Kansas City jazz is nothing without its women. Here are the musicians you need to know

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Jazz is a part of Kansas Metropolis’s DNA. However of the various historic and current day artists, what number of ladies are you able to title?

Because the inception of jazz within the early twentieth century, into the heyday of the Roaring ’20s and thru all of the a long time since, there have been distinctive ladies in jazz — performers who not solely had the ability to impress but additionally the stamina to endure the male-dominated subject, difficult inherent sexism and racism.

Carol Comer and Dianne Gregg based the Kansas Metropolis Ladies’s Jazz Competition, searching for to rejoice, help and convey consciousness to ladies in jazz. Working from 1978-1985, the competition introduced nationwide acts to city, in addition to showcasing native artists and honoring Kansas Metropolis’s jazz heritage. Kansas Metropolis author Carolyn Glenn Brewer paperwork the historical past of the competition in her e book “Altering the Tune.”

Jazz historian and percussionist Nina Cherry created the Countess Database to carry consciousness to previous and current Kansas Metropolis jazz ladies. The mission is called in honor of “Countess” Margaret Johnson, a pianist who performed with Rely Basie and Andy Kirk’s Clouds of Pleasure, however died on the age of 20, potential unfilled. The database focuses on instrumentalists and composers.

Right here’s a collection of music-makers who’ve made each jazz and Kansas Metropolis all the higher for his or her abilities and perseverance.

Julia Lee

A Individuals’s Historical past of Kansas Metropolis dug into the legacy of one of many space’s well-known names, singer and pianist Julia Lee, who thrilled and scandalized audiences along with her hits like “King Sized Papa” and “Snatch and Seize It.” Hearken to the story — and when you’re at it, subscribe to KCUR’s podcast A Individuals’s Historical past of Kansas Metropolis.

Referred to as the “Queen of the Blues,” Lee began enjoying piano along with her brother George’s band, rival to Bennie Moten’s throughout the 20s. At occasions, she break up piano duties with Rely Basie. The George E. Lee Singing Novelty Orchestra was first recorded by Kansas Metropolis’s first Black-owned document label, Meritt Information.

Lee began a solo profession within the 30s underneath Capitol Information, making her a nationwide sensation.

Lee lived most of her life in Kansas Metropolis, however proved well-liked the world over. In 1995, a German label launched a boxed set of each recognized Julia Lee recording, known as “Kansas Metropolis Star,” that included over 100 tracks. On the American Jazz Museum, she and her brother are honored with a particular “George and Julia Lee” desk within the Blue Room.

Lee died in 1958, the final of the good blues singers.

Mary Lou Williams

Although born in Atlanta, Georgia, and raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, when Mary Lou Williams arrived in Kansas Metropolis, she absorbed and remodeled that important swing fashion, taking it for the remainder of her life as she traveled the world.

Williams got here again to Kansas Metropolis in 1978 as a headliner with the nascent Kansas Metropolis Ladies’s Jazz Competition, when her “Mass” was carried out (later in life, Williams grew to become deeply spiritual and transformed to Catholicism). Choreography on “Mary Lou’s Mass” grew to become a part of the repertoire for the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater.

“I’ve lived by 4 eras of jazz and I’ve performed the kinds of all of them. The best period of all of them was Kansas Metropolis within the ’30s,” Williams mentioned on the time. She was one of many inaugural inductees within the American Jazz Museum’s Jazz Stroll of Fame in 2014.

The Kansas Metropolis Jazz Orchestra carried out a tribute to Williams in 2018, with huge band preparations of her Zodiac Suite, every signal linked to a jazz luminary.

Williams developed all through her profession, incorporating musical kinds from blues and ragtime to the atonal avant garde works of Igor Stravinsky and Krysztof Penderecki. An instance of her artistic, complicated fashion could be heard within the observe “A Fungus A Mungus,” recorded on the album “Black Christ of the Andes.”

In her honor, Mary Lou Williams Lane runs between the Paseo and Woodlawn Avenue, alongside tenth Road in Kansas Metropolis, Missouri.

Born in Bonner Springs, Kansas, however raised within the 18th and Vine district, Myra Taylor began performing when she was a youngster. Although she traveled the world, she spent her golden years again in Kansas Metropolis.

She began out as a dancer, however made her profession as a singer. In comparison with Ella Fitzgerald, she discovered to forge her personal path and carried the Kansas Metropolis fashion everywhere in the world, with hits like “Dig It” that includes Harlan Leonard’s Rockets (remixed right here by French artist Minimatic) and “Spider and the Fly” — although she was usually cheated out of royalties.

She was an entertainer to her core, touring North America, Europe and Asia and settling in Frankfurt, Germany, the place she owned a membership throughout the Seventies. Her adventure-filled life impressed the musical “All For A Track.”

