Kansas City jazz Kansas City jazz Kansas City jazz is a style of jazz that developed in Kansas City during the 1920s and 1930s, which marked the transition from the structured big band style to the musical improvisation style of Bebop. The hard-swinging, bluesy transition style is bracketed by Count Basie who in 1929 signed with the Bennie Moten's Kansas City Orchestra and Kansas City native Charlie Parker who ushered in the Bebop style in America. "While New Orleans was the birthplace of jazz, America's music grew up in Kansas City". Kansas City is known as one of the most popular "cradles of
Original Dixieland Jass Band jazz craze. Established bands of different types and bandleaders such as Wilbur Sweatman began billing their groups as "jass" or "jazz" bands. Earl Fuller, bandleader at a competing New York venue, was ordered by management to form a "jass" band. W. C. Handy recorded one of the earliest cover versions of an ODJB tune when he released a recording of "Livery Stable Blues" by Handy's Orchestra of Memphis for Columbia in 1917. In 1918, the song "When You Hear That Dixieland Jazz Band Play" by Shelton Brooks, "the King of Ragtime Writers", was published by Will Rossiter in Chicago. It