Bennie Moten

And you also had swing music coming out of Kansas City, a different kind of swing music.

Of course, the swing era comes along with Benny Goodman in 1935, but Benny Moten was already recording swing composition.

Moten's swing was recorded in 1932, and it contains all of the elements that would later distinguish swing.

The use of riffs, contrasting riffs, a 4-4 rhythm, an easy swing, outstanding soloists, and a real feel for the blues.

And he said, well, if he's going to open a pawn shop and get rich, I'm going to compose a rag with a three over four pattern.

And it became a classic and then remains, you know, a classic today.

And also a dotted version of it was published by Jenkins Music and that was picked up on and recorded by Benny Moten Orchestra.

So it kind of inspired the development of jazz in Kansas City, too.

He was the silent architect behind the Kansas City sound that turned a regional dance hall rhythm into a national language of swing and blues.

He built a band in Oklahoma City that became the backbone for Benny Moten's orchestra, then Count Basie's powerhouse.

The way his playing carved space for improvisers shows how a single musician can influence who gets to claim

jazz's identity.

He knew their capabilities.

He knew pretty much all of that stuff came from the Benny Moten Orchestra.

If you listen to the Benny Moten early 1930s, you will hear a blues version of every big band song he wrote that he rearranged for Basie because he always said he wanted to make blues danceable because his roots was in blues.

And so that's where the swing, he created the swing idiom, his songs, if you really follow it.

Somebody at Lincoln Center, one of the trombonists was telling me that, you know, a lot of people look at Duke Ellington like above everybody else, but he said Duke Ellington changed his sound when he started hearing my dad's writings, then everybody wanted to swing, you know, because that's what was now selling.

Hampton's early gigs in local house parties gave him a taste for how rhythm could command attention, setting the stage for his later showmanship.

When he finally landed in Chicago, he cut himself into the world of big bands, first with Benny Moten's group and then Count Basie's orchestra.

This was a time when black musicians were carving out spaces inside white-dominated venues like the Cotton Club, yet still being relegated to the back room or the balcony for audiences.

Hampton's path shows how race dictated not just where you could play, but also what you had to do.

Yeah, after having recorded him with King Oliver and his Creole jazz band, he records Jolly Roll Morton, W.C.

Handy, Benny Moten and the Kansas City Orchestra, from which Count Basie and Lester Young and a whole Kansas City swing.

crowd comes from.

He makes the first trip to New Orleans, records a number of artists there.