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Kansas City's musical history past�and present�is alive and well at the American Jazz Museum.
(Photo: Courtesy of American Jazz Museum) |
After discovering the city’s ever-evolving present, delve into Kansas City’s jazz-and-sports-filled roots. Start your morning at the Classic Cup with buttermilk griddlecakes and smoked bacon ($8.95). Then head to the historic 18th and Vine District, where native son Charlie Parker and Count Basie both played and where Kansas City Monarch baseball legend Buck O’Neil once suited up. The nonprofit Negro League Baseball Museum ($10) re-creates the narrative of the widely unknown Negro Leagues teams from the Civil War to the 1960s; browse the extensive memorabilia collection, from the 1920s and '30s, which includes everything from uniforms to signed baseballs, including one with Jackie Robinson, Roy Campanella, Joe Black, and Junior Gilliam’s signatures. The adjoining American Jazz Museum ($10) screens taped performances from the likes of Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, and Louis Armstrong and showcases Charlie Parker’s alto sax. Check the schedule of the on-site jazz club venue, Blue Room, for evening performances. A few blocks away, grab lunch at no-frills barbecue haven Bryant’s, a favorite of visiting presidents like Truman and Clinton; order the crispy burnt ends (charred �bark� from the tender end of the brisket) on white Wonder bread with hand-cut fries cooked in lard oil ($10). A quick jaunt to the local Boulevard Brewery allows for a production tour (free) and four 4-oz samples ($5); make sure to try the Belgian-style Tank 7 Farmhouse ale. Head to midtown for dinner at Anton’s, a casual space serving as a butcher shop, restaurant, beer garden, and art gallery; go for the butchered-in-house, grass- or grain-fed KC strip steak (starting at $14). Toe-tap the evening away at the moody jazz spot Kill Devil Club, historic, Prohibition-style Majestic, or the narrow, dimly lit Green Lady Lounge, with a stiff B Sidecar with bourbon, Cointreau, and lemon juice ($10) in hand.