Confirmation: Weekly News and Notes

*Reporting on a junket to Kansas City partly subsidized by Visit KC, a correspondent for The Times of London mentions Green Lady Lounge and the American Jazz Museum in a Taylor Swift-themed feature.

*Larry Tye promoted his book The Jazzmen: How Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong and Count Basie Transformed America on KCUR.

*From a press release: It has been a very long wait, but, with the combined efforts of three celebrated jazz musicians – and with the approval of the step-daughter of the great Charlie Parker – we proudly announce the release of "Pree's Wings", a composition and recording that not only adds to the Parker legacy, but fills a significant historical and musical void that has lasted nearly 70 years! As is well-known, Parker composed two brilliant jazz compositions for his children, “Kim,” for step-daughter Kim and “Baird Laird” for his natural son with Chan Richardson. However, Bird never composed a song for daughter “Pree” who, seriously ill from birth, tragically died as a toddler… After lengthy conversations with Parker’s still-surviving jazz vocalist step-daughter, Kim – and receiving her approval, three internationally known jazz artists, trumpeter/writer, Nick Mondello, saxophonist/arranger/composer, Gio Washington-Wright, and vocalist/lyricist, Giacomo Gates - each a lifelong acolyte of Parker’s legacy - combined forces to compose both an instrumental and vocal original composition dedicated to Kim Parker and named after the child who never had a Parker-composed song dedicated to her – “Pree’s Wings.”

*From a press release: Kansas City Jazz A.L.I.V.E. is pleased to announce it has been approved by the National Endowment for the Arts for a Grants for Arts Projects award of $10,000. This grant will support Spotlight: Charlie Parker, an annual Kansas City-wide celebration of the life and music of Kansas City’s native son, Charlie “Bird” Parker, held in August.

Confirmation: Weekly News and Notes

*Charlie Parker, Count Basie and the Extemporaneous Music and Arts Society were name-checked in a recent episode of the Eight One Sixty program on 90.9 The Bridge.

*Dave Scott checked in with Joe Dimino.

Confirmation: Weekly News and Notes

*KCUR reported on the resignation of Rashida Phillips as the executive director of the American Jazz Museum.

*Reed Jackson investigated the Kansas origins of guitarist David Lord for The Pitch.

*Greg Carroll and Deborah Brown promoted the annual Spotlight: Charlie Parker initiative on KCUR.

*Joe Dimino interviewed Matt Otto.

*Marc Myers is on a Basie bender.

Album Review: Late Night Basie

A flurry of press releases fail to clarify the concept of Late Night Basie.  The new 23-minute collection consists of seven remakes of songs associated with or performed at least once by the Count Basie Orchestra.  While entirely welcome, the tribute to the Kansas City legend is extremely odd. Here’s a ranking of the tracks.

1. "Blue & Sentimental": The roots music duo Larkin Poe gives the Basie original a gorgeous makeover.

2. “Jumpin’ at the Woodside”: A jump blues take on the classic featuring the Count Basie Orchestra with soloists Ray Angry and Jimmy Vivino.

3. “M-Squad”: Terence Blanchard joins the Count Basie Orchestra on a straight-ahead New Testament-era number.

4. "St. Thomas": Cimafunk, Soul Rebels and Nicholas Payton add New Orleans zest to the Sonny Rollins melody.

5. “One O’Clock Jump”: Jubilant swing revivalists Danny Jonokuchi & The Revisionists play the familiar tune with reverence.

6. “One O’Clock Jump”: Jazzmeia Horn scats on an unusual arrangement of the big band’s signature song.  (Two of the seven tracks are interpretations of “One O’Clock Jump.”)

7. "Didn't You": The funk band Lettuce and the rapper Talib Kweli have both made loads of exceptional music. This effort is less than exceptional.

Traditionalists dismayed by the unconventional Basie initiative can take consolation in Live at Fabrik, Hamburg 1981.  The recently issued live set features a lively group of nine Basie sidemen.  Saxophonist Buddy Tate sounds particularly vibrant.

Book Review: Kansas City Jazz: A Little Evil Will Do You Good, by Con Chapman

Kansas City Jazz: A Little Evil Will Do You Good looks, feels and scans like a textbook.  Not only is the cover drab, the heavy stock of the 370 pages gives the book the heft of a brick.  Its exhaustive chronology of recording sessions and personnel changes of bands often seems like grist for a pop quiz nightmare.

