Results for "Kansas City"

Big Joe Turner

Born: May 18, 1911

“The Boss of the Blues”

Providing an essential link between the blues and rock 'n' roll, Big Joe Turner is best remembered for his classic 1954 hit "Shake, Rattle and Roll," one of the pioneering songs of rock 'n' roll. Although Turner enjoyed his greatest recorded success with Atlantic Records between 1951 and 1956, rock 'n' roll was actually his second (or third) successful musical career.

He started out as an important member of the burgeoning Kansas City jazz scene and helped popularize boogie woogie in the late '30s with pianist Pete Johnson. He also pursued an influential career as one of the most potent blues shouters of the '40s. He was one of the few jazz and blues singers of his generation to become popular with the teenage rock 'n' roll audience. After spending the '60s in relative obscurity, Big Joe Turner returned to jazz and blues, singing on the Pablo label with the likes of Count Basie and Jimmy Witherspoon.

Charlie Parker

Born: August 29, 1920

The only child of Charles and Addie Parker, Charlie Parker was one of the most important and influential saxophonists and jazz players of the 1940’s. When Parker was still a child, his family moved to Kansas City, Missouri, where jazz, blues and gospel music were flourishing. His first contact with music came from school, where he played baritone horn with the school’s band. When he was 15, he showed a great interest in music and a love for the alto saxophone. Soon, Parker was playing with local bands until 1935, when he left school to pursue a music career. From 1935 to 1939, Parker worked in Kansas City with several local jazz and blues bands from which he developed his art

Hot Lips Page

Born: January 27, 1908

Known as a scorching soloist and powerful vocalist, Oran “Hot Lips” Page was one of the Midwest's top trumpet players. Oran Thadeus Page was born in Dallas, Texas, on January 27, 1908. Page's mother, a schoolteacher and musician, taught him the basics of music when he was a child. By the age of twelve he could play the clarinet, saxophone, and trumpet. He joined a local youth band, led by drummer Lux Alexander, which played at local venues around Dallas. Page attended Corsicana High School and Texas College (in Tyler), and worked for a time in the oilfields. He began his professional touring career when he joined "Ma" Rainey's band in the 1920s

Benny Moten

Born: November 30, 1916

No relation to Kansas City pianist-bandleader Bennie Moten, Benny Moten was a solid and supportive bassist for decades. He began seriously playing professionally in 1941 and Moten's many musical associations included Hot Lips Page, Jerry Jerome, Henry "Red" Allen (1942-49 and off and on during 1955-65), Eddie South, Stuff Smith, Arnett Cobb, Ella Fitzgerald, Wilbur DeParis' New New Orleans Band (1956-57 including a tour of Africa), Buster Bailey, Roy Eldridge and Dakota Staton (1961-63), among many others. Moten recorded with most of the above players (although never as a leader) and was active musically until virtually the end of his life

Bennie Moten

Born: November 13, 1894

Kansas City jazz, a hard-swinging, blues-based musical style that flourished in the 1920s and '30s, is one of the greatest contributions to the uniquely American art form of jazz. Of the countless musicians and bandleaders who played at nightclubs, ballrooms, social clubs, and all-night jam sessions in the 18th & Vine district during that golden era, none embodied Kansas City jazz more than Bennie Moten. Moten was born and raised in Kansas City, where he studied piano with two of Scott Joplin's former students. While Moten was considered to be a good, but not exceptional, piano player, he excelled as a bandleader and businessman

Billy Mitchell

Born: November 3, 1926

Billy Mitchell was an American jazz tenor saxophonist. Mitchell was born in Kansas City, Missouri. Known for his close association with fellow Detroit based player Thad Jones and work with a variety of big bands including Woody Herman's when he replaced Gene Ammons. In 1949 Mitchell recorded with the Milt Buckner band, and from 1956 to 1957 he played with Dizzy Gillespie in his big band. From 1957 until 1961 and from 1966 to 1967 Mitchell played with Count Basie, having replaced Lockjaw Davis. In the early 1960s he co-led a group with Al Grey, and also served as musical director to Stevie Wonder for a short time during this period

Pat Metheny

Born: August 12, 1954

Pat Metheny was born in Kansas City on August 12, 1954 into a musical family. Starting on trumpet at the age of 8, Metheny switched to guitar at age 12. By the age of 15, he was working regularly with the best jazz musicians in Kansas City, receiving valuable on-the-bandstand experience at an unusually young age. Metheny first burst onto the international jazz scene in 1974. Over the course of his three-year stint with vibraphone great Gary Burton, the young Missouri native already displayed his soon-to-become trademarked playing style, which blended the loose and flexible articulation customarily reserved for horn players with an advanced rhythmic and harmonic sensibility - a way of playing and improvising that was modern in conception but grounded deeply in the jazz tradition of melody, swing, and the blues. With the release of his first album, Bright Size Life (1975), he reinvented the traditional "jazz guitar" sound for a new generation of players. Throughout his career, Pat Metheny has continued to re-define the genre by utilizing new technology and constantly working to evolve the improvisational and sonic potential of his instrument. METHENY'S versatility is almost nearly without peer on any instrument. Over the years, he has performed with artists as diverse as Steve Reich to Ornette Coleman to Herbie Hancock to Jim Hall to Milton Nascimento to David Bowie.  Metheny's body of work includes compositions for solo guitar, small ensembles, electric and acoustic instruments, large orchestras, and ballet pieces, with settings ranging from modern jazz to rock to classical.

Frank Melrose

Born: November 26, 1907

Franklyn Taft Melrose was an American jazz and blues pianist, who recorded as Kansas City Frank. He was born in Sumner, Illinois and was the younger brother of Walter and Lester Melrose, who had set up the Melrose Brothers Music Company in Chicago, in 1918. He became one of the leading figures in the Chicago blues and jazz scene of the 1920s and 1930s. Frank’s first instrument was violin, but he later took up piano. He was strongly influenced by his brothers’ business partner, Jelly Roll Morton. In 1924, he left home and began drifting around, playing and settling for short periods in St

Jay McShann

Born: January 12, 1909

“The Last of the Blue Devils” Jay “Hootie” McShann landed in Kansas City in the 1930s, and along with fellow pianist and bandleader Count Basie, established what came to be known as the Kansas City sound: blues rooted jazz driven by swinging horns laid over a powerful but relaxed rhythmic pulse. James Columbus McShann was born in Muskogee, Okla., on Jan. 12, 1916. He learned to play piano as a young boy by tagging along with an older sister to piano lessons and imitating music he heard on the radio. One of the piano men he heard and would be influenced by was Earl “Fatha” Hines whose live broadcasts from Chicago’s Grand Terrace Hotel he would listen to

Kevin Mahogany

Born: July 30, 1958

With over ten recordings as a leader, vocalist, businessman and educator Kevin Mahogany has been the standard setter for jazz vocalists for three decades. His broad baritone was forged in his hometown: the legendary jazz metropolis known as Kansas City; where he learned to swing like Charlie Parker, shout the blues like Big Joe Turner, and cry a ballad like Lester Young; while, extending, elaborating and refining the jazz vocal legacies of Lambert, Hendricks & Ross, Eddie Jefferson and Al Jarreau into the myriad, interwoven dimensions of music – from gutbucket, the Great American Songbook, and gospel, to Mingus to Motown.