Some things never change. You will be reminded, for instance, that parental horror and puritanical outrage over the rumblings of new kinds of youthful entertainment didn't begin with rock 'n' roll or hip-hop but stretch back decades. There are Buddy Bolden, King Oliver, Jelly Roll Morton and soon Louis Armstrong, whose journey from New Orleans to Chicago and beyond is recounted in golden, near-messianic terms. The point is, he explains later, that Armstrong created the entire vocabulary of jazz and his influence can be heard in virtually every musician who followed. Among the fascinating anecdotes is one from the late 1920s when blues singer Bessie Smith heroically chased away a squad of Klansmen who had come to interrupt her tent show.
Swing is business.
For the record, Kansas City makes its entry into the tale 1 hour 23 minutes into the fifth episode. The promoter John Hammond, getting bored with swing, hears a radio broadcast featuring Count Basie at the Reno Club and eagerly heads this way from Chicago. Count Basie could swing with a mere one note, but he injected the music with Kansas City-based blues, and then, with Hammond behind him, he went on to New York to spread the message. Then after 20 minutes, it's back to Armstrong and the Cotton Club in Harlem. Young Charlie Parker left Kansas City for New York, too.