Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611

  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Kansas City Jazz: From Ragtime to Bebop--A History

Kansas City Jazz: From Ragtime to Bebop--A History

Driggs, Frank
Haddix, Chuck

Paperback

JazzMusic ReferenceRegional: Midwest

Publisher Price: $25.99

ISBN10: 0195307127
ISBN13: 9780195307122
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: Jul 13 2006
Pages: 320
Weight: 1.04
Height: 0.84 Width: 6.12 Depth: 9.22
Language: English
There were four major galaxies in the early jazz universe, and three of them--New Orleans, Chicago, and New York--have been well documented in print. But there has never been a serious history of the fourth, Kansas City, until now.
In this colorful history, Frank Driggs and Chuck Haddix capture the golden age of Kansas City jazz, and bring us a colorful portrait of old Kaycee itself, back then a neon riot of bars, bambling dens, and taxi dance halls, all ruled over by Boss Tom Pendergast, who had transformed a dusty cowtown into the Paris of the Plains. The authors show how this wide-open, gin-soaked town gave birth to a music that was more basic and more viscerally exciting than other styles of jazz, its singers belting out a rough-and-tumble urban style of blues, its piano players pounding out a style later known as boogie-woogie. We visit the great landmarks, like the Reno Club, the Biggest Little Club in the World, where Lester Young and Count Basie made jazz history, and Charlie Parker began his musical education in the alley out back. The lives of the great musicians who made Kansas City swing are illuminated, with colorful profiles of jazz figures such as Mary Lou Williams, Big Joe Turner, Jimmy Rushing, and Andy Kirk and his Clouds of Joy.

Also in

Jazz

View All