Kansas City jazz
[3] In the 1920s was a Great Migration from the south and the search for musical work in Kansas City, Missouri,[4] where the Black population rose from 23,500 to 42,000 between 1912 and 1940.
Russell, Diggs, and Pearson have well documented how the vice district expanded within black neighborhoods of Kansas City, resulting in economic success for jazz musicians.
[3] A variety of clubs and cabarets, dance halls, and jazz venues arose in Kansas City, including the Paseo Room, Pla-Mor Ballroom, Reno Club, Amos 'n' Andy, Boulevard Lounge, Cherry Blossom, Chocolate Bar, Lone Star, Elk's Rest, Old Kentucky Bar-B-Que, Sunset, Subway, Spinning Wheel, Hawaiian Gardens, Street's Blue Room, Hell's Kitchen, The Hi Hat, and the Hey-Hay.
[3] Kansas City's concentration of outstanding jazz talent had made it a potential competitor to New York and Chicago by the middle of the 1930s.
However, the Kansas City jazz school is identified with the black bands of the 1920s and 1930s, including those led by Bennie Moten, Andy Kirk, Harlan Leonard, George E. Lee, Count Basie, and Jay McShann.
During his first gigs, Moten played house rent parties and brothels operating from private homes, according to long-time Kansas City native Fred Hicks.
[12] The success of Count Basie nationally and internationally led bookers, managers, and record producers to come to Kansas City in search of similar talent.
[13] According to Gray Giddins, Basie "is the only major jazz figure to realize his individuality by paring down his technique" because he discovered his style through a search for identity.
[14] "From his first session with Bennie Moten to those with his own band in the late 1930s, Basie could be heard in various settings responding to musical challenges as a committed ensemble player, making choices that might serve others as well".
Like Louis Armstrong, who mastered his native New Orleans idiom before breaking free, Parker was refined in the Kansas City jam sessions and never challenged his foundation.
[11] Due to Parker's dubious musical reputation, Oliver Todd reluctantly allowed him to join his Hottentots band: "I tried to take him under my wing.
For instance, in his award-winning book on Charlie Parker titled Kansas City Lightning, Stanley Crouch described Kansas City this way: "People came to guzzle the blues away, to chase the night long, to take the risk of leaving in a barrel as they laid bet after bet, and, as ever, there were those who came to involve themselves in the mercantile eroticism of the high to low courtesans.
"[3] Kansas City, like the rest of the country, experienced a change in listening habits as a result of vaudeville blues recordings in the early 1920s, and the Moten Orchestra capitalized on the trend (289 rice).
Kansas City was a wide open town with prohibition era liquor laws and hours totally ignored, and was called the new Storyville.
Often members of the big bands would perform at regular venues earlier in the evening and go to the jazz clubs later to jam for the rest of the night.
[17] In 1936, Kansas City's influence overtly transferred to the national scene, when record producer John Hammond discovered Count Basie on his car radio.
When he explained how Young dethroned Coleman Hawkins in a legendary tenor-saxophone battle at the cherry blossom, he noted that the Kansas City musician played more creatively.
