If you turned the calendar back 60 years or so, you could stroll along the fabled intersection of 18th and Vine and hear just about anyone who was anyone in jazz.
Count Basie’s big band would be roaring forth in one of a dozen jazz joints, Big Joe Turner would be serving drinks and belting the blues from behind the bar, a young Charlie Parker would be blowing his saxophone for dear life.
In a charming way, those sights and sounds have returned to 18th and Vine, which once was one of the most wide-open nightlife capitals in America. Indeed, long before anyone had dreamed of turning Las Vegas, Reno or Miami’s South Beach into neon meccas, K.C. was the place where the good times rolled all through the night.
More than a half century later, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, Charlie “Bird” Parker and the like are back, though in a decidedly more family-friendly setting. This time around, they’re the focal point of the Kansas City Jazz Museum, which is but one part of a sprawling, newly opened campus called The Museums at 18th & and Vine.
The idea — under development for nearly a decade and financed for approximately $26 million — was to capitalize on Kansas City’s illustrious past to reclaim a neighborhood that had fallen on hard times.
In so doing, Kansas City has created a beguiling urban theme park that blends entertainment and education into an alluring whole. Spend a day or two at 18th and Vine, and chances are you’ll learn more about this storied place — and about the legacy of African-American culture in the United States — than you might glean from any textbook or classroom.
The centerpiece of the restoration is the Kansas City Jazz Museum, which shares a blocklong, 50,000-square-foot building with the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum (the latter set to open on Nov. 1). If the baseball museum achieves the same sheen and glamor of its jazz counterpart, the two should rank among the most valuable museum explorations of the black experience in America.
Certainly the Jazz Museum, which opened in September, gives visitors an unprecedented look at the evolution of black music in America. Designed to seduce the eye as well as the ear, the Jazz Museum turns American urban history into a full-fledged sensory experience.
Even before you enter the place, there’s no mistaking the historic feel of the neighborhood. Streetside banners proclaim “The Legacy Plays On,” with images of larger-than-life jazz musicians and baseball players running as far as the eye can see.
Step inside the Jazz Museum and you’ll think you just entered H.G. Wells’ time machine — the lobby is aglow with 1930s marquees from such venerable Kansas City joints as Milton’s Tap Room, Elnora’s Cafe and the Pink Door. Most are originals, a few are exact replicas, but each flashes with precisely the glittering effects that once made Kansas City bright as daylight all night long.
Charlie Parker remains Kansas City’s most famous musical export, so it’s no wonder that a fair portion of the museum stands as a shrine to him. In one glass case, you’ll find an unconventional acrylic alto saxophone that Bird played in clubs along 18th and Vine; in another, you’ll see contracts that Bird signed, awards he received from Down Beat magazine and other ephemera.
But that’s just for starters. Slip on a pair of headphones, press a button and you’ll hear Parker and trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie improvising in hyper-virtuoso style. Press another, and you’ll sample Fitzgerald singing her first big hit, “A-Tisket, A-Tasket,” or Armstrong blowing his horn or Ellington swinging his big band.
For those who want to explore this music in depth, you can stroll over to the museum’s high-tech archives, where compact discs and computer data are available to all visitors. And for those who want to brush up on the basics of music-making, the Studio Room offers elemental instruction and information on the essentials of rhythm, melody and that most elusive of all jazz terms — swing.
It’s worth noting that the Jazz Museum also has an extensive exhibition on loan from the Smithsonian Institution, “Beyond Category: The Musical Genius of Duke Ellington.” Though many Chicagoans saw this exhibition last year, when it was on view at the DuSable Museum of African-American History, those who missed it will be seduced by its look at the tumultuous times and glorious music-making of Ellington and his orchestra. The Ellington show will be on view at the Jazz Museum through the fall of ’98.
Because the Jazz Museum has been designed as family fare, there’s at least one room any youngster will want to check out: the Wee Bop Room, its softly padded walls and primary colors welcoming kids to burn off their energy, while Mom and Dad savor the big band sound.
More than just a play space, though, the Wee Bop Room has musical instruments that kids are welcome to bang to their hearts’ content. Steel buckets, garbage can lids, makeshift xylophones — the sounds that will come out of the Wee Bop Room once a few kids pile in are bound to shake the floorboards.
