Kansas City blues (music)

Kansas City blues
Stylistic origins	Jump blues, jazz
Typical instruments	Guitar, piano, harmonica, bass guitar, drums, saxophone, vocals, trumpet, trombone

Kansas City blues is a genre of blues music. It has spawned the Kansas City Blues & Jazz festival and the Kansas City Blues Society.

Although Kansas City, Missouri is known primarily for jazz, it has also contributed to the history of and the preservation of the blues.

Kansas City did not enter into blues history until the 1940s. Kansas City blues artists Pete Johnson and Big Joe Turner recorded a style of music called jump blues, which later provided the foundation for rhythm and blues, and later rock and roll. Charlie Parker dabbled in the blues in the late 1940s with his release of the hit "Now's the Time", a bebop jazz number that gave a nod to the popularity of the blues in Kansas City, by using the familiar blues pentatonic scale and blue notes.

The blues scene in Kansas City produced Jay McShann, Julia Lee, Little Hatch, Sonny Kenner, and Cotton Candy. The blues was popular in small nightclubs and after-hours jam sessions. Many Kansas City musicians would finish their "paying" gigs at weddings, jazz clubs etc. and then pack up and head to the 18th and Vine-Downtown East, Kansas City district to participate in all-night parties that would sometimes continue well into daylight. The 18th & Vine jam sessions continue today at Kansas City's Musician's Foundation. The Musician's Foundation has immunity from liquor laws, and has not changed its outlook since the 1940s.

The Contemporary Blues scene in Kansas City is alive and vibrant, recently foisting numerous acts onto the national stage. While the blues circuit is perhaps less prestigious than it once was national touring acts coming out of the Kansas City area market include: Trampled Under Foot (defunct), Moreland and Arbuckle, LeVee Town, Samantha Fish, Kelly Hunt, Danielle Nicole, Amanda Fish and Rev. Jimmie Bratcher.

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