
#KANSAS CITY JAZZ HENRY STONE MANUALS#
Peters and Sons, where Worrall published his most famous works “Sebastopol” and “Spanish Fandango.” These tunes became quite popular and were included as standard pieces in guitar instruction manuals from the 1850s through the 1920s. During the 1850s, Worrall shared the same publisher as Stephen Foster, the Cincinnati music publisher W. For more on this topic, see Robert Taft’s 1946 article on Worrall in the Kansas Historical Quarterly.īut Worrall was much more than a visual artist, he was also an accomplished musician who composed and arranged popular music for solo acoustic guitar. His artistic creations would capture some of the most iconic imagery of early life in Kansas and the American West. In Kansas, Worrall became a prolific and renowned illustrator and decorator. When Henry and Mary Worrall moved to Topeka, Kansas, from Cincinati, Ohio, in 1867, Henry was already a noted artist. But in 2006, researchers and archivists here at the Kansas Historical Society uncovered the importance of a relatively unknown manuscript collection donated to the Historical Society in 1968 by the family of Kansas artist Henry Worrall. Notables of Kansas City jazz include pianists Pete Johnson and Mary Lou Williams, singer Big Joe Turner, trumpeter Oran “Hot Lips” Page, saxophonists Jimmy Smith, Buster Smith, Ben Webster, and Lester Young, bassist-bandleader Walter Page, saxophonist-bandleader Andy Kirk, and pianist-bandleaders Bennie Moten, Jay McShann, and Count Basie.Kansas seems an unlikely place to discover a link between the refined parlor music of the 19th century and the country and blues guitar styles of the rural South in the early 20th. Hammond discovered Kansas City talent in the shape of Count Basie. Kansas City jazz burst on to the national scene in 1936 when record producer John H. Just six blocks to the south, jazz also flourished at 18th & Vine, which became nationally respected as the epicenter of the city’s African American community. At its height, 12th Street was home to more than fifty jazz clubs.


Kansas City’s 12th Street became nationally known for its jazz clubs. A saxophone player named Charlie Parker began his ascent to fame here in his hometown in the 1930s. Legends like pianist-bandleader Count Basie, saxophonist-bandleader Andy Kirk, singer Big Joe Turner, trumpeter Oran Thaddeus “Hot Lips” Page, and pianist-bandleader Jay McShann all played in Kansas City. At one time, there were more than 100 nightclubs, dance halls, and vaudeville houses in Kansas City regularly featuring jazz music. Only in Kansas City did jazz continue to flourish during the Depression. This “wide-open” town image attracted displaced musicians from everywhere in mid-America. During prohibition, he allowed alcohol to flow in Kansas City. Kansas City jazz flourished in the 1930s, mainly as a result of political boss Tom Pendergast. By the mid-1920s, the big band became the most common. In the early days, many jazz groups were smaller dance bands with three to six pieces. In fact, the city’s first jazz recording by Bennie Moten in 1923 was “Evil Mama Blues.” Settings such as dance halls, cabarets, and speakeasies fostered the development of this new musical style. Blues singers of the 1920s and ragtime music greatly influenced the music scene, evolving eventually to Kansas City jazz-a new kind of blues that jumped with a jazz sound. Blues formed the basic vocabulary for KC-style jazz. Kansas City is world-renowned for its rich jazz and blues legacy.
