointed by the mayor to the Kansas City Jazz Commission.

Actually, I’m assuming that you know what the Kansas City Jazz Commission was. You may not. It was a city commission – like the Landmarks Commission, or the Arts Commission, or the TIF Commission – created in the 1980s to bring together the leaders of Kansas City’s then numerous jazz organizations to support jazz in Kansas City. At least, that was its altruistic goal. It was the goal I knew when I was appointed. I didn’t know about the other agendas.

The Jazz Commission was then, in the mid-1980s, a mostly lackadaisical group which, outside of its executive director, accomplished little. It was comprised of the leaders of other jazz organizations, most of whom were busy running their own groups, and some musicians and residents with historical ties (Bennie Moten’s daughter was one of the nicest and most supportive members during my years). And it was something of a dumping ground for friends of the mayor who wanted to be on a city commission. Few ever attended a meeting.

Some of the commission’s members were looking for leadership to guide the organization towards accomplishing something meaningful. But others just wanted to boast that they were on the Jazz Commission.

So when the Commission’s treasurer resigned, I volunteered to help. I had served as treasurer of the jazz festival. Nobody else volunteered. The chairman named me treasurer.

Then I found out that the last treasurer resigned because the individual was being investigated for stealing city money from the Jazz Commission. That was interesting to hear.

Then the Commission made news stories in The Kansas City Star and The Kansas City Times (we had a morning and an evening newspaper then). A former member, someone who left the Commission before I joined, stood before a City Council committee to argue that the Jazz Commission should receive no city funding.

At the time, the Jazz Commission received $20,000 each year from the city budget. But this young attorney, whose brother was a local jazz musician, said the Commission was failing to create jobs for jazz musicians and should receive no city support.

There was one of those other agendas. The Jazz Commission was not created to create jobs. But this young attorney, apparently, decided it was and it didn’t so it shouldn’t be funded.

Then the county prosecutor charged the Jazz Commission’s former treasurer with stealing $6400 of city money from the Commission. That made the front page of The Star and The Times.

Then the Jazz Commission’s chairman resigned. We never knew the specific reasons. He never told anyone on the Commission. We found out when the Commission’s executive director was alerted by someone in the Mayor’s Office that they had received his letter of resignation.

A new chairman was appointed.

Then the City Auditor announced that, in light of the prosecution of the former treasurer, his office would audit the Jazz Commission.

The young attorney testified again before a City Council committee that the Jazz Commission was dysfunctional and should not be funded. Nobody from the Jazz Commission showed up to defend it. A city councilman on the committee angrily asked why nobody from the Commission showed (Answer: Nobody left on the Commission was politically adept enough to know that we should).

Then the executive director gave notice that he was taking a job with a radio station in California.

Then the new chairman, deciding this was too much for him, submitted his letter or resignation to the Mayor’s Office. At least this chairman talked with other Commission members first.

So there, in mid-1987, stood the Kansas City Jazz Commission: Needing its third chairman in three months, a spry young attorney lobbying the City Council to deny it funds, its executive director leaving, its former treasurer charged with stealing $6400 of city money from it, and being audited by the City Auditor.

Only a total idiot would volunteer to be chairman under those circumstances.

I volunteered to be chairman of the Kansas City Jazz Commission.

More, in another blog post.

A Portrait of the Foundation Last Saturday Night

Around 3:45 a.m., they temporarily stopped letting people go upstairs. Too many guests were already up there.

Meanwhile, downstairs, the line of people snaked out the door. One man in a military uniform asked if he could get in free. No, he was told, this was the only means of income. Think of the cover charge as a donation. He did.

People wandered around downstairs, looking closely at the portraits of Kansas City jazz legends which line the walls. I prefer the ambiance downstairs.

“How do they do this?” one person asked, looking away from the wall, throwing the question out to anybody. “How can they stay open all night? Do they have a special permit?”

“The state of Missouri passed a special law just for this place,” I offered, from across the room. “This is a National Historic Landmark, after all.”

Upstairs, every seat was filled. People lined the back of the room and the thin aisles between tables. Most held a drink. Everyone I saw looked happy.

The crowd was diverse – black people, white people, Asian people – and enjoying each other’s company. I came alone and shared a table with strangers. But they weren’t strangers. We introduced ourselves. The other guests started asking questions.

“Do you come here often?”

“Not too often,” I answered. “At my age, I need an afternoon nap to stay out this late. But I’ve been coming here since the 1980s.”

“So who has played here?”

“Just about anyone associated with jazz. Count Basie, Charlie Parker, Mary Lou Williams, Big Joe Turner. In fact, I saw Big Joe Turner here.”

“You did?”

“Yes, downstairs. I was standing about an arm’s length away while he shouted the blues.”

