At three in the morning, jazz provided both the entertainment and the alibi.
Respectable Kansas City had gone home hours ago. What remained was a room full of people with other reasons to keep performing—and not all of them involved music.
CHANGING OF THE GUARD
The strip on Broadway in Westport grabs even more than it glimmers.
Pools of water bathe the sidewalks. Shimmering bar lights offer their encouragement.
Drying motor oil and washed gasoline rise through the air. It was a free sample of the highs on offer within.
A man stood watch outside the loudest establishment like a tired school principal who had heard it all before. Overgrown children pled their cases before him. The ladies were feigning innocence in clothes made for another climate. The gentlemen faked leverage like aspiring card sharks, their tells leaking from their pores. This city has many uses for a man who enjoys this kind of performance, and this was certainly one of them.
Eventually, this Kansas City leaves, and another takes over.
House lights return. So does everything the darkness had concealed. Hotel bars begin stacking chairs. Tables are wiped quickly by relieved waiters. Chefs clean their kitchens. Musicians pack up their sets. Restaurants lock their doors. Even the places devoted to bad decisions eventually insist that they be made somewhere else.
The Ubers arrive. The queues for them swell, then dribble away.
So where might people who aren’t interested in the procession back to reality go next? And who else might be there waiting for them?
The obvious destinations have disappeared by now.
But in Kansas City, the trail leads to an old building where Friday nights have apparently negotiated an extension.
THE LAST OPEN ROOM
Fifteen dollars bought admission. Whiskey was eight. Mine cost ten, which I took to be either a tax on the unsatisfactory tailoring of my Octobre Editions navy suit—or a compliment. Identification was checked outside. Beyond that, the place chooses optimism.
Through the door and up the stairs, the room itself offers few clues as to why anyone would stay until morning. Plastic folding chairs. Beaten wooden tables. Low green walls. A piano badly in need of attention. I was told the room had once been used for rehearsals, before the musicians were moved upstairs and the downstairs space put to the more profitable business of drinking. The honesty of the entire arrangement was unmistakable.
The band dressed the room better than the furniture. The double bassist was moustachioed and fair-haired. His eyebrows permanently raised, he shook his head and hugged his instrument as though the thing was in need of continuous validation. Oscar sat open-mouthed at the piano beneath an aristocratic fall of blond hair, coaxing more sensitivity from it than its tuning deserved. The drummer, older and wiser than the rest, appeared to have seen every version of the evening before and was enjoying this one anyway.
The singer waited in a Rastafarian hat, short white jacket and blue peep-toe sandals, keys hanging from her belt loop. The saxophonist watched. For a while he did nothing else. When he finally chose to play, everybody else in the room became accompaniment.
The room makes no particular effort to explain its importance. Charlie Parker had belonged to the union headquartered here, and generations of Kansas City musicians had come through this building. The after-hours jam tradition here reaches back to around 1930. Upstairs, there were no labels, no staged reverence, no sense that the building wished to persuade anyone of its significance. That is all in the bar downstairs. The piano was still out of tune. The history is simply there, which in some ways makes it harder to ignore.
The audience here divides itself quickly. Some come for the jazz. Others come to establish that they have come for the jazz. Their expensive Yankees caps, immaculate white T-shirts and carefully distressed denim tell their own story. Phones rise. With a flick of a five-hundred-dollar haircut, a few seconds of video secure the necessary evidence.
After that, their attention becomes optional. Small groups turn inward and begin out-vibing one another. Off-duty youth pastors nod their heads with grave expertise. Hands move through conversations like shadow-boxers underwater. The musicians play on.
Beyond the music, the remaining eighty percent of the guests were downstairs. And in the garden outside the bar, they were conducting business of their own. Introductions were brisk. Information changed hands. Every so often a shirt lifted or a waistband shifted and something appeared, displayed with the casual vanity of a new watch.
The obvious men were almost a comfort. They advertised themselves too clearly. Their menace was largely decorative.
The Russians were different.
There was more than one of them, all heavily built and conspicuously free of the need to establish themselves. Eventually, one of them wandered over. The position of the sleeve on his left arm suggested something which might normally have been left unsaid. He spoke quietly, as if he were confirming what he had already decided. He proved his English. I returned it in Russian.
He smiled.
He continued in English.
His industry was “security.” His passport was well stamped. He gave a few opinions about the United States. I made sure mine were the same.
We shared some cigars. He complimented my suit. At some point he told me that, not long before, he had shot three men who had been trying to kill people “here.”
“Sometimes—good money requires bad things.”
It was impossible to know whether this was a resignation or a gambit.
Or—which of us was putting up the better performance.
Whilst I had no way of knowing whether any of it was true, the more telling thing was that he appeared to have no particular interest in convincing me.
The men displaying their statement pieces had wanted an audience. He seemed content merely to contribute to the atmosphere.
Back upstairs, remarkably little had changed. The drummer kept time. Oscar remained absorbed at the piano. The bassist continued reassuring his double bass. The networking being conducted below had apparently failed to register with the musicians.
At quarter to four, Oscar asked me not to leave. The request was less sentimental than practical. The room was still functioning. Drinks were still being sold–and down to eight dollars for me now. People were still arriving. Elsewhere in Kansas City, Friday night had ended. Here, nobody appeared to have received the instruction.
THE THIRD SHIFT
By now, the city had changed departments. The night had lost its grip. Morning had begun issuing orders. The people still moving were no longer part of the evening. Some were drivers, some cooks, some cleaners, some simply on their way to work. Nightlife gave way to labour, and Kansas City was being handed over quietly, without ceremony.
Hunger at this time of day is an honest thing. It has little interest in ambience, status or the flattering effects of candlelight. The people still awake wanted warmth, salt, coffee and somewhere to sit while the city changed shifts around them. Breakfast had not quite begun, but dinner had long since given up.
McDonald’s marks the hour more reliably than any clock. At four, the burgers disappeared and breakfast took their place. The night had ended in the least romantic way possible: by administrative update.
Kansas City contains several establishments in which danger is reproduced for customers under controlled conditions. There are passwords, hidden entrances, low light and the reassurance that somebody has already arranged the experience.
The Mutual needs none of this. It has history.
Kansas City jazz flourished in the wide-open Pendergast era, amid speakeasies, gambling, vice and permissive law enforcement. Musicians finished their paid work and gathered here after hours to keep playing. The Mutual’s late-night tradition survives to this day.
Well past closing time, jazz can be found in perhaps its most traditional setting: drink, strangers, money, uncertain motives and the distinct possibility that everybody present has another reason for being there. This makes the place feel less theatrical, and far more authentic.
This wasn’t Kansas City Disneyfied for visitors.
It is Thrilling Kansas City.