Portions of Con Chapman’s new study of the heyday of Kansas City jazz are a bit of a slog, but the very elements that make the text dense- an attention to detail and a panoramic lens- make it an essential addition to the library of every person with a serious interest in the history of Kansas City.

The work draws heavily on Count Basie’s autobiography and previously published studies by historians including Stanley Crouch, Frank Driggs and Chuck Haddix.  Consequently, much of the material will already be familiar to enthusiasts.  As an amalgamation of these established works, however, Kansas City Jazz can be viewed as a one-stop compendium.

Chapman also has a few ideas of his own.  In addition to synthesizing the work of previous scholars, he fills in gaps with investigations of overlooked nooks and crannies.  These insights begin with a survey of traveling minstrel shows and circuses in the Midwest and Chapman’s insistence that ragtime’s connection to central Missouri is an integral part of the musical foundation of Kansas City.

He attempts to link regional and national musicians to Kansas City.  Several pages are dedicated to Texas trombonist Jack Teagarden. Chapman also suspects the New Orleans legend Jelly Roll Morton spent time in Kansas City influencing locally based artists.  Furthermore, a case is made for the impact of the innovative style of the Texas born and Oklahoma raised guitarist Charlie Christian on the sound of Kansas City jazz. 

Chapman’s championing of the relatively unheralded Missouri native Wilbur Sweatman as a forebear of the likes of Bennie Moten may be the book’s biggest revelation.  The familiar swing of Sweatman’s overlooked recordings suggest Chapman is right.

Impatient readers will be heartened to learn that Chapman successfully deploys the mountain of facts he accumulates in a wholly effective summation.  The strong conclusion makes the textbook-like list price of $55 seem like a bargain.

Confirmation: Weekly News and Notes

*A band led by Hermon Mehari performed for the influential Seattle radio station KEXP.

*Late Night Basie, an all-star reimagining of the music of Count Basie, will be released on April 7.

*Butch Miles, a longtime drummer for the Count Basie Orchestra, has died.

*Tweet of the Week: MidContinent Library- Explore the “golden era” of Kansas City Jazz through historic images and audio recordings with Kent Rausch of the Vine Street Rumble Jazz Orchestra. Learn how unique circumstances in the 1930s and 40s led to an enduring Kansas City legacy….Jazz! Register: (link)

Confirmation: Weekly News and Notes

*Joyce Smith of The Kansas City Star reports that Westport Coffee House, an important cog in Kansas City’s jazz scene, is for sale.

*Radio France looks back on the Kansas City Women’s Jazz Festival.

*An archive recording recently released by Chris Burnett is reviewed at All About Jazz.

*Michael Shults is featured on Steve Kortyka’s YouTube channel.

*Marc Myers shares recently uploaded footage featuring Count Basie.

*Tweet of the Week: Jessica Moulin- Green Lady Lounge is so underrated in Kansas City. I can’t wait to listen to live jazz Friday and then play skee ball at Updown #ilovekc

Book Review: Count Basie and Albert Murray’s Good Morning Blues: The Autobiography of Count Basie

The timeless sounds produced by the band overseen by William Basie in the 1930s might be the most immediately enjoyable music ever produced in the New World.  Take "Miss Thing".  Everything about the brash 1939 recording is intelligent, sexy and yes, incredibly swinging.

Published a year after Basie’s 1984 death, Good Morning Blues: The Autobiography of Count Basie, contains the backstory of “Miss Thing”:  “it was named for Rubberlegs (Williams) himself, who was… a female impersonator as well as a dancer and a very raunchy blues singer.”

Almost every page of the out-of-print book contains at least one similarly scintillating anecdote.  The conversational tone of the “as told to” volume assembled by the notable jazz writer Albert Murray enhances the wildly entertaining if not entirely complete portrait of the essential American artist.  As Basie liked to say, it’s a real killer-diller.

While Basie assiduously avoids revealing details about his personal predilections- “I just don’t see the point of going into things like that” he asserts in Good Morning Blues- Basie was admirably candid about musical and business matters.  

For instance, he’s more than willing to confess his limitations as a keyboardist.  One of the running bits of Good Morning Blues involves Basie’s fear of being shown up by technically superior pianists including Art Tatum and Mary Lou Williams. 

Basie’s reverence for his peers can make Good Morning Blues slow going.  A reader is obligated to put the book down in order to queue up not just the dozens of recording sessions Basie dutifully describes, but also music by a cast of characters ranging from the titanic Duke Ellington to the earthy comedian Pigmeat Markham.

