“NAN WAS A SOLID GAS”…….. David Basse

nan hill2David Basse is one of Kansas City’s best-known contemporary jazz artists. During his tenure broadcasting at Kansas Public Radio in Lawrence, he met Nan Hill, a devout listener and dynamo with unfettered knowledge of the Blues and Jazz Scene. She would come to write the radio host often. She composed her letters as she listened to Basse’s show on the radio and critique his programs as she felt she needed to. This Jazz Aficionada took her job as Mr. Basse’s appointed co-pilot quite seriously. Never could this radio host have imagined, while spreading inspiration with the power of music throughout the airwaves, that he in turn would be galvanized by the passion of this dear soul reaching back to him. Following is a moving tribute by David honoring Nan after her passing.

1 June 2012
Nan Hill
I programmed a jazz tribute to Nan Hill on Kansas Public Radio last night. The evening sounded a lot like other jazz programming on KPR, yet she would have known the difference: Thelonious Monk, John Coltrane, Kurt Elling, Ahmad Alaadeen… music that Nan might have labeled “Nothing but class, and three solid hours of it – a symphony,” she used to say in her weekly handwritten letters to me at the station. I have every one of Nan’s letters saved meticulously – in the order she sent them. Most have been archived in my section of the LaBudde Special Collections at the University of Missouri, Kansas City. Nan knew her jazz. She loved to listen to the radio while lying down, in order to REALLY LISTEN. Living in Lawrence, Kansas, her favorite shows were hosted by Bob McWilliams, Bob Parlocha, and me. Nan was a lifelong listener of jazz radio, and over the years, she named her all-time favorite hosts to me in her extensive letters. She listened to programming on KPR, sleeping and awake – something that I began doing as a teenager, to get jazz by osmosis, get it into my soul. Nan was the only other person I have ever met who could relate to that: listening to jazz while sleeping. We discovered many such similarities over the past few years.

Nan Hill was my co-pilot. I called her that on air when I needed to let her know that the next song, or preceding song, was played in answer to a request or comment that she had made in her weekly letter. That’s just how Nan and I rolled. If I took a new turn, and played some blues, she responded. If I played two ballads in a row – Dexter Gordon, or whatever, she knew, and she knew that I had programmed that with her in mind. Often times after programming a show, in the comfort of the air studio, I would have the time to savor Nan’s weekly letter, and would be surprised to read that she had requested the very same songs that I had programmed. We were completely in tune. If you are a close friend of Nan’s, or a family member, I may even know when you called her on a Saturday afternoon. Nan always gave me a complete rundown of what I had played and when, until someone who “wasn’t hip to jazz” happened to call and take her away from her “work,” which was listening to and commenting on my show. There was no messing around going on in this relationship. It was a jazz union. I tried, back in 2004, to get her to email me so I could respond in real time, but, Nan wrote letters, on yellow legal paper, stuffed into number 10 envelopes. The letters were “old school,” like the music she loved. I responded with a few letters a year to attempt to balance out the volumes that she put out in my honor. If she felt bad, which she often did, she would send a simple card with Billie Holiday or Charlie Parker on it, and a short note: “Stay hip,” or “Great show, you
are the hippest” ~Nan.

I miss Nan Hill more than anyone will know. She was my co-pilot; she was Ms. C.P. – in David-Bassereference to the John Coltrane composition Mr. P.C. The song was written for Paul Chambers, Trane’s long-time bassist, and I realized last night how much Chambers is the star of that piece, driving everyone in the band to perform fabulous solos without being featured himself. That’s a jazz thing. That is exactly what Nan did each week with her solid devotion to me and my colleagues: she pushed the music along, influencing us without getting in the way. Nan fell by the station for a visit once when her granddaughter was in town from California. Nan was dressed like Norma Desmond, with black sunglasses and a brocade wrap around her head. I know she was training her granddaughter to listen to jazz by insisting on the outing. The two of them sat quietly in the studio and watched me program the entire afternoon. From then on, the weekly letters not only included stories from Nan’s active memory and tales of her daily activities, Nan also kept me apprised of the goings on of her beloved granddaughter. It was the hippest. After several years of letters, I decided to call her. I invited her to attend a few jazz shows, the very special ones I offered to drive to Lawrence to pick her up and return her when she was too tired to hang. Once, she actually took me up on the offer, for a holiday jazz event that KPR sponsored at Liberty Hall. Nan reserved a room across the street at the Eldridge Hotel to be close to a bed if she needed to lie down. We talked and wrote back and forth several times while making plans. When the big day came, a serious blizzard hit Lawrence right at the end of my 4pm shift. Nan couldn’t make the scene. She had to hear the gig on the radio, listening and commenting on every nuance of the party – both times it aired!

