Smith, Buster

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Full length group photograph of three of the Blue Devils, taken by Bert Studios, Kansas City, (left to right): Theo Ross, Lester Young, and Buster Smith, ca. 1932. Source: Jimmy Jewel.

Charlie Parker

Parker was born in Kansas City, Kansas, on August 29, 1920. He grew up in Kansas City, Missouri, where he played in jazz clubs as a teenager and young man. The local jazz culture based in the Vine Street nightclub district cultivated his talents as a teenager. Indeed, it was during this period that Kansas City made notable contributions to jazz with hometown artists such as Count Basie, Bennie Moten, and Buster Smith.

Bennie Moten Orchestra

On September 23, 1923, the Bennie Moten Orchestra made its first recording consisting of eight songs. By strict musical standards, the songs themselves were unrefined and not much removed from existing blues music. But the Bennie Moten Orchestra would soon build upon its earliest recordings to develop a distinct Kansas City style of jazz that later dominated the jazz scene in the late 1930s and 1940s.

KANSAS CITY PUBLIC LIBRARY | DIGITAL HISTORY