TRAVEL ADVISORY, PART III

I spent the winter months humming the Eagles’ “Hotel California,” my theme song for the wonderful long weekend I anticipated spending in sunny San Diego in April.  Well, I guess you could say that I had to change my tune, as I made it only halfway there, our travel itinerary foreshortened by an invitation to a wedding that same weekend . . . in Kansas City.   So it goes.  I had passed through KC around 30 years ago, though I had no specific memories outside of attending a Royals game.  I thus wondered if this was a fair trade . . . not that I had any negotiating power as (as usual) I was traveling on my wife’s frequent flyer miles. . . .

Anyway, I “agreed” to go to KC . . . but only if our visit would include a pilgrimage to the grave of Charlie “Bird” Parker, arguably the greatest jazzman of them all.  A native of Kansas City, he is buried in a cemetery in the vicinity of Independence, MO—apparently because he proclaimed before his untimely death that he did not want to be buried in KC itself, where the jazz community did not really embrace his innovative bebop style until after his death.

As it turns out, Kansas City overall was a fine place to visit.  We had great barbecue at Jack Stack’s, we visited the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, we had a decent pint of Guinness at O’Dowd’s Little Dublin Irish Ale House and Pub—even the wedding was fun!

But our weekend there ended up being centered around jazz in general and Charlie Parker in particular, thanks in large part to the remarkable restoration of the historic neighborhood of 18th and Vine . . . as in the classic blues song “Goin’ to Kansas City”: Standin’ on the corner, 18th and Vine . . .  That is now the location of a very pleasing museum dedicated to the history of jazz in KC—we spent a happy hour or so there.  (The building that houses the Jazz Museum also houses the Negro Baseball League Museum, but we didn’t have time to tour that . . . unfortunately, as we understand that there is some fascinating historical crossover between jazz history and baseball history right in that once-segregated neighborhood.  We actually got a short version of that history from the janitor at the Jazz Museum, who shared with us some engaging stories about growing up in that neighborhood in the 1950s.)

As the couple of photos below suggest, the area around 18th and Vine has been nicely rehabbed:

But for us, Charlie Parker was the centerpiece of our jazz tour.  We were in awe of the sculpture of his head—the lips pursed as if he were blowing on a saxophone mouthpiece—that stands about a block away from the Jazz Museum: 

Our feeling after visiting his grave was another story altogether.  The graveyard itself was basically unmaintained—the grass had not been cut and there was not a single standing headstone: every stone was of the sort that lies flat . . . and thus most were buried in the overgrown grass.  We found it sad—depressing, scandalous even—that the final resting place of arguably the most important figure in American music should be not just so nondescript but also so decrepit.  We paid our respects to “Bird” (who is buried next to his mother) and left with heavy hearts.