Nan Hill heard Monk live in a nightclub. She went to shows back in the day at Baker’s Keyboard Lounge in Detroit. She heard Trane, Duke, and Cab Calloway in movie theaters. Her knowledge of jazz was immense, her commentary on my programming, uncanny. When she first started writing me, I asked her in a letter to be totally honest, to tell me when the show was sub-par, or when I was off my game. She took the “job” very seriously; she listened intently. I played Lou Donaldson’s “Whiskey Drinkin’ Woman” in her honor to make her laugh, which brought on stories from the old days of drinking with her friends, of being in Detroit and attending jazz shows with her mother. Detroit is where Donaldson hails from, and Nan wrote of going out night clubbing when the greats of jazz actually went from town to town, club to club, playing their music.

Nan was a solid gas. Nan was no square. Nan was hip and sharp until the day she left the planet. She hurt. She was in constant pain, but she did her job each week as if her life depended on it. She was a teacher and an incredible help to me, teaching me the ways of jazz, same as Alaadeen, Bobby Watson, Mike Melvoin, Phil Woods, and others have done. You see, jazz is passed on by mentoring. It can be a word, a nod, a slight mention that changes it all, just the way one note changes a composition. Nan will live on through the letters she wrote me and my colleagues. Nan and I will continue to produce jazz programming for many years to come. I have garnered her sensibilities and captured them for future use on my shows. I may no longer exclaim weekly, “This is for Ms. C.P., my constant companion,” or if I do, you and I may remember how I feel about Nan Hill.

The David Basse Collection is located in the LaBudde Special Collections, Miller Nichols Library, UMKC. Thanks to Mr. Basse’s love and diligence those many years, Nan Hill is with us still. To read her letters is to feel her soul. Her personality was infectious and it radiates in her every word.

Teresa Wilson Gipson – Libraries Information Specialist II, LaBudde Special Collections

Evie Quarles and Her Muse

KIC ImageAfter 35 years of designing greeting cards, Evie Quarles finally decided to pursue her innate yearning to become a professional photographer. In the Fall of 1997 her son Josh persuaded her to put down her paintbrush, pick up a camera and enroll in a photography class at Penn Valley Community College. What Evie would choose to photograph was not to be of the usual common nature, but rather a phenomenon ingrained into her spirit at a very early age, referred to as the Blues. Growing up in West Tennessee, she would accompany her father to joints to service Juke Boxes on weekends or in the summertime. It was in the black joints she would discover her call to the Blues. In her words, “the call would come as a whisper”, because “race’ music was not played on the radio in those days. Parents did not want their teenagers to be influenced by the Devil’s music.

A few months into her photography class she was wandering around 39th and Main iMillage Gilbertn Kansas City, looking for visual material for her final exam. She heard music coming from the open door of the Grand Emporium, a local Juke Joint. She wandered in and quickly became immersed in the music of Millage Gilbert’s Blues. When the band took a break she introduced herself to Millage and asked if she could photograph his next set. He approved her request,, and so here her new journey began.  Quarles soon contacted the proprietor Roger Naber to obtain permission to photograph local & national acts, to which he agreed. For the next seven years the Grand Emporium would become her “Muse”. GE

In May of 2013, Ms. Quarles bestowed upon the LaBudde Special Collections a generous selection of photographs from her vast collection. The black & white images create a compelling depiction of Quarles’ love and passion for the epic American art form known as the Blues.

Teresa Wilson Gipson

L. Perry Cookingham Collection: A Salute to Our Veterans of the Armed Forces

0554Known as Armistice Day or Veteran’s Day, November 11th  signifies the demise of World War I when Allied Forces signed an Armistice Agreement with Germany in 1918.  Recognizing their sacrifice and duty to country, we continue to honor our Veterans on this historical date each year.

Perry Cookingham, former City Manager of Kansas City, Missouri was called to duty and served in World War I. Per his request, he and several buddies from his hometown of Danville, Illinois were assigned to Company B of the 310th Signal Battalion, which was located at the front for a period of 5 months prior to this world changing event. Following are excerpts from a diary penned by Cookingham and titled: A Few Little Incidents of the War and My Travels with the “Army of Occupation”. Depicted are personal accounts of Cookingham and his fellow soldiers leading up to the Armistice. Obviously it was ever business as usual for our courageous warriors as Cookingham notes on his October 23rd entry. Not only did he have KP Duty (Kitchen Police) on his birthday but they were also shelled by the enemy. Happy Birthday!

