every WEDNESDAY
The weekly feature page of the University Daily Kansan October 5, 1977
Zoot Sims, one of the famed “Four Brothers” from the Woody Herman band of the late 1980s, and Hook Clayton lead trumpet in the Bass band from 1975 to 1984, imbu-
died by the music of Jimi Hendrix.
Candy Gordon, Basle's protocol director, and Albert Gaines, Basle's road manager, applank Eila Fitzgerald after one of her three numbers.
Dave Brubeck, best known for his years as leader of the Dave Brubeck Quartet, plays a rollicking blues in tribute to the Count.
Welcome back to Kansas City, Count.
Your classic style was all there Friday night: the strolling piano introductions, the sassy reef riffs, the inevitable smash of tight Bassie brasses—on top of a steamrolling beat that has made your music the definition of swing.
It was you and my band's talents, Ella Fitzgerald's gravity-defying dazzle and Dave Brubeck's crashing piano chords that used that jazz is alive in the United States.
But, sad as it is to say, Count, it was the mishandling of the concert in your honor Friday night that proved that Kansas City iazz may be dead in Kansas City.
They say it was a city steaming with a rugged music style that changed the face of jazz when you band roared to fame on Jo Jones' expansive cymbals, Lester Young's convention-breaking tenor saxophone solos, tight ensemble work and, of course, your own subtle persuasion and that unending swing.
Pardon you for unfair comparisons, but as we welcomed you back we couldn't help but wonder about the Kansas City of the 1930s that jazz historians describe.
It was a city of round-the-clock jam sessions, that humiliated the East Coast big shots. It was a legendary oasis of plentiful water, as well as its rivers and rivers of river in spite of Prohibition.
Kansas City's tribute to you, Count—in the acoustically · barbarian Municipal Auditorium arena—was more realistically reminiscent of that awkward evening last January when Dizzy Gillespie played in the cavern after a college basketball game. Then, with the guidance of Jerry Fung, a larger fringe of noisy basketball fans asked the surviving patriarch of jazz trumpet to play something they could dance to.
But those thoughts came more from hope than any relations to the event taking place Place
The tribute to you, Count, had promised to be an unattentable evening, for the list of artists planning to perform as astounding: Ella, Brueckel, Ocar Peterson, Zoot Sims, Max Roach, Sweets Edison, Eddie R. Davis, Jo Jones and Becky Clayton.
If Dizzy Gillespie's Kansas City visits are reduced to unappreciated concerts for rude audiences; if Friday night's artificially structured concert was the best Kansas City could do to show its appreciation for you; then jazz at that city is dead, or almost so.
But—although one would think the best
way for musicians to honor a fellow musician would be for them to play their tributes—there was relatively little music from the guest artists during the three-and-one-half hour program.
Indeed, there were moments of greatness,
especially from Ella, Brubeck and Jones
and Roach on drums. But the satisfying
moments were too short. Too often the
visiting artists were hustled onto stage
between speeches for one unprepared
number then herded off again to make room
for yet another speech.
Count Bassie, a 73-year-old native of Red Bank, N.J., who is standing to Kansas City with a vandelle show in 1928, to accept the audience's first standing ovation.
Photos by Randy Olson Story by Steve Frazier
The examples of poor musical planning were many.
There was Zoot Sims, one of the greatest and truest living followers of Lester Young, a short tribute to Young was played by a solid but unspectacular local saxophonist. Kansas City's New Breed Band couldn't hold the tempo behind Davis and Edith Chapman, but played with "Darkroom Strutter's Ball," playing "Sweet Georgia Brown" instead.
The musical indignities were just the beginning. In addition to the speeches and an embarrassing dance routine performed on taped music, a sorely sophomoric poem was read in an attempt to honor Charlie Parker.
Just the beginning of the poem belied its consistent silliness:
*Bird, they said you were nuts.
"Bird, they said you were nuts
Duh, they said you were not
"because you wouldn't kiss their butts."
The audience was there to thank you for sharing your genius, Count, but the show's producers forget to thank the audience. The audience was promised additional performances by Peterson and Ella, but they never happened.
Why couldn't Kansas City honor you with a red concert unless it is true that jazz is not available there?
That was the problem, Count; we don't blame you. The tribute was an Event, front-page news, but it was no concert. One no intent on presenting good jazz would try to do so in a basketball arena at prices of up to $30 a seat.
By not turning the evening into a real concert, the tribute's sponsor, the Charlie Parker Memorial Foundation, missed its chance to build excitement about jazz.
But the group obviously is dedicated, and they're facing a tough fight.
Friday night's failure to produce a genuine jazz concert means that Kansas City jazz is a lot sicker than most of us. This isn't a tribute to you marked a beginning, not an end.
.