People upstairs stood, bought a drink, apologized when they bumped into each other, then sat down to chat and to listen and to marvel.

Let’s be honest: This was a beautiful spring night. And at 3:45 a.m. on a weekend night in Kansas City, here and the casinos are the only places I know where you can (legally) enjoy entertainment and drink. Some people were here because they could be. Some just weren’t ready for bed yet on such a gorgeous night.

But some in the audience came for the jazz. The people I spoke with came to touch history. Here, it touches back.

On stage, a rhythm section anchored the Saturday night jam session (Sunday morning, actually; it started at 1 a.m.). They were joined by trumpet, trombone and tenor sax. There was solid experience, a veteran of Kansas City jazz, behind the piano. But on trumpet, Chalice is young and here regularly. I’ve heard him before, and before he sounded inexperienced. But tonight his sound is more controlled. He’s growing in mastery of his instrument. I’m not the only one who noticed.

Is this what Kansas Citians had the chance to hear 75 years ago, when a young Charlie Parker once squeaked his sax – in, among other places, this building – then gradually grew and mastered his instrument? Sure, we don’t know where any young player will end up. It’s improbable that I’m hearing the maturing of a future jazz great. I understand odds stand stacked against that.

But it’s possible. Because in this building, history touches back.

Downstairs, I chatted with Anita, who is in charge. I told her that after some recent turmoil on the Board here, I asked a friend, a musician, what was going on. My friend told me, “Don’t worry, Anita will take care of everything.” Anita laughed. My friend was right.

Outside, cars lined both sides of Highland Street, leaving a single lane on a two-way street. I stopped to chat with another friend. On the street, a car and a taxi approached from opposite directions and stopped, facing each other. Someone from the car, who maybe had a bit to drink, stepped out, flashing muscles (“he’s done steroids,” my friend decided) and yelled at then kicked the taxi. The taxi driver just talked on his cell phone. The car pulled to the side, between two parked cars, and the taxi passed. As it did, the driver of the car yelled at the taxi driver. The taxi driver continued to talk on his cell phone.

I walked down the street, smiling, to my car, then drove off for the night. I drove through the Crossroads district, seeing maybe two other cars on the road. The rest of Kansas City was asleep.

When I pulled out of my parking spot, on Highland, and drove off, I saw another car pull into the space. I saw two people step out.

As I drove up the ramp to I-35 from West Pennway, to head back home, I wondered if those two people had found their way upstairs yet.

— Last Saturday night at the Mutual Musicians Foundation.

The Blue Devils You Don't Know

Count Basie opens his autobiography recalling the first time he heard the Blue Devils and the impact they had on his music and his career.

Basie:

“…The Blue Devils was the first big band I ever had a chance to get close to and really listen to, and it was the greatest thing I had ever heard. I had never heard the blues played like that….”

Jimmy Rushing:

“Basie had come West with a show. He couldn’t play the blues then….

“They would balleyhoo in front of the show, take a band and play a number, and have fellows singing….

“ The first time [Basie] heard the Blue Devils, we were balleyhooing on a big truck in Kansas City. [In his autobiography, Basie says it was in Tulsa.] There was a lot of that in those days. Wherever you were working, you had to go out and balleyhoo for the place. Coming back from downtown, we struck up with a good blues. Basie heard this and thought it was a record, but somebody told him, ‘No, that’s the Blue Devils!’ He ran down and met all the fellows. Not long after, he…joined our band.”

Walter Page's Blue Devils, 1932

One of most influential bands from the early days of Kansas City jazz was Walter Page’s Original Blue Devils. A territory band which spent winters in Kansas City but traveled the Midwest, some of the greatest names associated with KC jazz were once a Blue Devil.

Bassist Walter Page, who would anchor Count Basie’s orchestra, was there at the start, in 1923. Bill Basie joined in 1928. Other Blue Devils included saxophonist Buster Smith (joined in 1925, profiled here), singer Jimmy Rushing (1925), drummer and vocalist Ernie Williams (1925), trombonists Dan Minor (1927) and Eddie Durham (1928), trumpeter Oran “Hot Lips” Page (1928), and saxophonist Lester Young (1932).

Ernie Williams:

“The original Blue Devils was Billie King’s [Road Show, a 9-piece vaudeville troupe, started in Kansas City].”

Buster Smith:

“The first man that [led the band] was a fellow named Coleman, we called him Bucket. He was kind of hard to get along with and the boys fired him and turned it over to Walter Page….”

Page took over and renamed the band in 1925, then expanded it to 13 pieces.

Count Basie:

“… you could also hear the musicians addressing [Page] by his nickname, which was Big ‘Un. You could also tell right away that they didn’t just respect him because he was the boss; they really liked him and felt close to him because he was also one of them.”

