(uplifting music) - We're in the blue room of the American Jazz Museum here to talk about the history of jazz, the history of African American literature, and its impact on American culture.

And Muriel, I wonder if you would tell us a little bit about why the jazz museum, the American Jazz Museum, is here at 18th and Vine in Kansas City.

- Well, we are fortunate to be part of the community.

We are in the area that jazz grew up, and we are so interested in not only the history of our musicians, we say this is not a hall of fame.

This is a collection of ideas and dreams that flowered into what became Kansas City Jazz.

So because we are part of the community, we are representing the music, the neighborhood, the people who attended these concerts, the people who gave lessons, the people who made the life of these musicians better by being their neighbors and being their friends.

- And Chuck, the neighborhood was pretty incredible.

18th and Vine was the center of jazz and a whole lot else.

One of the reasons that jazz happened here is that Kansas City was known as the most wide open city in America.

Why was it known as that?

And what was this neighborhood's contribution to it?

- Well, 18th and Vine was in, during the days of public segregation, was the heart and soul of the African American community.

Buck O'Neill, great ballplayer told me that when someone would come to town from like Lexington, Missouri, and they wanted to find a relative, they would ask where that relative was.

Maybe they didn't know where he lived or that person lived.

So they would say, stand on the corner of 18th and Vine, and they'll walk by there at some time.

And it was, there are clubs here, but also it was the business district.

The Lincoln Building, which was established in 1921, formed the cornerstone of the district.

And it was a home of offices for professionals, lawyers, dentists, and anything that was denied anything or service that was denied downtown, African Americans could get here.

- But the real difference, which you've just sort of told us is the concentration of so many clubs, so many people, and no hours restrictions.

So it goes on all night and no restrictions on, you know, some of the things that are being imbibed or ingested.

And so Kansas City really had a concentration of music that was extraordinary.

- Yes.

And it evolved very quickly from ragtime to bebop.

In 1920, James Scott composed, "Don't Jazz Me Rag On Music.

By 1940, Charlie Parker, by all accounts, was playing bebop in Kansas City.

And that's what really sets it aside from the other cradles of jazz, New Orleans, Chicago, and New York, a jazz no doubt was born in New Orleans, but when they closed Storyville, all the musicians moved to Chicago.

And so Chicago styles largely derivative of the New Orleans tradition.

And then Kansas City and New York developed independently, and New York developed an orchestral expression of jazz where Kansas City developed bebop.

- And the influence of this is, is important in many larger senses, not just the history of jazz, but the history of literature as well, Arnold.

Langston Hughes grows up not far away from Kansas City, and his mother's here.

So he ends up coming to Kansas City and experiencing this culture.

Clearly it's important to him as he gets to Harlem and the Harlem Renaissance, which really some ways starts here with Langston, with Aaron Douglas.

Lincoln High School creates part of the African American culture, graduating people like Aaron Douglas.

What would you say about Hughes and Ellison and their relationship to jazz?

- Well, I think it's crucial to their development and their work as writers, absolutely crucial.

I think one thing that strikes me is that even as a professor of literature or as a literary critic and so on, we have to see music as being the central art form of black America.

Hugh saw it that way.

I think to some extent Ellison saw it that way also, even though he was very interested in all kinds of literature, but Hugh saw it and understood it.

And the great task of the writer was to somehow capture the spirit virtuosity of jazz musicians in their work.

- Every great African American writer seems to that quality of the intensity of the jam session, the competitive nature of it, and everybody searching for the one unique note.

I think that's a phrase from Tony Morrison, that this has a big impact on literature, doesn't it?

- I would say so.

I think the writers realized, as I, as others did at some point that this was what they had to, the music was what they had to aspire to, what would inspire them, but also would challenge them, and they would feel outdone by the musicians if they had any sense or any sense of fairness or perspective on culture.

And so that became the great stimulus, I say for the literary tradition, whether we are talking about Langston Hughes or we're talking about Tony Morrison or Ralph Ellison.

Music was what was central to the enterprise of the writer.

- And yeah.

And there's a great moment in The Invisible Man where he's listening to Louis Armstrong in his basement apartment.

And he says that Louis Armstrong is the invisible man because he's... And critics have said this forever about Armstrong, that he played the clown, he made himself as a black man invisible, which is sort of what Ellison is saying in the Invisible Man about Armstrong.

And yet, the truth, I think, Chuck, about the history of jazz is, actually the beginning of this star idea, the saxophonist maybe in some ways, but the pianist, bassy, et cetera.

And they all of a sudden are no longer invisible because you can't deny the skill, the brilliance, the one unique note that comes out of Kansas City Jazz.

- I mean, the saxophone is very important, but the trumpet must not be forgotten too.

- Well, Armstrong, absolutely.

And Roy Eldridge and a whole... And there's again, a history of that in Kansas City, the trumpets were doing the jam sessions, they were cutting competitions in for the trumpeters too.

- Well, you know, St. Louis was really a trumpet town, and Kansas City was a saxophone town, but there were great trumpet players that came outta Kansas City.

Buck Clayton's, of course, case in point, very modern sounding trumpet.

- You know, two of the pianists I want to talk about a little bit, Julia Lee and Mary Lou Williams, I think they're two of the forgotten people of Kansas City Jazz and American American Jazz.

- One of the things that sets Kansas City tradition aside is the number of women that participated as instrumentalists, beginning with Julia Lee, who began her career in the very early 1920s.

