http://216.239.59.104/search?q=cache:u47cWyCB6vIJ:www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/news/12613651.htm+%2212th+Street+and+Vine%22&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=3 ----------------------------------------------------------------- from THE KANSAS CITY STAR Posted on Sun, Sep. 11, 2005 New plaza plays on the enduring musical legacy of 12th and Vine Once-hot corner now a cool park By MATT CAMPBELL The Kansas City Star For decades, the most famous address in Kansas City had been an empty field. Visitors who came looking for 12th Street and Vine found no trace of the all-night jazz halls, cheap dance clubs and elegant ballrooms. Nothing was jumping but crickets in the grass. Now, Kansas City’s jazz heritage is back in the spotlight. The city recently adopted “Kansas City” as its signature song. Later this month, Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York will focus on the Kansas City style for three days. And today, the lonely street sign at 1600 E. 12th St. — where 12th and Vine streets used to intersect — will become part of a park dedicated to the city’s jazz heyday. In a 5 p.m. ceremony, the piano-shaped piece of land east of the Paseo will formally be named “Goin’ to Kansas City Plaza at 12th Street and Vine.” The landscaped park is to become a sculpture garden for all things Kansas City and will give tourists something to look at when they seek the corner made famous in the 1952 song by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller. The songwriters are scheduled to attend the dedication. “A lot of folk come here and take pictures, so now they can take a picture standing at the new street sign in a nice park,” said barbecue baron Ollie Gates, who was among those who worked 10 years to create the new park. “It also helps create some beauty in this area,” Gates said. “This was a forgotten area and perceived as undesirable. Now look at it.” Trees and flower beds have been planted. Ornamental lamps have been installed, and a 13-foot plaque tells the story of 12th Street, once Kansas City’s main drag. From the 1930s to the 1950s, the street, from downtown east, was the site of dozens of raucous gambling halls and nightclubs. Places such as the Reno Club, Orchid Room, Jockey Club and Boulevard Room were hopping. Count Basie, Charlie Parker, Jay McShann and other jazz luminaries jammed all night at the clubs on 12th Street and elsewhere in the city. “Almost every door you went in had a band,” said Myra Taylor, a singer and dancer who started out on 12th Street in the 1930s and went on to perform around the world. “They had so much to offer — food, clubs, dancing — all up and down 12th Street.” Now 88, Taylor lives in Kansas City and still performs. She recalled her first jobs as a 14-year-old when she would play three sets a night at both the Sunset Club, at 12th and Woodland Avenue, and the Reno Club at 12th and Cherry Street. She made $1.25 a night at both places, which she said was good money. Being underage, Taylor had to climb in a window behind the Sunset Club. But she could walk in the front door of the Reno Club because it was run by gangsters, she said. “The clubs ranged from rough, bucket-of-blood joints with sawdust on the floor and a stomp-down piano player, to elegant nightclubs, presenting elaborate floor shows accompanied by full bands,” states the recently published book Kansas City Jazz: From Ragtime to Bebop — A History, by Frank Driggs and Chuck Haddix. Haddix, who is the host of two weekly jazz, blues and zydeco shows on KCUR-FM, said 18th and Vine gets played up now because it was not physically destroyed, “but most of the club action was on 12th Street.” Marland Buckner knows that better than anyone. He lived on 18th Street as a boy, and his father took him to the clubs on 12th Street. “Every day I hung out in the nightclubs,” said Buckner, now 78, who lives near 12th and Vine. “My brother was a tap dancer, and my daddy was a singer.” He recalled both streets — the center of the black community in segregated Kansas City — being packed with activity and commerce. A law enforcement crackdown on liquor in the late 1930s hurt business at the clubs, and many people attribute the clubs’ gradual decline to the fact that the owners started replacing musicians with jukeboxes. Urban renewal in the 1970s cleared the area around 12th Street and Vine, and in 1977 the streets were realigned so that the famed intersection was lost. But the city left a street sign on the spot, at the edge of a 4.8-acre expanse of grass. Even then, tourists with Wilbert Harrison’s famous 1959 version of “Kansas City” in their heads sought out the site so they could be photographed “standin’ on the corner.” Buckner, who had been away from Kansas City since the 1960s, could not believe what he found when he returned a few years ago. “There will never be anything like that in Kansas City again,” he said. The Goin’ to Kansas City Plaza project was spearheaded by the Enshriners organization, which will hold its annual charity golf tournament Monday at Swope Memorial Golf Course. The group contributed about half the roughly $300,000 cost of the project; the city provided the rest. Gates, chairman of the Enshriners, and Bea Davis, widow of former mayor Ilus Davis, also contributed to the project. Not only is the park in the shape of a baby grand, but the parking area on 12th is painted to resemble piano keys. The concrete pathway that meanders through the park is embedded with red paving stones to create a large treble clef. Gates said a competition will be held for an artist to create a sculpture that evokes Kansas City, musically or otherwise. It will sit atop a piano-shaped base in the center of the park. When a sculpture is retired, it will be placed elsewhere in the park. “I think it’s terrific,” Juanita Moore, executive director of the American Jazz Museum and Gem Theater, said of the park. “The more attention we can bring to Kansas City jazz, the better for everybody.” To that end, the museum will send an exhibition by Kansas City jazz photographer Dan White to New York for the Lincoln Center program Sept. 22-24. The Kansas City Convention and Visitors Association also will be there to promote the city. Boulevard Brewing Co. and Fiorella’s Jack Stack Barbecue will take tastes of Kansas City to the Big Apple. The Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis will feature the sounds of Count Basie in a program to be heard from 7 to 9 p.m. Sept. 24 on Haddix’s show on KCUR. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The details ¦ What: Dedication of the Goin’ to Kansas City Plaza at 12th Street and Vine ¦ When: 5 p.m. today ¦ Guests: Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, who wrote the song “Kansas City” -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To reach Matt Campbell, call (816) 234-4905 or send e-mail to mcampbell@kcstar.com .