There's just something about Kansas City is brought to you in part by the generosity of our friends at the Cockrell Family Foundation, the Bergmann family, and the Sherman Family Foundation.

Thank you.

Welcome once again to another episode of There's Just Something About Kansas City.

I'm your host, Frank ball.

And as you can see, we're not in studio.

We are in Lani's Reno Club, in the Ambassador Hotel.

And you know who's sitting right across from me?

The one and only Lonnie McFadden.

True.

Kansas City treasure icon.

I've heard you referred to as the Michael Jordan of jazz.

How's that?

Whoa.

How's that?

How's that?

I think that there's there's more than generous in.

And I don't know if I can live up to that.

Oh, I think I think you all borrowed that, Lonnie.

I got in trouble.

You know, when you sit here, you are at home.

This is your hometown.

You're born and raised over by the jazz district.

Yes.

And your dad, of course.

Big influence.

We'll talk about smile and Jimmy.

Yeah.

And, you know, the chocolate drops and everything else that that happened to you as as you were growing up and how you got here.

But dad performed in the old Reno club, right?

I think with Count Basie and his orchestra and with the chocolate drops.

Yes.

And all of a sudden, that club is no longer there.

Right?

But now all of a sudden, you've got Lonnie's Reno club that.

Do you ever just pinch yourself and just go, man, this has just been an incredible journey.

It's, it's overwhelming for so many reasons.

It's like, good example.

Opening night.

I was just caught up in the moment.

I was tired because we've been doing all kind of press things and promotional things and and I remember I was going through the audience, talking to people.

Thank you for coming and hoping they're having a good time.

And I got to a table there was in the back there and, is a younger white gentleman.

And he stood up and he just hugged me and he said.

And he was tearing up.

He said, can you imagine what your father would think right now?

And and I was in, in this jovial move and I the thought of that just got to me because it's no way in the world my dad could ever have imagined this.

He came up in a time when playing at the original Reno club, he couldn't walk in the front door.

Right.

He.

You know, so even though he was part of the floor show, he couldn't go there on his day off and just party with his girl.

And so all of that, it was like all of this went through my man when this guy and all of a sudden it got to me and it just put everything, that moment, put everything in perspective how how much this city has evolved and how much I have to be thankful for.

Yeah, because.

My father couldn't.

It's no way he could imagine this.

He spent his whole career walking in the back door and walking through the kitchen to places that he was being featured at and, and stuff like that he couldn't drink of.

He grew up in a time when he couldn't drink out of the same water fountains and go to the same bathroom.

So for, for a club that pays homage to a place that he was a major part of to carry his son's name, I mean, God is good and it is the gig is the.

Yeah.

Is it really does is is this amazing?

I, I'm very thankful that I'm living right now and that I, I've lived long enough to appreciate right now.

think the other part of that is to you to talk about your dad, but your mom too.

I mean, your dad and mom together.

Your mom was ahead the PTA, or she was she was ahead the PTA, right?

For the entire time I was in grades in school.

Exactly.

Yeah.

While working every evening, she was a bartender at Hillcrest Country Club.

Back then, it was a a a real country, a private country club.

And, and she used to go to work from 5 to 10, sometimes two in the morning.

You know, it's a country club.

So it depends on when the last person leaves the bar.

That's when she gets to leave.

And, she did that five days a week.

And I woke up every morning to a hot breakfast.

I had a full dinner every evening.

I mean, my mom, to this day, I don't know how she did it because I've raised children, and I wasn't.

I wasn't able to do me and my wife, we did our best, but we couldn't do what my mom did.

Mom, she was the most selfless person I've met in my life.

And to this day, one of the things that makes me come down here and practice every day is my memory of everything that my mom put into me.

She sacrificed everything.

So my brothers, my sister and I could be somebody because we grew up in a rough environment.

Yeah, yeah.

Yes.

It was, you know, it was nothing around.

