This wonderful place is adjacent to the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum -- and just down 18th Street from legendary barbeque joint Arthur Bryant's.
There are lots of things to look at, including videos and a perpetually running film loop in a theater with interviews with jazz luminaries like Max Roach, Shirley Horn and Jay McShann.
But, WOW, the museum's most remarkable thing is that it actually centers around THE MUSIC. There's music in the hallways, at personal listening stations where you can read about the musicians and tunes while looking at the memorabilia.
Bird's Massey Hall white plastic alto is there (allegedly KC Mayor, now congressman, Emmanuel Cleaver outbid Clint Eastwood for the item), a gorgeous ball gown owned by Ella Fitzgerald, show posters, union cards, old records and some of the most amazing photographs this jazz afficianado has ever seen.
If you haven't gone to Kansas City to this place and you claim to love jazz, why not? I went there & wasn't too impressed actually. I am a fan of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum though. No, but I've been to the Delta Blues Museum in Clarksdale, Mississippi where they have moved and re-assembled Muddy Waters' shack from the Stovall Plantation and put a life-sized wax Muddy (dressed in one of Muddy's suits which was donated by his widow) sitting inside. How funky is that? |