_____________________________________________________________

SEPT 28 – Attack of appendicitis
Off eight days.

Oct 15 – Came down with
cold. Could not talk
for four days.

Oct 21 – Well again.
Moved to Monsard.
Living on public sq.
Real homelike. Shelled.

Oct 22 Worked

Oct 23 – Birthday. K.P.
Shelled

Oct. 24 to Nov. 4. Worked
on permanent lines.
Shelled every night
with 9” babies. Co. C
man wounded. Dirt
flying everywhere.
Hit by a few. Thot [sic]
it was a big shell
bursting on my head.

Nov. 5 – Moved to hills
back of Buxerelles [sic].
Nice house. Thanks to
the boche.

NOV. 5 – 11 Worked
on permanent line
near St. Benoit. Shelled
every day. Tore for the
dugouts. Working
½ mile from line!

NOV – 11 – “Finis la Guerre”
Firing ceased. Worked
under the heavy barrage
of last six hours. No
one hurt. Sure lucky.
Went up to see the
boche come over.
Talked to several. Some
sight.cookingham

NOV. 11 – 17 Worked on lines
and waited for orders.
Transferred to occupation
army.

November 11, 1918 would not be the conclusion of all war-related activity. There would
still be an aftermath of responsibilities and Cookingham and others were to remain on active duty through February of 1919 according to General Orders No, 38.-A, by General John J. Pershing, Commander in Chief

FREE event: Chuck Haddix to discuss his recently published Charlie Parker biography

The life and music of Charlie "Bird" ParkerChuck Haddix will discuss his book, Bird: The Life and Music of Charlie Parker, November 6 at 6:00pm in the Jeannette Nichols Forum of the new Miller Nichols Learning Center. The program is free and open to the public and will also feature live performances by Bobby Watson and friends. Complimentary parking is available on the 5th & 6th floors of the Cherry Street Garage. UMKC Friends of the Library proudly sponsor this event as inaugaral program in their new portFOLio series.

In Memory of Patricia Huyett and Her Intrepid Life’s Journey

 KIC ImageThe Patricia Huyett Collection was gifted to the LaBudde Special Collections in April, 2011 by Patricia Huyett. Ms Huyett, a former Alumnus and Professor of the University of Missouri, Kansas City was a Renaissance woman in the truest sense of the word, and this collection reflects those broad identities. Among the jewels of this collection are her personal journals, which range in emotion from whimsical to compelling. As she documents the experience of a young girl’s journey into womanhood, she freely expresses her most intimate thoughts; fears and the hopes of who she is and what she wished to achieve on a daily basis and ultimately in life. As one peruses the hundreds of pages of text throughout the collection, they are transported into a unique experience and provided an inkling of what life can hold when creativity and passion show no boundaries. Huyett pens her life’s lessons and cosmic imagination into the form of poetry, short stories, novellas, and even songwriting. Also included in this collection is a series of correspondence, the bulk of which is personal, along with college papers; teaching materials; graphics and photographs.  Ms Huyett shares her inner most senses and reveals what motivates her means to an end. As a writer, she is articulate, with a sharp wit and an infinite compassion for her fellow being. The journals are a glaring testament to the historic significance of personal histories and the fading practice of putting pen to paper in the form of diaries, letters, etc. The latter will serve to deny future generations the historical bounty we now take for granted. Sadly, the emotions and interactions of impending ancestors are vanishing into the age of digital eventuality.

KIC Image

Teresa Wilson Gipson, Library Information Specialist II, LaBudde Special Collections

Chuck Haddix to discuss his new Charlie Parker biography

The life and music of Charlie "Bird" ParkerWhile it’s not unusual to hear our own Chuck Haddix on the radio, this week he will have an unusual time slot and a different program – he’s appearing as a guest on Up to Date with Steve Kraske to discuss his new Charlie Parker biography and the “Spirituality and All that Jazz”  event scheduled for Wednesday, October 2 at Unity on the Plaza.  The Unity program will feature a narrated musical debut of the book that includes Bobby Watson, Tim Whitmer, and other musical friends, so tune in to 89.3 FM or kcur.org at 11:00am on Thursday to learn more.