Trama

During Prohibition, Kansas City was wide open, and jazz was its music. Late in the 1970s, musicians of the Pendergast era gather at the union hall to play, sing, and talk. Some were part of Walter Page's Blue Devils, joined Bennie Moten's band, and stayed with Count Basie's Orchestra. Basie is on hand, as are Big Joe Turner, Jay McShann, and some of his big band. Highlights include Turner's vocals, McShann's sly piano playing, a drum clinic from Jo Jones and Baby Lovett, Jimmy Forrest solos, and remembrances of Lester Young and of how Charlie Parker got his nickname. Throughout is the Kansas City sound: cool and relaxed, blues meeting swing, an afterbeat that calls for dancing.—<jhailey@hotmail.com>

Writer Arnoldy gives something else in this film--the character of Harlem, and African-American urban culture everywhere, prior and during the Great Depression. Blues, the film explains brought hard times to 'edge' music: the blues. The scapegoat of these hard times, as much of Harlem, Kansas City, and others, wasn't brought out in music as poverty, unemployment, hardships, or terrible racism. It was all somehow the fault of the woman. 'Woman', from Willie Dixon (not in this flick, but applicable), Big Joe Turner (who performs in a whorehouse here), to Robert Plant (also not in this film), define the seedy underside of the nearly profit-less, but pain releasing, beat of the day. This film weaves this message throughout and takes viewers to now-long-gone performers in their absolute heyday.—phil baker