Pianist and vocalist Sam Price:

“I remember hearing the Blue Devils [in the mid-1920s]. When the saxophones would be playing a riff, Jimmy Rushing would be singing and Lips [Page] would…play anything he wanted to…. He didn’t have to play with the [trumpet] section. He’d be up high, Rush’d be singing and the rhythm and the band’d be playing something else. It’d be fantastic.”

Count Basie:

“Everybody seemed to be having so much fun just being up there playing together…. There was such a team spirit among those guys, and it came out in the music, and as you stood there looking and listening you just couldn’t help wishing that you were a part of it. Everything about them really got to me….”

Pianist Jesse Stone:

“The biggest upset we ever had in our life…happened to be in Sioux City, Iowa…and it was a battle of the bands between Page and Jesse Stone. We got up there on the stand first because we were considered like a house band there. We played there regularly. Well, we started out with some of our light things, little ballads. And [the Blue Devils] hit right off the reel, wham, and they didn’t let up all night long. They had a tough band. They were just sharper, cleaner, more powerful, and they had more material….

“These guys, they were actually ragged. Their uniforms were tattered and they came in an old beat up…airport bus. It was about ready to cave in. We said, ‘It ain’t no problem.’ And they gave us the biggest shock of our whole career….”

Jimmy Rushing:

“The best band in Kansas City in those days was reckoned to be Bennie Moten’s. We battled all the bands around, but he avoided us until we caught him one night and tore him up.”

Buster Smith:

“We played a whole bunch of battles. We used to play rings around Bennie, because he wanted to play all them old tunes he made, and he’d stick with them a lot…. We had a better reed section than Bennie had…. We’d get off. We built the band around them solo things. We had Lips [Page] on trumpet over there and we had Dee Stewart…second trumpet. In other words, we tried to be a band that could just get off instead of just read music.”

Bennie Moten began to raid the Blue Devils for musicians. Basie left for Moten’s band in 1929, followed by Lips Page, Jimmy Rushing and Eddie Durham. Walter Page left and joined Moten in 1932. Buster Smith, Lester Young and Ernie Williams were still with the Blue Devils when the band fell apart in 1933 in Virginia. The last seven Blue Devils hoboed on trains to St. Louis. When Moten heard, he sent a car to pick up them up and hired all seven.

Count Basie:

“…As things worked out, hearing them that day was probably the most important turning point in my musical career so far as my notions about what kind of music I really wanted to try to play was concerned…. When I look back at just about every step I’ve taken since I ran into those guys that morning, I can see quite a lot to bear out the old saying, ‘Once a Blue Devil, always a Blue Devil.’”

*****

Quotes by Basie are from his autobiography, Good Morning Blues. Quotes by Jimmy Rushing are from the book, The World of Count Basie. All other quotes are from the book, Goin’ to Kansas City.

In Lieu of 1000 Words: The Matt Otto Quartet (But With Six Musicians)

It was billed as the Matt Otto Quartet, but there were six musicians on stage. So that doesn’t work.

And there’s the complete list of what didn’t work that night.

What did work, I wrote about in another post about a month ago. To quote myself:

“The musicians included Matt on tenor sax, Gerald Dunn on alto sax, Jeff Harshbarger on bass, Michael Warren on drums, Beau Bledsoe on guitar, and Shay Estes vocalizing….

“The vocalizing – no words, but rather the voice as an instrument – added a unique layer of depth to the sound. To my ears, which only know how to respond emotionally, the bass and drums carried rhythms. On top of that I heard tenor, alto, guitar and voice blending, harmonizing, into the wonder of a single complex instrument, creating often beautiful, often smoothly opaque, detailed, yet consistently extraordinary waves of music, of jazz, unlike any I’ve heard elsewhere.”

This is a collection of Kansas City jazz all-stars. All but Matt are better known in KC in other groups. Yet in this configuration, they blend their talents into a unique voice for Matt’s compositions (and some by Monk and others) to fill the room with musical wonder.

In case you didn’t pick up on it, I like this group.

On the night of February 9th, the six musicians of the Matt Otto Quartet (hey, I didn’t name the group) performed at Jardine’s. It snowed that night, and few patrons braved the weather. But I was there, with camera, and below you’ll see how it looked. As always, clicking on a photo should open a larger version of it.

The Matt Otto Quartet. Left to right: Beau Bledsoe on guitar, Shay Estes, vocals, Jeff Harshbarger on bass, Matt Otto on tenor sax, Michael Warren on drums, Gerald Dunn on alto sax

Matt Otto

Gerald Dunn

Shay Estes

The front line: Shay, Matt and Gerald

Beau Bledsoe

 

Jeff Harshbarger

Michael Warren

Shay admires Matt's solo

Matt Otto on tenor

The Matt Otto Quartet enjoying Jeff's bass solo