Details about Basie’s interactions with other legendary figures such as John Hammond, Jimmy Rushing, Fats Waller, Lester Young are dazzling.  Basie was a lifelong music obsessive.  Although his sound evolved through the vaudeville, big band, bop and rock and roll eras, his enthusiasm never waned.

Kansas City’s civic boosters will cringe at some of Basie’s perspectives, beginning with his characterization of the town as “the sticks.”  Yet locally based readers will lap up Basie’s descriptions of boarding houses and clubs in the Jazz District, the “lily-white” Fairyland Park and area landmarks such as Jenkins Music and Municipal Auditorium.

Basie recalls “(t)hey always did like farewells and homecomings in Kansas City.”  The ongoing vibrancy of his music and the genial tone of Good Morning Blues makes the prospect of closing the door on Basie’s legacy in his one-time stomping grounds absolutely unthinkable.

Album Review: Bobby Watson- Back Home in Kansas City

The release of each Bobby Watson album is a significant event in the cultural history of Kansas City.  The saxophonist has long been the dominant locally based practitioner of the art form associated with the town.  When a new recording is not only specifically dedicated to the sound of Kansas City but is also one of the best works of Watson’s career, the entire city should rejoice.

Watson plays with quiet confidence on Back Home in Kansas City, the third Watson solo album released by Smoke Sessions Records in the past five years.  The music is more of the same- and in Watson’s case, that’s more than enough.  Immediately comfortable and immensely satisfying, the mainstream jazz of Back Home in Kansas City possesses a lived-in feel.

Recorded on April 5, 2022, with trumpeter Jeremy Pelt, pianist Cyrus Chestnut, bassist Curtis Lundy and drummer Victor Jones, Back Home in Kansas City is an instant classic.  The title track exemplifies Watson’s feel-good, toe-tapping approach.  The quintet pays homage to Count Basie on Lewis’ jumping “Red Bank Heist.”

Guest vocalist Carmen Lundy imbues “Our Love Remains,” a recently minted standard co-written by Watson and Pamela Baskin-Watson, with mature sophistication.  And ballads don’t get much better than the reading of “I’m Glad There Is You.”  The secret of life is embedded in Watson’s knee-buckling solo.  

Two homages to John Coltrane are the only variations from straightforward Kansas City swing.  Watson makes a profound spiritual statement on “Dear Lord” as Chestnut showcases his peerless gospel chops.  “Side Steps” is a strutting modification of Coltrane’s titanic “Giant Steps.”

A ticker-tape parade as part of an official civic holiday is warranted, but there’s nothing stopping grateful fans from celebrating the release of Back Home in Kansas City on a more modest scale. Everyone in the Kansas City area should be glad to be live in a time and place in which Watson is producing art for the ages.

Book Review: Dangerous Rhythms: Jazz and the Underworld

Kansas City figures prominently in T.J. English’s new book Dangerous Rhythms: Jazz and the Underworld.  The author frequently cites the town’s clubs, mobsters and musicians to make a convincing case that the mafia and jazz were inextricably linked for much of the previous century.

An absorbing chapter is dedicated to Pendergast-era Kansas City.  Most Plastic Sax readers will already be familiar with the details, but English brings a fresh perspective to his vivid descriptions of venues including the Clay County supper club Cuban Gardens.

Count Basie, Mary Lou Williams and Charlie Parker are among the musicians associated with Kansas City referenced throughout Dangerous Rhythms.  Each became ensnared in one or more of the mafia’s revenue streams.

English asserts Basie had a gambling problem which compelled him to rely on mobsters.  Parker was among the musicians addicted to mob-distributed heroin.  Williams’ aversion to gangster-run venues altered the course of her career.

Yet the story told by English is nuanced.  He doesn’t downplay gruesome violence, sickening racism and shameful exploitation, but English suggests that decades of artistic innovation may not have occurred without the unchecked vice overseen by mobsters.

Confirmation: Weekly News and Notes

*A concert headlined by smooth jazz artist Jackiem Joyner and a performance by Dan Thomas are among the events listed on the schedule of next month’s Spotlight Charlie Parker endeavor.

*The Kansas City Star’s feature about Fairyland Park notes that bands led by Bennie Moten and Count Basie frequently performed at the amusement park.

*A review of a Minneapolis concert by the Count Basie Orchestra was published by the Jazz Police blog.

