The tradition & historical record
2 min read · 1 sourceKansas City jazz is a style of jazz that developed in Kansas City, Missouri during the 1920s and 1930s, which marked the transition from the structured big band style to the much more improvisational style of bebop. The hard-swinging, bluesy transition style is bracketed by Count Basie, who in 1929 signed with Bennie Moten's Kansas City Orchestra, and Kansas City native Charlie Parker, who promoted the bebop style in America. Kansas City is known as one of the most popular "cradles of jazz". Other cities include New Orleans, Chicago, St. Louis, Philadelphia, and New York City. Kansas City was known for the organized musicians of the Local 627 A.F.M., which controlled a number of venues in the city. Almost every jazz history depicts Kansas City jazz as a fertile ground for the development of big bands, virtuosic performances, and legendary performers. In the 1920s was a Great Migration from the south and the search for musical work in Kansas City, Missouri, 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. Many musicians from the Southwest moved to Kansas City for its plentiful jobs. "Nightclubs in Kansas City served up prostitution, gambling, and narcotics along with liquor".
The text above is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Kansas City jazz”, available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 licence.
Kansas City jazz is music genre or scene, according to the structured record cited below. This entry was generated automatically from that record and has not yet been reviewed by a person familiar with the tradition. 1
The source record links this tradition to 6 external registers, which can be verified through the citation. 1