St. Louis, St. Joseph, Kansas City, MO

7/5/2011-7/11/2011
Last week I went on a road-trip to visit the city of my birth St. Joseph, Missouri. On the way I stopped in St. Louis, Columbia and Kansas City and found a few musical experiences. There are actually three excellent music clubs across the street from the baseball stadium in St. Louis. My main goal was to see Kim Massie at Beale on Broadway but typical of my luck, the club picked this night to close unexpectedly (I assume because it was the night after the 4th of July). Instead I checked out the club across the street called BB's Jazz, Blues and Soups and saw a great blues band fronted by Miz Shay. She is a superior blues belter and does a great version of Let The Good Times Roll on this video clip.

I then ventured to the Broadway Oyster Bar across the street. They had a fill-in band there and I didn't catch their name but they are what I would call a Missouri hillbilly band. They were great instrumentalists and put on a nice demonstration of this genre of music.

A statue to Coleman Hawkins.

Later in the week I was staying in downtown St. Joseph when I discovered that the town sponsors musical concerts in the Coleman Hawkins Park in the center of town (this despite the fact that the town is rotting around this little oasis).According to our good friends at Wikipedia Coleman Randolph Hawkins (November 21, 1904 – May 19, 1969) was an American jazz tenor saxophonist born in St. Joseph.  Hawkins was one of the first prominent jazz musicians on his instrument. As Joachim E. Berendt explained, "there were some tenor players before him, but the instrument was not an acknowledged jazz horn". While Hawkins is most strongly associated with the swing music and big band era, he had a role in the development of bebop in the 1940s Phil Vandel was the act on this night and he proved to be a competent country-rock band and the crowd seemed to enjoy him. Sorry, I forgot my flip cam so I took this video on my phone.

Tiffany Miller

After St. Joseph I moved on to Kansas City and found myself in a piano bar. Tiffany Miller was the official talent this evening although she had several guest pianists guesting during her show. Tiffany is not a great pianist or singer but she knows her job as an entertainer and worked the crowd effectively. The club was dark as tar so none of my videos or photos were of an acceptable quality so I stole a photo of Tiffany from her website. Let's hope she doesn't sue me.