Once I stepped outside my front door, there was nothing in my environment that would have encouraged me to do anything other than being a, you know, a third Frost, pimp, drug dealer.

You know, I knew a lot of pimps, drug dealers and just straight up drugs, you know, with just rolling drugs every weekend, you know?

And so it's like I grew up in an environment that, that that's, that's what I saw every day, you know.

But when I came in my home, it was like, I mean, I don't know how they did it.

My mom and dad, I had a childhood that was is close to Norman Rockwell.

Is is I've ever seen.

And I grew up we we had no money.

We had no money.

It wasn't that.

But I didn't know it.

We had big Christmases.

I'd wake up to, like, a wonderland full of toys.

I'd go to bed.

It would be nothing there.

And I wake up and it's toys all over the place.

Bicycle.

I don't know how they did it.

and I so when you mention my mom, that touches me deeply because I, I don't talk about on stage, but but it's no way in the world I would be anything or have any kind of class or any any kind of scruples without the love and guidance of my mom, because she put everything into us.

I don't even and I've told my kids I don't even remember my mom ever going shopping for herself.

I don't own it.

I don't have any memory of her going out and then coming home with the dress or, new pants suit or new shoes.

But every year we started every school year with brand new clothes from Penney, Jcpenney's or Sears and Roebuck.

I remember going to Sears, and I don't know if any of you are old enough to remember.

Oh, yeah, I'm I'm old enough.

Okay.

Well, yeah, we the every year we would go to Sears and Roebuck and get brand new, clothes for school and so, yeah, my mom was, I don't know anybody like my mom.

She was she was unbelievable.

And to this day, that keeps me whenever I'm tired and I don't feel like practicing something in the back of my mind thinks of how much my mother put into me.

And I'm like, okay, let's go.

Yeah, yeah, I pick up the trumpet, you know, I feel like, And I used talk to my brother.

Well, I feel like I owe it to them to at least be whatever I can, whatever I can accomplish doing this before I get out of here.

I'm still going for it.

I still practice every day.

Yeah, I would be practicing right now if.

If we weren't sitting here.

If I didn't interrupt, you know, that didn't really matter.

I guess you did.

But it's okay.

I'm guy.

I'm good, I'm good.

I'm okay now.

I think also with your mom and dad, they knew where you were.

They knew the environment that was surrounding you.

And that's why they called you in off the street to practice.

They had to get you involved in something, and they.

And they never quit.

I mean, they never they never stopped trying and stopped steering you down the right path.

And I think that we.

Right.

That was so and still with you today when you say I still I got practice.

You're still getting called in and it's.

Come on, come on in time to pray.

You hear.

It's in the back of your brain.

So it is it, it is every day it it wakes me up.

You know, I'll be sitting down having coffee with my wife and and some.

It's almost like a, urge.

I don't know what it is.

It's like, okay, I got to go.

And I go down to the basement, pick up the trumpet, and, every morning area.

So you, so you're going through here, you and your brother, you're still young, you're getting into grade school now.

You're, you know, in grade school and doing your thing.

Was there ever a time when you thought, I don't want to do this anymore?

You know, especially you said about tapping you didn't really want to tap that much anymore because it was a lot of work.

But was there ever a time when you sort of said, I really don't want to do this?

No.

There was a time that I tried to stop because I went through a period in my life in the early to, in 2001, actually, I don't have to guess.

So you have definitely been all over the world with your jazz, which, you know, I think you sort of try to play it down a little bit, but that, that is that is phenomenal.

You don't get to do that unless you are somebody you really have a talent for.

Clown.

Well thank you.

I've always tried to, to be kind of good at what I do, so.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So, so you had to get back to practicing and going back.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

So how old were you when you picked up the trumpet?

I was ten years.

Ten years old.

Yeah.

Okay.

And so you played in the middle school band, I'm assuming in marching band in high school.

Yep.

I played, yes, I did back then.

we the.

And when you in grade school and you start the back, then the music teacher would teach it like 3 or 4 inner city schools, like our music teacher taught.

