The highlight is a five-minute sax battle between Lester Young (Joshua Redman) and Coleman Hawkins (Craig Handy) play duelling tenor saxophones on a Noble Sissle tune, Yeah, Man. And boy, they can play, and their enthusiasm in doing so is obvious. These are some of the top players of our day (well, 1996) dressed up in ’30s suits and playing original arrangements. Let’s start with the roster: Joshua Redman, Fathead Newman, James Carter and Don Byron are among the reedmen, with Nicholas Payton on trumpet, Geri Allen playing piano, Russell Malone on guitar, and Ron Carter and Christian McBride on bass - and that’s not even the full lineup. Kansas City was the birthplace of the energetic, intense swing that found its best expression in artists like Jay McShann, Count Basie and a very young Charlie Parker, who we meet as a teenager dying to sit in with the Hey Hey band.Īnd it’s that house band that is, for me, the most memorable thing about this film. The production itself is magnificent the sets, costumes and design are all top-class. I’ll leave a blow-by-blow recounting of the plot to the many online reviews that lay it out, but suffice to say that there’s enough plot and action to more than satisfy fans of the genre. The film also stars Michael Murphy as a prominent advisor to FDR (the film is set on the eve of Election Day, 1934), Miranda Richardson as his wife, Jennifer Jason Leigh as the girlfriend of a low-end hood, and Dermot Mulroney as said hood, who makes the mistake of hijacking a passenger in one of Seldom’s cabs, who was on his way to gamble heavily at the Hey Hey. ![]() His headquarters is the Hey Hey club, from which he runs his nightclub, taxis and less savoury businesses. The plot of Kansas City turns on gangsters - specifically, Seldom Seen, kingpin of KC’s black underworld, played by Harry Belafonte with an intense, angry power. It’s a film about politics, power, race and corruption, set to a thrilling soundtrack. The same can be said about the film Altman made about his home town, Kansas City. Nashville (1975) and Short Cuts (1993) captured the essence of Nashville and Los Angeles, respectively. The late Robert Altman was a maverick filmmaker whose greatest films featured large casts, overlapping dialogue and strong soundtracks to portray American cities. ![]() The collapse of the Pendergast machine after 1939, however, ended the legally and socially permissive environment that had allowed Kansas City’s nightlife to thrive in the first place.By David Basskin Harry Belafonte in Kansas City MVD Entertainment Group Lee, Julia Lee, Jay McShann, Joe Turner, Mary Lou Williams, and Lester Young. Centered on the intersection of 18 th and Vine St., the jazz district nurtured such musicians as Count Basie, Charlie Parker, Andy Kirk, George E. ![]() ![]() But it was African American musicians, many associated with Bennie Moten’s Kansas City Orchestra and inspired by blues and ragtime traditions, that developed the Kansas City style-featuring complex rhythms, carefully restrained drum beats, and riffs in the late 1920s and 1930s. A white band, the Coon-Sanders Nighthawks Orchestra, became the first national radio sensation on Kansas City’s WDAF (one of just four U.S. In the "wide open" environment of Kansas City in the 1920s and 30s, nightlife thrived, musicians established themselves, and the creative space allowed a unique style of jazz music to emerge.
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