She was a very fine concert pianist too, but she didn't enjoy the national success, even though she had hit records, because she didn't like to travel.

And then Mary Lou Williams, of course, was the lady who swings the band in the Andy Kirk Band.

And when she first came, joined her husband, John Williams in Oklahoma, she was fully expecting to join the band because she was a better pianist than the one they had.

And they wouldn't let her join because she was a woman.

- Now, it's been said that Mary Lou, if she were a man, she would be more famous than Duke Ellington.

And, you know, it was the times that women weren't really in the forefront.

You did have the Hazel Scotts who did, you know, make it big, but actually Mary Lou composed, arranged, played, did everything that the guys did in high heels.

- Absolutely right.

- Julia Lee, you know, she was the first African American to play at the White House because Truman loved her so much.

You know, and that goes on through all the women we see on the wall behind you, Betty Miller, and even- - Ella Fitzgerald.

- Yeah, Ella Fitzgerald.

And you know, there's a famous story by Marilyn May where she and Ella were such good friends and, you know, talking backstage all the time, they would go to each other's concerts.

So you have that Kansas City connection there with Ella and Marilyn May, but the women in jazz really, I think jazz was one of the genres of music where women could excel, you know?

So you have even someone like Margaret Countess Johnson, even though she was what I consider a young girl who, when she passed, she made her mark in Kansas City.

You know, so the women in Jazz, the sweethearts of rhythm, you know, their contribution to music was so important, - Ultimately the Kansas City style of jazz.

You talked about before a little bit, Chuck, but can you define it specifically or does it have to be about the bands and about the individual players?

Is there a style that transcends the individual?

- Well, basically would say you could tap your feet to it, but Kansas City, they move the beat.

We moved from a two four beat to a four four beat.

- Four four, yeah.

- With an emphasis on the second and the fourth beat.

And that was the big change in Kansas City.

And it was music for dancers, you know, all these great bands.

They played at Fairyland Park, Wynwood Beach for dancers.

That's what really set the style.

And also, it was an orchestral expression of the blues.

Also, there's a counterpoint between a call and response between the soloists and the sections, the brass and the reed sections.

And it was a call in response that comes out of the church in the fields where the sections would set a riff and it would be dun, dun, dun, and then that would be the foundation for the soloist to take flight.

- At the end of the day, jazz was a huge success in America, one of the most successful art forms that's purely American and not totally dominated, but significantly inspired out of African-American culture.

And so is there a triumph in that Arnold?

Is jazz one of the things that we can bless for having made us a better country?

- Well, I think so, absolutely.

I mean, also internationally renowned, it changed the image of America around the world.

I mean, the music became so important to all kinds of people, kids in Liverpool and, you know, in Paris, and in Africa.

You would have to say that, some would say it's almost the crowning achievement of American culture.

This rise of first, you know, general jazz, if you wanna call it that.

And then blues at the same time.

And eventually of course, you get to rock and roll and so on.

Yes.

I mean, I would consider that almost the central achievement of American culture in the 20th century.

- Between 20 and 40, this was the conservatory for jazz.

This was where the seeds were planted, where the people learned their lessons, where, you know, it just grew.

Of course, then they have to go off and practice their art form, and they went around the world, and we have people coming and making pilgrimage to 18th and Vine.

I had a group of ladies from Morocco come to the Blue Room and they were so excited to be here.

We have a connection with Global Ties, and they bring people from all over the world to Kansas City, but their first stop is here on 18th and Vine, because they know that they don't know anything else about the United States or just what they read on the newspapers, but they know about 18th and Vine.

- One of the things that really also set Kansas City apart is there was a really strong music education program in the grade schools and also the high schools.

And it was started by Major M. Clark Smith, who was the band master at Lincoln.

And Charlie Parker was really the beneficiary of that too.

I mean, he played in the marching band at Lincoln and he played also in the orchestra at Lincoln too.

And then after school, there's a long tradition of the tradition being passed on from older musicians to younger musicians.

We saw that with Ahmad Alaadeen.

He continued that tradition.

Charlie Parker learned from Buster Smith.

And so they passed the tradition on to the next generation.

And that's still happening here in the Blue Room.

If you come here on a Monday night for the quote Blue Monday session, you'll see a lot of young cats with their horns waiting to get up on stage.

- Through the American Jazz Museum, we have Jazz Academy, which starts with junior high school students, through high school students.

We had a young man who was our intern here, and he said, "Miss Muriel, I can't come in on Friday."

I said, "Oh, is everything okay?"

He said, "Well, I got a gig tonight."

I'm like, "Okay, alright."

(all laugh) And he was just a junior in high school.

And we have a young man who's a guitarist.

The guitar is bigger than him.

He's taking, electric guitar lessons from Will Matthews.

And when I heard him play, I was like, oh, Jimi Hendrix is reborn.

But we have these students who are so eager to come to our jazz academy to learn from professional musicians who want to sing with Lisa Henry, who want to practice under Stan Kessler, who want to play the piano with Charles Williams, and they are really phenomenal.

- I think, you know, just speaking about the American Jazz Museum, they tell the story of Kansas City Jazz and they pass it on to the next generation.

And looking around today in Kansas City, you can see that all these young players coming up studying at the conservatory, working at the American Jazz Museum here, and the future is bright for jazz and Kansas City.

The tradition jams on.

(uplifting music) (soft music)