Critical Acclaim For Kansas City Lightning: Stanley Crouch Opus Dedicated To Jazz Legend Charlie Parker Stays Winning!!!

Because most Americans no longer read anything but social media updates, in Kansas City mainstream media has mostly ignored one of the greatest instances of American historical scholarship in recent memory.

Stanley Crouch, one of this blogger's heroes, has recently crafted a masterwork that features a jazz legend and Kansas City's golden era as the centerpiece of a sprawling narrative that ultimately ends in bittersweet tragedy but a musical legacy that endures.



Music aficionados and readers interested in Kansas City history will revel in the first part of this masterwork that's meeting with high praise.

Take a look:

Sax, Drugs And Jazz: Charlie Parker's 'Lightning'-Fast Rise

Kansas City Lightning: The Rise And Times Of Charlie Parker

Best line from a recent NPR review that's buried under a litany of liberal chatter:

"Crouch exhaustively details Parker's childhood and adolescence in mob-run Kansas City, Mo., the sordid hotbed of jazz, where the nightlife was endless and "everybody was looking for fun, for a vacation from Depression conditions, for a thrill and a laugh." He turns Parker's story into as gripping a narrative as he can, fleshing out well-known details with anecdotes and first-person accounts."

Again, this book is a significant work of scholarship for many reasons including its characterization of Kansas City as the cultural hub of the nation during the bygone jazz era.