Part II
The start of swing as we now identify with it occurred in Kansas City in the thirties. Like New York, the jazz of KC was not homegrown but soon took on a character of its own. KC had long been a ragtime stronghold since it sat squarely in the region where most of the ragtime innovation was occurring—namely Missouri. Scott Joplin composed the majority of his rags in Sedalia, Missouri. The great ragtime composer Percy Wenrich was known as “the Joplin Kid” because he hailed from Joplin, Missouri. Another great ragtime composer, James Scott, hailed from Neosho, Missouri. Wilbur Sweatman, who was a pivotal figure in the transition of ragtime to jass was born in Brunswick, Missouri. Kansas City as well as St. Louis and Chicago were very attractive venues for the ragtimers. Kansas City had its own ragtime scene centered at 18th and Vine which could boast being the home of great ragtime composers as Charles L. Johnson and Irene Cozad.
As some of the surrounding towns as Sedalia had their ragtime culture destroyed by overzealous teetotaling Christians who got into office and promptly began outlawing and shutting down the clubs that catered to the ragtime crowds by 1909, the musicians and publishers packed up and moved onto places as KC who readily took them in.
Kansas City was the watering hole of the U.S. Anybody traveling cross-country was bound to stop there to recharge their batteries. Hence, places of entertainment were needed. Bars, saloons and clubs of every kind sprang up and they all needed some kind of live entertainment to draw patrons in. By the twenties, when ragtime fell out of favor and jazz reared its head, 18th and Vine began to attract jazz musicians without missing a beat. When Prohibition was put into effect in 1922, the juice flowed unabated in KC thanks to mob boss Tom Pendergast. He kept the clubs open long past sundown and on into sunup and the juice flowed the whole time turning KC into a different kind of watering hole. Prohibition was not enforced in Kansas City. Big Boss Pendergast made sure of it by buying off the cops.
Big Tom Pendergast. Despite being a big mob boss, the biggest in Kansas City, which he essentially owned, he was generally well-liked by the club owners and musicians. He enjoyed jazz and a good party and kept the lights on, the music playing and the booze flowing all night long all through the Depression. Life would have been much tougher for a lot of jazz musicians if not for Tom Pendergast who changed the face of jazz. If the cops raided a club and arrested people, Big Tom had a lawyer waiting at the police station where the arrestees would sign out and head straight back to the clubs to carry on until dawn. The Boss of the Blues—Big Joe Turner—remembered Big Tom quite fondly.
The two biggest bosses in Missouri—Tom Pendergast and Harry Truman. Without Big Tom’s backing, Truman might never have become a senator much less president. Despite Pendergast’s undeniable mob connections, Truman never apologized for their relationship. Whether they were close friends or secret political partners has been the subject of much speculation. Probably a bit of both.
But KC hit its stride with the onset of the Depression. So many vibrant but small jazz scenes closed down not from legislation but from lack of money and work. The musicians needed to find gigs and badly. Word went out: Go to Kansas City! So they went. With a City Hall under the thumb of Tom Pendergast no vice was off limits. If you couldn’t get it at home, come to Kansas City and you’ll get it there for sure provided, of course, you could pay for it. At a typical KC club, the bar and the brothel were in the same building. Downstairs, you could get beer, booze and wine. The clubs also openly sold marijuana cigarettes (usually three joints for two bits). Like to gamble? Come to Kansas City and gamble your night and your money away! Before there was a Vegas, KC hauled in $100 million a year in gambling revenues—huge money in those days. Adding in drug and prostitution revenues (at least a million dollars each per year) and there was little doubt that without the underground economy, Kansas City would have been little more than a back road town struggling to survive.
With more and more jazz scenes shutting down due to the Depression, the talent flocked to KC. By the mid-30s, Kansas City boasted at least as much jazz talent as New York or Chicago. The jazz scene of KC simply took over 18th and Vine from the ragtimers. In fact, one of the earliest jazzmen to play there was the native Bennie Moten who was taught piano by two of Scott Joplin’s former-pupils. In fact, we can watch the evolution of jazz just by watching Moten. From a ragtimer to a traditional jass band, Moten’s band would eventually trade tuba for double bass and banjo for guitar, the ensemble expanded and within the space of a decade was a full-fledged big band that could rival any other in the country. The difference between the two clips below show how much the band changed in only seven years.
Bennie Moten's Kansas City Orchestra - Kater Street Rag (1925) - YouTube
Bennie Moten's Kansas City Orchestra - "Moten Swing" (1932) - YouTube
One of the final recordings of the Moten band—pure swing.
One reason Moten’s band was so versatile was the presence of Walter Page. Page started off in Kansas City in 1923 as part of Billy King’s Road Show. Two years later, they were Oklahoma City ready to break up when Page stepped forward to lead the band. He added for more musicians to the original nine and renamed the band Walter Page’s Blue Devils. Walter Sylvester Page was born in Gallatin, Missouri February 9, 1900 to Edward and Blanche Page. At 10, Walter, already playing music, moved to Kansas City with his mother. Page got involved in marching bands playing bass drum and tuba because he was a big kid. In fact, as an adult he weighed in a 250 lbs and was nicknamed “Big ‘Un.”
When Page went to see John Wycliffe’s orchestra play at his high school, he saw Wellman Braud playing double bass. Braud, who started off in New Orleans in the early days of jazz and also did a stint with Ellington, impressed Page. “When Braud got ahold of that bass, he hit those tones like hammers and made them jump right out of the box!” Page decided “that’s for me.” Page later attended the University of Kansas at Lawrence as a music student where he became an excellent sight-reader learning both bass and sax. He completed a three-year music program in one year and so filled his extra time by taking classes on gas engines.
Page joined the Moten orchestra in 1918 playing double bass, bass saxophone and tuba. He stayed with Moten until starting his gig with Billy King. When King’s band mutated into the Blue Devils, there were a territory band covering the area from Oklahoma City to Wichita. When the Blue Devils hit their prime, they were a premier hot swing band. Page knew he had the best band in the territory and wanted to go up against his former boss, Bennie Moten, to crack KC wide open. Page claimed it never happened but others say it did and that the Blue Devils won hands down. Whether true or not, Moten certainly recognized the Blue Devils as his more serious competition in Kansas City. So Moten simply began buying off the band members of the Blue Devils by offering them higher salaries. The Blue Devils contained such notables as Count Basie, Eddie Durham, Jimmy Rushing, Lester Young, Buster Smith and Oran “Hot Lips” Page. In 1929, Durham and Basie left the Blue Devils for Moten. The following year, Hot Lips and Rushing left Big ‘Un for Moten. Unable to keep his band intact, Page himself rejoined with Moten in 1931. According to Basie: “Big ‘Un in there on bass made things a lot different in the rhythm section, and naturally that changed the whole band and made it even more like the Blue Devils.” Hence the big change in the band’s sound. Page stayed with Moten only a short time before leaving to play with the Jeter-Pillars Plantation Orchestra in St. Louis.
Walter Page's Blue Devils - Blue Devil Blues (1929) - YouTube
Walter Page's Blue Devils - Squabblin' - YouTube
In the above clips, both recorded in November of 1929, Page plays tuba in the first and double bass in the second except for a part where he sets it down to play a baritone sax solo and then goes back to the bass again. The solos by Buster Smith and Hot Lips Page are already outstanding even though both were just 21 at the time. The guitar and drums round out the rhythm in a way that feels like swing even though both numbers are in 2/4 time.