Quickly after transferring again to Kansas Metropolis in 1994, she based a jazz quartet — the Wild Ladies of Kansas Metropolis — with Geneva Worth, Millie Edwards and Lori Tucker. The group was featured on NPR’s “Day to Day” program in 2007.

Taylor died in 2011, performing her final present on the age of 94 — the fruits of an 80 12 months profession. Down at 18th and Vine, the place it began, she’s honored with an archway and historic marker on the nook of the previous Attucks College and a medallion on the American Jazz Museum’s Jazz Stroll of Fame.

The Wild Ladies nonetheless carry out every so often, most just lately at Unity Temple on the Plaza for the Temple Lifetime Achievement Awards, the place Geneva Worth was one of many 2022 honorees, however the quartet is now a trio.

Myra, they deemed, was irreplaceable.

Melba Liston

Born in Kansas Metropolis, Missouri, Melba Liston was drawn to the trombone early in life and began enjoying at solely seven years previous. Her household moved out to Los Angeles when she was younger and that’s the place she bought her begin in present enterprise.

Finally, the roster of bandleaders she performed with included Rely Basie, Dizzy Gillespie, Artwork Blakey, Charles Mingus, Quincy Jones, Dizzy Gillespie, Randy Weston and a bunch of others.

Her solely album as a pacesetter, “Melba Liston and Her ‘Bones,” epitomizes her wealthy, swinging and soulful fashion.

She was equally properly often called a composer and arranger, and labored (credited and uncredited) in jazz, R&B and Motown. Liston influenced the sound of the 40s, 50s, 60 and 70s greater than many individuals notice. She was additionally the arranger for Mary Lou Williams’ “Black Christ of the Andes.”

Typically discouraged by the vagaries of the business, she moved to Jamaica in 1974, the place she taught on the Institute of Music. However she was satisfied to come back out of retirement for the 1979 Ladies’s Jazz Competition in Kansas Metropolis to headline an “All-Stars” band.

“Kansas Metropolis modified my life,” she advised journalist Linda Dahl, who wrote “Stormy Climate: the Music and Lives of a Century of Jazzwomen,” printed in 1984.

Liston was named an NEA Jazz Grasp in 1987 and can be an inductee into the AJM Jazz Stroll of Fame.

Bettye Miller

Glamorous Bettye Miller was often called the “Queen of Kansas Metropolis jazz” (after Mary Lou Williams, in fact). She studied voice in faculty, incomes a grasp’s diploma and persevering with her research in Philadelphia.

The pianist and singer began performing in Kansas Metropolis in 1953, the place she met bassist Milt Abel. Collectively they shaped a duo act, later married, and have become staples of the jazz scene with a powerful native following and acclaimed performances out of city and at festivals.

Miller’s portrait hangs within the UMKC Music/Media Library, which homes the Bettye Miller-Milt Abel Assortment within the LaBudde Particular Collections. The identical picture is used on the quilt of her album, “A Portrait of Bettye,” a treasure from 1968.

She died of most cancers in 1977 at solely 49 years previous. Abel survived her by 29 years, a listing of awards and achievements connected to his profession.

Miller’s daughter, Bettye Jo “BJ” Miller, can be a musician, and was in bands in Kansas Metropolis all through the seventies and eighties. She might play keys with one hand and valve trombone with the opposite.

Hearken to this reside efficiency of Neckbone & Candied Yams, the place BJ lays it down on trombone throughout “Kansas Metropolis (Right here I Come).” She continues to carry out, although she not lives in Kansas Metropolis.

Although jazz is much from equitable, extra ladies than ever have the chance to observe within the footsteps of those groundbreaking artists. Marilyn Maye is 94 and nonetheless promoting out exhibits. Deborah Brown was born in Kansas Metropolis, although she splits her time between right here and Europe.

Grammy Award-nominee Oleta Adams makes her residence in Kansas Metropolis, Kansas. Lisa Henry, a daily on the Blue Room, has taken Kansas Metropolis jazz to far-off locations together with India, Africa and Madagascar. Born in Kansas, Grammy Award-nominee Karrin Allyson launched her profession in Kansas Metropolis.

Angela Hagenbach has labored as a singer and band chief for many years. A local of Weston, Missouri, she’s additionally became a historian as one of many constitution members of the Black Ancestors Consciousness Marketing campaign (BAAC) of Weston. Hagenbach’s hometown hosts its second-annual Juneteenth Heritage Jubilee on Saturday, June 18, which is able to embrace music, poetry and storytelling, honoring the legacy of Weston’s African American neighborhood.

Singer/actor Eboni Fondren is, in a manner, the face of Kansas Metropolis jazz for out-of-towners, featured on Go to KC’s 2022 Official Information. Fondren performs with the Kansas Metropolis Jazz Orchestra for the Kansas Metropolis PBS sequence KC Performs. Her group Eboni & The Ivories was voted Greatest Jazz Band in Kansas Metropolis by The Pitch’s reader ballot.

The custom and legacy of jazz is alive, era to era.

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