We've got TWO MONUMENTAL birthdays to recognize this week: Lester Young's (Aug. 27) and Charlie Parker's (Aug. 29). When we think influencers here at KSDS, we don't think college coeds hawking athleisure and makeup tutorials; we think Bird and Prez. Two sons of Kansas City, the Paris of the Plains.
New Orleans may be the birthplace of jazz, but Kansas City is the Cradle of Jazz. And it's not just Lester and Charlie. Along with Count Basie, they sport the most enduring legacies, but at Jazz 88.3 KSDS FM San Diego, names like Mary Lou Williams, Jay McShann, Ben Webster, Jimmy Rushing, and Jo Jones — to name but a few giants of jazz who called KC home — will never be neglected or forgotten.
In 1978 Mary Lou Williams, for whom a section of 10th Street in KC is named, returned to Kansas City for the inaugural Kansas City Women's Jazz Festival. When an interviewer asked her how Kansas City's jazz heyday compared to those of other cities, she answered: “I’ve lived through four eras of jazz and I’ve played the styles of all of them. The greatest era of them all was Kansas City in the thirties.” So join us as we honor, celebrate and immerse ourselves in the music and musicians of Kansas City all week long.
Bird, and to his left, Chet Baker, playing the San Diego Coliseum in Nov. 1953. Photo by Ross Burdick.