We were going to Linwood.

He taught Linwood, Booker T, Washington, Phillis Wheatley and, I can't remember the fourth school, but but he would he would teach at all these different schools and, and, I started playing trumpet because I wanted to be like, like, clad back with the guy that was the leader of clapping him.

And he was I didn't know him.

It was a little platinum in her back then.

I just knew he was a teenager.

That was real cool.

He had this, this, this, old Lincoln Continental with the what we used called the kids.

And those were the.

Yeah, yeah.

And I just wanted to be like Clyde.

So he played trumpet.

I wanted to play trumpet.

Yeah.

And and, Then.

Yeah.

Yeah.

yeah.

And it too, it really took off.

And you talked about Japan.

I read an interesting story about you in Japan.

Disclosure.

For about four months, every year.

Right?

Yes.

So to Japan.

And you would bring your jazz with you and you'd rearrange or whatever.

But the Japanese audience was pretty tough when you first started, right?

Weren't they?

Aren't they pretty tough?

And then you guys had to incorporate more things in your show like yes, yes, that's back.

Right.

Yes.

That's when we start.

Yeah.

Wow.

You you okay?

You know, more than I realize, but, but yeah, here.

We are in Kansas City.

We're playing in these inner city clubs and stuff, basically chitlin circuit here, Des Moines, Wichita, Minneapolis.

You know, we're going to play in all these.

But the thing that gets you attention and gets you out of that and it's still like that, you have to have your own voice.

And so even though we were playing cover songs, we would have our own arrangements and we would flip around.

And that's what made us stand out in America, in, in, in the inner city.

They respected that.

So they'd heard all these tunes.

Yeah.

Originally played.

So we wanted to make it the McFadden.

Right, right.

Yeah.

Right.

We were in the band.

We didn't want to sound like the old how players are like cool in the gang or like Earth, Wind and Fire.

We did their songs and we did our way, and that's what gave us a, a good name in the, in the inner city clubs.

But when we went to Japan, there used to hear in the record, you know, so if you're doing Saturday Night Fever night, did dinner under the Stars, they wanted and the whole dance floor will be filled.

They want to hear it just like that.

And so if we put a little spin in the middle of it, they'd be like.

And so we started throwing the audience the song.

It would be a song that they felt was familiar.

And then and at the time it was three bands, the American band, which was us that was the star of the show.

Then the it was a band from the Philippines.

They were second tier and then the Jet Japanese Jazz Band.

They were just kind of there.

They were good.

But this was the the pecking order of things that the nightclub is for.

They want to see the American Death Star, they wanted to see the American band and, and you know, and back then, this was 1976.

It was the bicentennial year.

They, they they we were there because of the image of Soul Train and stuff like that.

They wanted a band this like, cool in the gang, this like Earth, Wind and Fire, this like The Dramatics or The Delfonics.

So they wanted.

So in most of the bands in L.A., you mind you, we're in the mid, mid Midwest.

So I don't really know what's going on out in L.A..

I just know I'm trying to get a record deal.

So most of the bands were coming from Los Angeles, and a lot of them were kind of clones, but they knew the deal.

That was what makes them money going to Japan and Europe and all that.

From being a clone.

We were we didn't know that.

That's what the game was.

And so it's like different things that have evolved this the way this came about.

Yeah.

That's the next question.

You know, did you ever I mean, yeah.

You say you got Lonnie Reno club sitting up there.

Okay.

And your dad, like I said, when we first started, he was with Count Basie at the original Reno Club here in Kansas City.

And all of a sudden, you are thinking about, you know, what?

And and with Ronald, of course, you know what?

Why don't we.

Okay.

Can we open our own place?

It was.

This was a total God thing.

Okay, here we are in the 2020 Covid.

Covid March 7th, the weekend of March 17th, Saint Patrick's Day weekend.

Everything in Kansas City shut down.

I remember clearly because that was the first year since I had left Wayne Newton that I had my whole year booked every week.