*Tweet of the Week: Helbing Jazz Initiative- Day 1 of the 2022 Grand Prairie Fine Arts Academy Jazz camp! We spent the day focused on the music and legend of Charlie Parker: Kansas City Lightning.

Concert Review: Vanessa Rubin at Lincoln Hall

A free concert in Portland, Oregon, on Monday, March 7, unexpectedly evoked of the sound of Kansas City.  Vanessa Rubin and the Portland State University Jazz Ensemble under the direction of George Colligan wondrously transported an audience of 100 at a dignified campus facility to a rowdy Kansas City nightclub.

Count Basie, Ronnell Bright, Frank Foster, Bobby Watson and Frank Wess were among the Kansas City-affiliated artists name-checked by the vocalist during the swinging performance.  The formidable talent documented on Rubin’s five major label albums in the 1990s hasn’t diminished.

Many members of the extremely impressive student ensemble beamed with delight as Rubin revealed an old-school sensibility worthy of comparison to Ella Fitzgerald and Marilyn Maye. Tradition-minded jazz fans in Kansas City won’t want to miss Rubin’s appearance at the Blue Room on Saturday, March 26.

Confirmation: Weekly News and Notes

*Pat Metheny is a Kansas City music blog’s Artist of the Year.

*JazzTimes published a Count Basie-themed listicle. Something Else! published an appreciation of Pat Metheny’s debut album.

*Tweet of the Week: Carl Kincaid- What a fantastic night. And privilege. Seeing #BobbyWatson with some of Kansas City’s (indeed, the world’s) greatest players in The American Jazz Orchestra at the epicenter of Jazz, #TheBlueRoom at 18th and Vine. Got him to sign my copy of his #GatesBBQ Suite too. So cool. #jazz

Now’s the Time: Count Basie: Through His Own Eyes

Marc Myers, the proprietor of the JazzWax blog, recently alerted his readers to a new documentary about the private life of Count Basie. Count Basie: Through His Own Eyes may be rented or purchased at Amazon.

Book Review: Sittin’ In: Jazz Clubs of the 1940s and 1950s by Jeff Gold

William Claxton’s stunning portraits of musicians including Chet Baker and Miles Davis made him my favorite jazz photographer.  No longer.  My new heroes are the anonymous men and women who hawked souvenir photos in jazz clubs in the 1940s and 1950s.  Their previously unappreciated work is documented in Jeff Gold’s revelatory new book Sittin’ In: Jazz Clubs of the 1940s and 1950s.

In his introduction to the lavish volume, Gold notes the images “turn the camera around” from the musicians on stages to the patrons in the clubs.  Intended as “a cheap souvenir of a night out,” Gold rightly suggests the “quick snapshots” form an “accidental history.”  Scholars and fans can finally take a close look at precisely who frequented venues during jazz’s golden era.  Sittin’ In reveals fans of the form were often as charismatic as the musicians.

Typical entries feature black-and-white photos of smiling customers enclosed in paper frames.  The riveting pictures of strikingly beautiful women and men with outsize swagger are supplemented by Gold’s admirable scholarship.  He provides insights into the history and cultural significance of each venue.  He’s particularly interested in examining depictions of integration as well as the blatant racism associated with the Cotton Club.  In addition to providing a sense of the atmosphere and decor at each venue, the photographs allow viewers to see what patrons were wearing and drinking.

While interviews with musicians and historians including Jason Moran and Sonny Rollins provide invaluable insights, the majority of Sittin’ In’s 260 pages are dedicated to geographically-arranged chapters about clubs in 11 cities.  Dozens of New York City venues are examined, but only two rooms in Kansas City are featured.  Text on the frame of a souvenir photo of eight distracted patrons at Gilmore’s Chez Paree bills the room at 1822 Vine as “The Gayest Nite Spot In Greater Kansas City.”  A 1951 advertisement for Tootie’s New Mayfair outside the city limits of Kansas City promotes an appearance by Charley (sic) Parker.

Only the most provincial Kansas City jazz fan would let the underrepresentation of the town prevent them from coveting Sittin’ In.  Besides, Charlie Parker and Count Basie pop up throughout the book.  The luxurious paper stock and handsome layout complement the exceptional contents.  Sittin’ In is an essential addition to the bookshelf of every serious jazz library.  While the volume is weighty enough to be used as a doorstop, it’s destined to serve as the pride of countless coffee tables.