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Book: Kansas City Jazz

Chapter: Trumpets

DOI: 10.1558/equinox.44039

Blurb:

It is St. Louis, not Kansas City, that is known as a trumpeter’s town in the State of Missouri, an accident of history based on its location upriver from New Orleans and its high number of German immigrant residents. Nonetheless, a Kansas City style emerged from the Southwest in the persons of, among others, Lammar Wright and Oran “Hot Lips” Page, two Texas natives who gravitated to Kansas City and wrought blues-based changes to a brass instrument that, on the other side of the state, was used in a more conventional European style. Other notable trumpeters associated with the Moten-Basie tradition such as Buck Clayton and Harry “Sweets” Edison are identified and placed in context.

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