While the youngsters are practicing the fundamentals of improvisation, the adults can slip into the Blue Room, a bona fide jazz club that might make the Jazz Museum the only such bona fide museum with a working bar. Yes, drinks are served, music is live and, between sets, visitors can check out the novelty jukebox.
Even the Blue Room club, though, clearly has been designed with a museum setting in mind, for the place overflows with memorabilia from K.C.’s jazz past. Vintage records, historic posters, ancient publicity shots, yellowed newspaper clippings — every wall and table top carries precious relics of America’s musical legacy.
No museum trip is complete without a visit to the gift store, and, not surprisingly, the Swing Shop has a rich collection of compact discs, books on music and other arty collectibles.
Once visitors leave the Jazz Museum, they’re likely to wonder how the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum will be able to compete. The answers won’t be apparent until Nov. 1, when the baseball museum opens in its new quarters (since 1994, the museum has been located just a block away, in Kansas City’s Historic Lincoln Building, where it has drawn approximately 30,000 visitors to date).
The new home is promised to be state-of-the-art, including a 75-seat theater (with ballpark seats) featuring a film on the history of the Negro Leagues; 15 interactive computer stations where visitors can explore all manner of information on the subject; 12 life-size bronze sculptures, featuring such Negro Leagues legends as Andrew “Rube” Foster, James “Cool Papa” Bell and Leroy “Satchel” Paige.
And in coming months, the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum will include a research center (for students, scholars, educators, authors and filmmakers) and a computerized batting cage exhibit (in which visitors can take a swing without fear of breaking any windows).
All this will tell the story of the Negro Leagues, which were established after the Civil War and took root in Kansas City in 1920. Until its demise in the 1960s, the Negro Leagues attracted thousands of spectators and produced such baseball legends as Willie Mays, Hank Aaron and Jackie Robinson.
Together, the Jazz Museum and Negro Leagues Baseball Museum represent a formidable twosome, but there’s one more element here: the refurbished Gem Theater, a 1912 movie house across the street from the museums that has been updated as a state-of-the-art performance space.
During the Jazz Museum opening festivities in September, stars such as Tony Bennett, Al Jarreau, David Sanborn and Dianne Reeves played the Gem stage, establishing the Gem Theater as an acoustically inviting space. In coming months, jazz stars, big bands and new-music bands will take the stage of the Gem.
Even beyond The Museums at 18th & Vine and the Gem Theater, though, this Kansas City neighborhood is fascinating to behold. Stroll through these environs, and you’ll see the historic, still functioning Holy Ghost New Testament Church (at 1850 Paseo), which was built in 1850; and the Mutual Musicians Foundation building (on Highland Avenue), a small, squat structure where Kansas City musicians such as Parker and Basie, Jay McShann and Claude “Fiddler” Williams went to get leads on jobs — more than half a century ago.
And anyone who has seen the Robert Altman film “Kansas City,” itself an evocation of K.C.’s heyday in the ’30s, will recognize Vine Street. Its marquees and storefronts are fake, but they’ve been designed to re-create the look of Vine in its prime. Eventually, Kansas City officials hope to bring the block back to life as a center for entertainment and dining.
For now, though, the city is basking in the rejuvenation of a neighborhood that once was a focal point for black culture in America. Thanks to its new museums, refurbished Gem Theater and other nearby historic sites, 18th and Vine has begun to swing again.
DETAILS ON ATTRACTIONS
– The Museums at 18th & Vine. Hours for the Jazz Museum (now open) and the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum (opens Nov. 1) are 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays, noon to 6 p.m. Sundays. Admission to each museum is $6 adults, $2.50 children; combination tickets are $8 and $4, respectively. 816-474-VINE.
– Gem Theater Cultural & Performing Arts Center, 1601 E. 18th St. (across the street from The Museums at 18th & Vine). The Sun Ra Arkestra, under the direction of Marshall Allen, performs on Oct. 31. For tickets, and for schedule of other performances, call 816-842-4538.
– Convention and Visitors Bureau of Greater Kansas City, 1100 Main St., Suite 2550, Kansas City, Mo. For information on other Kansas City attractions, call 816-221-5242 or 800-767-7700 or explore the Web site at www.kansascity.com