Every week was booked up every week, every from Wednesday through Saturday, every week was, I look at it like then the pandemic hit nothing.

So I'm playing once a week at my wife's church during these live streams.

And you know, that's the only place I could play that again for people in the whole place.

You know, everybody's got mask on and all that.

Yeah, and nobody's in there, just me and my phone on a tripod.

And I'm up there.

The the band, all of us are spaced out.

At least ten feet apart.

And I'm doing these livestreams.

And then things started to ease up a little bit in June.

The musical, I mean, the, food and beverage manager here at the ambassador called me.

I'd never played you any.

He asked me.

He said, we got a real cool way that we we, we were able to present live music and have fine dining and and I'm like.

And he's trying.

He said, come on down here.

So when I came down here to the Ambassador Hotel, I met him in the lobby and he said, okay, come on.

And he took me out to the parking lot.

I'm I'm walking up.

I'm like, what?

And I get out there and as they transform the whole parking lot into a nightclub, they had these high top tables with black tablecloths on them.

The whole pavement was carpet.

They had leather couches and and Alexander Austin, the guy that does all these big murals all over the city.

He was doing live paintings, and, and and he took me out there and explained it to me.

And I'm looking around.

I'm like, blown away.

He said, you think you'd like to play?

I was like, and I got my I had no gigs.

Oh, yeah.

So.

So then he, he said, okay, we're going to try for two weeks on Saturdays.

So this was, it was two weeks away.

So this was maybe like the 1st of June.

So it was like we got the first weekend, maybe the 15th.

What.

I don't know what the calendar was.

So it was like the third weekend of the month.

We, I walked in when I, I set up in the afternoon when I get here at night, the place is already is packed as it could be during Covid.

Yeah.

So he's excited.

It was like, man, this is great.

Is.

And so I walk into a whole parking lot full of people I play and everybody's happy you know, and and so the next week same thing I walk in and I didn't know it.

But Paul Corey, the guy that owns this hotel was there that And, and then one of the ladies that worked you back then said, Lonnie Paul Corey, he said, well, he's the guy that owns the hotel.

He's here and he wants to talk to you.

So I've heard that before.

But Max.

I don't know how it is going to go.

You know, he said he was that I was like, oh, okay.

Well, hey, we had two wigs, you know.

Right.

So I walk up, he's like, hey, I got this great idea.

And you know, and and you know, by now I got my mask on.

He's put on his mask.

But then he this down this.

And he walks me through out in the major hotels.

Empty.

Ain't nobody there.

But but, guy at the front desk.

No.

Nobody standing out here.

It's empty.

So.

So we walk through the lobby, he's walking me down the steps, and he's trying to explain to me about this events space that is not being used.

So we walked me down here.

It needs explaining what his envisions.

And so we get to the, what now is the front doors back there and he opens it.

We walk in here, the complete.

It's completely empty.

Completely.

I mean, no furniture, no nothing.

It was it was two great big bins of hotel laundry.

That's all the way there.

Yeah, linen and all that stuff.

And so he said, I haven't used this room in about two and a half, three years.

And then he said, I'm thinking about opening a 1920s, 1930s prohibition style nightclub.

Then he he looked at me say, can you see the vision in immediately?

Because my dad had performed and I grew up listening to the stories him and Joe Mixon and Instep Buddy and all them had told about the Reno Club, about the streets, Blue Room, about the cherry blossom, about it.

So many places that that I had all these stories about.

So I started talking to Paul until I said, can I see it, man?

Do you realize Kansas City was.

Barton then started talking about all these places and Count Basie and Lester Young and Mary Lou Williams.

He said, wow, I love that.

And he said, where would you put the band?

Told him what?

Because this wasn't I mean, obviously this wasn't here, you know?

And so, we talked about that.

Then he started talking about different, different drinks and stuff that would be reminiscent of the 30s.

And we started talking about food and furniture and, and, and then and the photographs and the ambiance and the way the that he wanted it to feel.

