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About Billy Mitchell
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Billy Mitchell
Born:
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
About Pat Metheny
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Pat Metheny
Born:
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.
About Frank Melrose
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Frank Melrose
Born:
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
About Jay McShann
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Jay McShann
Born:
“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
About Kevin Mahogany
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Kevin Mahogany
Born:
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.
About Jimmie Lunceford
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Jimmie Lunceford
Born:
Jimmie Lunceford led what many consider to be the best swing orchestra of the 1930s. Flashy and talented, Lunceford's band was without a doubt the most entertaining of its day. No one who saw it in performance could ignore the group's infectious attitude and enthusiastic presence. Many of the era's top bandleaders openly borrowed from Lunceford's showmanship. Lunceford spent his formative years in Denver, Colorado, where he studied music under Paul Whiteman's father and in 1922 played saxophone with George Morrison's orchestra at the Empress Theatre. In 1926 he earned a bachelor's degree from Fisk University in Nashville
About Melba Liston
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Melba Liston
Born:
Born in Kansas City, Melba moved to Los Angeles as a child, and became a working musician at age sixteen. She learned to arrange and write, as well as play, and quickly found herself snapped up by Gerald Wilson, who hired her as a copyist, arranger, and trombonist during the War. When Wilson's band broke up in 1948, she joined Count Basie, and in 1949, Dizzy Gillespie. Her writing and arranging were formidable, and after Dizzy's big band folded in 1957, she stayed busy in New York with writing and playing. She returned to Los Angeles in the late 1960s, and moved to Jamaica in 1974, to teach at the Institute of Music there
About Harlan Leonard
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Harlan Leonard
Born:
Harlan Leonard was an American jazz bandleader and clarinetist from Kansas City, Missouri.
Leonard was born in Kansas City in 1905. A professional musician from the age of 17, he joined Benny Moten's orchestra in 1923, where he led the reed section until 1931. In 1931 he and Thamon Hayes formed the Kansas City Skyrockets, which included trumpeters Ed Lewis and James Ross, trombonist Vic Dickenson, and pianist Jesse Stone. After disputes with the Chicago local of the American Federation of Musicians the band broke up.
In 1939 Leonard formed Harlan Leonard and his Rockets, which featured a young Myra Taylor
About Andy Kirk
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Andy Kirk
Born:
In 1929, Kirk formed his band in Kansas City, and remained active until 1948. Their pianist, and the band's arranger, was Mary Lou Williams, who went on to become a prominent figure in her own right. Kirk’s was one of the earliest American bands to use the amplified guitar. One of the band's big hits was "Until The Real Thing Comes Along", a song first heard in the 1932 Revue 'Rhapsody in Black'. Andy was born and raised in Denver, CO. His teacher was Wilberforce Whiteman, father of Paul Whiteman. In 1921, Andy played tuba in George Morrison's Orch. in Denver, Colorado. In 1925, he moved to Dallas, Texas, where he played (doubling on baritone and bass saxophones) with Terrence Holder's 'Dark Clouds of Joy' orchestra, and in 1928, Andy took over as leader of Holder's first orchestra, moving the band to Kansas City, MO, for an engagement at Kansas City's prestigious Pla-Mor Restaurant
About Jo Jones
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Jo Jones
Born:
Papa Jo Jones was the drum anchor in the famous All American Rhythm Section by way of his work with Count Basie's band. Jones redefined the concept of a drummer. He lightened up on the four-beats-to-the-bar standard of bass drum playing, was possibly the first to use the ride cymbal as the main timekeeping accessory, and did all with a graceful and light touch. In the history of jazz, Jo Jones was one of the most outstanding drummers, full of sensitivity and style, in addition to an absolutely perfect drumming technique, he really knew, as very few other jazz musicians do, the history of his music. Jonathan Jones, was born 7 Oct
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