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 1940s, and Buck Clayton, lead trumpet in the Basie band from 1937 to 1942, improvise together on stage.
Candy Gordon, Basle's protecet director, and Albert Gaines, Basle's road manager, applaud Ella Fitzgerald after all 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 reed brasses, the inevitable smash of tight Basis brasses—all on top of a steamrolling beat that has made your music the definition of swing.
It was you and your band's talent, Ella Fitzgerald's gravity-defying dazle and Bruebke's crashing piano chords that reminded us 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 jazz may be dead in Kansas City.
They say it is a city steaming with a rugged musical style that changed the face of jazz when your band roared to fame on Jo Jones' expressive cymbals, Lester Young's convention-breaking tenor saxophone solos, tight ensemble work and, of course, your own subtle persuasion and that unending swing.
Pardon us 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 name of plenitude of cocktails and rivers of liquor in spite of Prohibition.
Kansas City's tribute to you, Count-in the acoustically 'barbary' Municipal Auditorium arena—was more realistically reminiscent of that awkward evening last January when Dizzy Gillespie played in the cavern even after a college basketball game. Then, an opponent dazzled with 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.
The tribute to you, Count, had promised to be an unforgettable evening, for the list of artists planning to perform was astounding: Ella, Brubeck, Oscar Pettet, Zoo Williams, Sweeta Edison, Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis, Jo Jones and Buck Clayton.
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.
layton.
But—although one would think the best
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 iazz at that city is dead, or almost so.
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 Basse, a 73-year-old native of Red Bank, N.J., who just came to Kansas City with a vaudeville show in 1928, in 1928, to accept the audience's 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 when Jazz came gelf confused with "Darktown Strutter's Ball," playing "Sweet Georgia Brown" instead.
The musical indigencies were just the beginning. In addition to the speeches and an embarrassing dance routine performed to taped music, a sorely sophomoric poem was read in an attempt to honor Charlie Parker.
Just the beginning of the poem belied its consistent illiness:
'cause you wouldn't kiss their butts.'
"Bird. they said you were nuts
Case by case.
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 victory unless it is true that jazz is dead in that city?
That was the problem, Count; we don't blame you. The tribute was an Event, front-page news, but it was no concert. No one 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 loticker than most of us. But you know what, we like to submit to you market a beginning, not an end.