KC Baseball & Jazz
Snatch and grab it....
The Band at the Reno Club was the best in town. It was really the old Bennie Moten band, which Count Basie and Prof Smith had taken over after Moten died having his tonsils taken out. Charlie (Parker) had heard every one of the Kansas City bands, the same way that guys at Lincoln (High School) tried to see all of the pitchers on the Kansas City baseball team a Ruppert Stadium.
- Ross Russell in Bird Lives!
When I was a kid, I liked baseball cards. Two older brothers had already amassed a large collection by the time I started buying them in the 1970s. My older sister collected them too, and I’m pretty sure she has taken custody of all those old cards.
I remember one of my favorites was a 1965 Topps Lee Maye, back when the Braves played in Milwaukee.
I mostly liked it for what was written on the back:
He was a lefty hitter, like me. He was also “a destructive hitter,” like I wanted to be. But more than all that, I liked most that he was “a singer during the off-season” - that was unique. As it turns out, Lee Maye wasn’t only a serious baseball player, he was a serious musician. From the Mid-1950s until the early 1970s, he recorded for major record labels Modern, RPM, and Specialty. This mix between musician and ballplayer reminds me of Kansas City.
I was down in Kansas City a couple of weeks ago. It was the NFL Draft, but I wasn’t there for that. I was there for the opening of a new jazz club - a speakeasy in the basement of Tom’s Town Distilling Co.
Local cats Jason Parson (grandson of Jay McShann) and Gerald Dunn put together a fine local jazz combo that proudly featured the great saxophonist Bobby Watson, along with Jason Goudeau on trombone, Will Matthews on guitar, Joe Cartwright on piano, James Ward on bass, and a young lad Paulo Zambarano on drums. Local trombone player “Steak” Stechschulte was also in the house. It was a wonderful mix of people, fine music, and craft spirits.
The Tom of Tom’s Town is of course Tom Pendergast, whose stewardship of Kansas City’s illicit pleasures during prohibition provided a scene for some of America’s greatest jazz musicians to work. Tom’s Town also provided a base for both Walter Page’s Blue Devils and a launching pad for Count Basie’s all-star lineup.
A short distance away from Tom’s Town Distilling Co. at the corner of 18th and Vine is the American Jazz Museum. The museum includes the new location of The Blue Room, a classy club where Jazz is performed on the weekends.
Right next door, you will also find the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum - in fact, they share the same location. You pass through the main doors and either go left to the jazz museum or right to the baseball museum. It’s fitting that the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum would share space with a museum dedicated to jazz. If ever there were two American “institutions” shaped and molded by the immense contributions of African Americans, it’s baseball and jazz.
Around the corner from the museums is the Mutual Musicians Foundation, the former home of the “Colored Musicians Local 627”. Since 1930, musicians have gathered at the Foundation Friday and Saturday nights after midnight to jam into the early morning hours. Here’s what it looks like today (I have no idea what “-5-130-9” stands for):
And here’s what it looked like back in the day:
The house on the right is gone, but otherwise not much has changed, particularly on the inside. Although Charlie Parker and Count Basie may have been the kings, singer Julia Lee was the queen back when 18th and Vine was the center of the Jazz universe.
Julia Lee was born in 1902 or 1903 in Kansas City, Missouri, and began her career as a pianist in her brother’s band, the George E. Lee Novelty Singing Orchestra.
Here she is with the band:
This is from her first session, recorded in 1929 for the Brunswick label:
She went on to become a big star, not only locally but nationally. Her popularity reached a peak first with Snatch and Grab It, which stayed at No.1 in the R&B charts for 12 weeks in 1947, and then with King Size Papa, which stayed at No.1 for nine weeks in 1948.
I think it’s interesting to listen to Lee sing the same song on two different recordings. First, here she is in 1930 with her brother’s band singing and playing piano on Won't You Come Over to My House:
Now, here she is singing the same song in 1944 with Jay McShann’s Kansas City Stompers:
I’m not sure which version I like better….
In 1932, Julia Lee married Negro League’s Kansas City Monarchs star catcher Frank Duncan - it was a marriage of baseball and jazz. Their son, Frank Duncan Jr. would also pitcher for the Monarchs. In fact, in 1941 Frank Sr. caught for his son Frank Jr. They are thought to have been the first father-son battery in professional baseball history. Frank Sr. was appointed Monarchs’ manager in 1942 and led his team to a sweep over the Homestead Grays in the Negro World Series.
Although the Kansas City Chiefs are now the talk of the town for winning Super Bowls, the first major league franchise to bring a championship home to Kansas City was the Kansas City Monarchs baseball team, who on October 20, 1924 won the first Negro Baseball League World Series. Five future Hall of Famers played in that first World Series – Hilldale’s (Hilldale Athletic Club - informally known as the Darby Daisies and based in Darby, Pennsylvania) Biz Mackey, Judy Johnson, and Louis Santop, and Kansas City’s “Bullet Joe” Rogan and Jose Mendez. The Kansas City Monarchs went on to develop a formidable franchise.
During the baseball season, out of town teams would stay at the Street Hotel, where the original Blue Room was located.
It was at The Blue Room or nearby Paseo Hall that jazz musicians and baseball players hung out. The jazz musicians would go to the baseball games and the baseball players would go listen to the jazz musicians. Here’s a picture of Count Basie at the piano with Herman Walder playing in the Blue Room:
Interestingly, Jackie Robinson's first professional team was the Kansas City Monarchs. Here’s a photo of Robinson in his Monarchs uniform:
After his discharge from the Army, Robinson wrote to Monarchs’ co-owner Thomas Baird inquiring about joining the club. The Monarchs were the pride of the Negro Leagues, winning 12 league titles and two Negro League World Series titles. In early 1945, he was signed. The following year he broke the color barrier and signed with the Brooklyn Dodgers. Robinson lived at the Street Hotel. His favorite restaurant was a place called Ol’ Kentuck BBQ, which was later purchased by George Gates and eventually became Gates BBQ. At the Negro Leagues Museum I also learned about another true American hero, Buck O’Neil, who played first base for the Monarchs and was Robinson’s teammate.
In 1948, after Frank Duncan’s retirement, O’Neil was named manager of the Kansas City Monarchs. After his playing and managing days, he worked as a scout and became the first African American coach in Major League Baseball. In his later years he played a major role in establishing the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum. He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2022. This is The Buck O'Neil Legacy Seat at Kansas City’s Kauffman Field:
Here’s one more for the road. In 1944, Julia Lee signed with Capitol Records and recorded a series of sides with the great Benny Carter and Vic Dickerson. This is Crazy World, a nice track from those sessions:
If you’re ever going to Kansas City, you need to take an afternoon and visit the American Jazz and Negro Leagues Baseball museums, places incredibly rich with American music and culture. Then at night, head over to Tom’s Town for some killer local jazz - the setting is cool, but the music is hot.
Next week, on that Big River called Jazz, we’ll dig our paddles in and explore the waters of Ornette Coleman.
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Until then, keep on walking….
Excellent issue this week, Mr. King. Really enjoyed it. Of the many times I’ve been to KC, I have not visited these sites. I now have a mission! ✌🏼