![]() We were 19 years old, we lived in Los Angeles, and to have this honored some 50 years later is just a thrill.” “It was based on our imagination about this wonderful, wonderful city and the great jazz that came out of it, the great blues that came out it: Charlie Parker, Jay McShann, Big Joe Turner, Count Basie with Lester Young and the Kansas City Seven. “Fifty years ago my partner Jerry Leiber and I wrote a song we called it ‘Kansas City,'” Stoller told the crowd. led a celebratory version of the song, which the city adopted as its official anthem on August 25th. Mike Stoller himself was on hand at the dedication ceremony, and the Kansas City Little Jazz Band featuring saxophonist Bobby Bryant Jr. The park will eventually become a sculpture garden for works embodying the jazz spirit of Kansas City. The plaza also features a monument describing how the song “Kansas City” was written and performed, and a meandering pathway paved in red that forms a giant G clef that can be seen from the air. Obliterated by 1970s redevelopment that left the once-famous corner (and hub of the black community) in the middle of a field for years, the intersection is now the centerpiece of the new city park. This new plaza east of the Paseo Bridge was marked by a new signage commemorating 12th and Vine Streets, the intersection immortalized in Leiber and Stoller’s rollicking hit “Goin’ to Kansas City.” In a ceremony attended by Mayor Kay Barnes and other state legislators and civic and business leaders, the city once known as the “Paris of the Plains” for its hepcat jazz scene dedicated its Goin’ to Kansas City Plaza, a piano-shaped expanse of parkland. On September 11th, 2005, Kansas City, Mo., officially claimed its legacy as the incubator of America’s only indigenous music form, jazz. ![]() The intersection of 18th and Vine in Kansas City, MO
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