The Reno Club — Kansas City, Missouri

The Reno Club at 1322 Cherry Street in Kansas City, Missouri, was the venue where Count Basie built and refined his orchestra in the mid-1930s and where a CBS radio broadcast in 1935 brought his music to a national audience for the first time. Kansas City in the 1920s and 1930s was a wide-open town under the notoriously corrupt Pendergast political machine, and its tolerance for after-hours vice made it a jazz paradise. Clubs ran all night, musicians played marathon sets, and the loose, blues-driven Kansas City style evolved freely away from the constraints of New York and Chicago.

Basie's band at the Reno Club played for dancers and drinkers in a small, smoky room, and it was in this setting that the call-and-response riffing style, the powerful rhythm section, and the emphasis on improvisation and blues feeling that defined Kansas City jazz were fully developed. John Hammond, the influential talent scout and producer, heard a late-night radio broadcast from the Reno Club in his car and immediately drove to Kansas City to sign Basie. The rest is jazz history. Charlie Parker, Lester Young, Mary Lou Williams, and Jay McShann were among the other musicians who thrived in this environment.

The original Reno Club building no longer stands — the site has been redeveloped — but Kansas City's 18th and Vine district has been extensively restored as a jazz heritage precinct, including the American Jazz Museum and the historic Blue Room, which still presents live jazz. The city's role in the development of jazz and blues is thoroughly documented and celebrated.