The Black Archives of Mid-America in Kansas City Often compared to Ella Fitzgerald, singer Myra Taylor learned to forge her own path and carried the Kansas City style all over the world.īorn in Bonner Springs, Kansas, but raised in the 18th and Vine district, Myra Taylor started performing when she was a teenager. In her honor, Mary Lou Williams Lane runs between the Paseo and Woodlawn Avenue, along 10th Street in Kansas City, Missouri. An example of her creative, complex style can be heard in the track “ A Fungus A Mungus,” recorded on the album “Black Christ of the Andes.” Williams evolved throughout her career, incorporating musical styles from blues and ragtime to the atonal avant garde works of Igor Stravinsky and Krysztof Penderecki. The Kansas City Jazz Orchestra performed a tribute to Williams in 2018, with big band arrangements of her Zodiac Suite, each sign linked to a jazz luminary. She was one of the inaugural inductees in the American Jazz Museum’s Jazz Walk of Fame in 2014.

The greatest era of them all was Kansas City in the '30s,” Williams said at the time. “I’ve lived through four eras of jazz and I’ve played the styles of all of them.

Choreography on “Mary Lou’s Mass” became part of the repertoire for the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. Williams came back to Kansas City in 1978 as a headliner with the nascent Kansas City Women’s Jazz Festival, when her 'Mass' was performed (later in life, Williams became deeply religious and converted to Catholicism). Though born in Atlanta, Georgia, and raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, when Mary Lou Williams arrived in Kansas City, she absorbed and transformed that essential swing style, taking it for the rest of her life as she traveled the world. The greatest era of them all was Kansas City in the thirties.' Library of Congress “I’ve lived through four eras of jazz and I’ve played the styles of all of them. Here’s a selection of music-makers who’ve made both jazz and Kansas City all the better for their talents and perseverance. The database focuses on instrumentalists and composers. The project is named in honor of “Countess” Margaret Johnson, a pianist who played with Count Basie and Andy Kirk’s Clouds of Joy, but died at the age of 20, potential unfilled. Jazz historian and percussionist Nina Cherry created the Countess Database to bring awareness to past and present Kansas City jazz women. Kansas City writer Carolyn Glenn Brewer documents the history of the festival in her book “ Changing the Tune.” Running from 1978-1985, the festival brought national acts to town, as well as showcasing local artists and honoring Kansas City’s jazz heritage. Since the inception of jazz in the early 20th century, into the heyday of the Roaring '20s and through all the decades since, there have been exceptional women in jazz - performers who not only had the skill to impress but also the stamina to endure the male-dominated field, challenging inherent sexism and racism.Ĭarol Comer and Dianne Gregg founded the Kansas City Women’s Jazz Festival, seeking to celebrate, support and bring awareness to women in jazz. But of the many historic and present day artists, how many women can you name? You can sign up to receive stories like this in your inbox every Tuesday. This story was first published in KCUR's Creative Adventure newsletter.

Kansas city jazz musicians