And I started giving him different ideas about the way that my father had told me these different places were and stuff.

And he he just said, that's that's it.

Then he looked at me, said, we're going to do that and we're going to name it after you.

And he looked at me, and he's a now I'm very honest with you.

I mean, you know, I'm thinking somebody said one 2 million.

You're, you know, I'm you know, I'm not taking this.

I'm not.

Nobody comes up to me in the middle of a parking lot and says, we're going to build a club and name it after you.

is like back then the, the food and beverage manager, Eric Willey, he would he was the one that was always in church, said Lonnie, Paul wants you to send some photographs that you think would work.

Lonnie probably wants to know what how do you want the stage to be?

And I'm like, wow.

And so I really had an an authentic seat at the table in the design and in the, the concept and everything.

And I was just I just feel so blessed.

I'm glad that I get a chance to, to talk about our very rich Kansas City jazz history.

You know, I've always been proud of that.

But, you know, I grew up, like I said, listening to the stories of action and and step building and all of a minor.

I mean, I met Joe Salisbury when I was little.

Benny and Milt would be at the house.

I mean, it's so many people that that I owe so much to when it comes to my style.

Because all I was trying to do is emulate them.

I just wanted to sound is soulful, is Eddie Sanders.

I wanted to swing his heart.

Is that who did I wanted to to be is spontaneous, as Eddie Kenner would be.

He's seen so free was like Jimi Hendrix before I heard Jimi Hendrix.

I mean, it was like.

And so these images of the way the music should be played were embedded in me at an early age.

And then, like I said, even though he didn't have the chops anymore, step buddy Anderson, that.

Who was the guy that introduced Berry to this?

I mean, because they played together and and Billy Eckstine, his band.

So I met all these guys and they'd always be at the house talk and and I'd always sit and listen to their stories and, and I just these are my heroes.

They still are.

Yeah.

And you are one of those people.

We talked about this at the end all the time.

you're one of those people you could you performed all over the world.

So you've been to Vegas and you've been to all these hot spots for musicians and jazz or whatever.

You can live anywhere in the world, and yet you live here.

There is no place like Kansas City.

There is no real.

That's I mean, there is no place like Kansas City.

don't don't go teams.

I mean, every day the barbecue, the Kansas City Chiefs, I mean the jazz, the feeling, my wife gets on me because, Oh, God.

You people, she thinks I'm borderline delusional.

I remember we were in Chicago riding an Uber and a guy was asking about Kansas City.

I said, man, it's nothing that you can do here that you can't.

Then my wife's like.

What did you say?

I said, anything we can do here, you can do it in Kansas City.

You might have a little more of it.

And my wife's like, well, and I, I mean and she I said our skylight.

And then after we got to the hotel and we looking at said Lonnie, next time we get to Kansas City, I want you to show me a place that that even resembles what we're looking at now.

And I said, oh, you just got to.

Oh, yeah, I am a little delusional.

Okay?

There's no place like Kansas City.

I love it, I love the people.

And like I said, I grew up in a time I couldn't even play on the plane.

Right?

I was the tail end of what was really hard core for my father.

Them.

But look at life now.

How can I not?

I mean, even that gives me a greater appreciation for what I am able to experience.

Not that it shouldn't.

In a perfect world, that would be normal for everybody.

But this ain't a perfect world.

Yeah, and I've lived through some times that helped me to appreciate these times.

So I mean, yeah, yeah.

And I would be remiss, just as we we say goodbye here and I could talk to you for hours.

is, there's somebody else looking down to Robert, looking down on us.

He's blessing you and your dad's up there.

He's blessing you, too.

And.

Yeah, just that is that.

That's all part of it.

That's all part.

So.

I mean, thank you.

You bet.

God bless you, my friend.

God bless you.

Thanks for taking the time.

Yeah.

Continued.

Continued.

Good luck to Lonnie's Reno club.

that sounds pretty darn good.

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