CHARLES PERKINS

Herman and bassist Charles Matthews with Carmel Jones.
Trombonist Bill Drybread and drummer Vince Bilardo were
members of the Kansas City Philharmonic. Bill Trambauer was
the trumpet professor at UMKC. Pianist and composer John
Elliott – the legendary Kansas City jazz theory guru – had a full
teaching studio and served as “drillmaster for the Kix Band.”
During their more than twenty years together, the Kix
Band backed up Bud Brisbois, John Park, Rich Matteson,
“Porky” Panico, Urbie Green, Bobby Rosengarden, and Arnie
Lawrence. They were Marilyn Maye’s first-call big band for local
gigs. Al Cohn, Bob Brookmeyer, and John Pope wrote special
arrangements for the group. Downbeat
called them “a smoothly
functioning, swinging group that seems to have excellent soloists
in every chair.” They performed their version of the Kansas
City sound and stood as an example to a younger generation.
“You tend to play solos like ones you’ve heard,” explains Ben
Gowler, an original member of the Junior Kix Band trombone
section. “Unless your school had a jazz band or you listened to
big band jazz on your own, you wouldn’t know what to play
in a solo.” Trumpeter Mike (Barrett) Eaton, another founding
member, says, “We tried to copy as many of the Kix Band’s licks
and phrasings as we could.” With few exceptions, mentoring
took the form of private lessons. Jess Cole taught Greg Howard.
Many of the teenagers took theory lessons from John Elliott.
For Jack Lightfoot, a trumpet student of Bill Traumbaur’s at
the UMKC Conservatory of Music, and trombonists Mike
Rieman, Doug Bundy, Reich Gardner, Ben Gowler and later
Mike Young – all students of Bill Drybread – attending Kix
Band concerts was a way of extending those lessons.
On the afternoon of April 2, 1967, the Kansas City Jazz
Festival was about to begin. Stan Kenton and his band were
there. Herb Ellis and Marilyn Maye were already in the wings.
Members of the Kix Band mingled throughout the auditorium.
Their scheduled evening spot gave them plenty of listening time.
As festival emcee Bill Brewer took the stage to introduce the
Junior Kix Band, calling them “the stars of tomorrow,” sixteen
very anxious teenagers prepared for the first downbeat. Chris
Mayer introduced “A Shot in the Dark” and then a tune written
by lead trumpeter Hal White, “Song of the Vulgar Boatmen.”
Trumpeter Mike Metheny remembers looking out into the
cavernous auditorium and thinking, “we’ve hit the big time.”
Against the late-sixties backdrop of draft lotteries and
student riots, Junior Kix Band members faced an unsettling
future. But this group of teenagers in middle America found
big band music a way of transcending politics. Like their big
band brothers before them, they worked to perfect a musical
foundation that would serve them for life.
The Junior Kix Band would go on to play both the 1968
and 1969 Kansas City Jazz Festivals. A 1969 Downbeat
review
called them “one of the most polished groups of the festival” and
stated, “they unleashed a furious and most professional assault,
with outstanding work from every section.” Until their demise
in the mid-seventies, the group also made it their mission to
introduce their generation to a new era of big band music by
playing at high school assemblies throughout the area.
As they moved into their adult lives, many of the alumni
established successful careers in music, such as familiar Kansas
City players Stan Kessler, Rod Fleeman, Mike Metheny, Mike
(Barrett) Eaton and Jack Lightfoot. Mike Young and Mike
Reiman spent their careers in Chicago. Doug Bundy played
for years in Los Angeles, as did Dave Scott who, along with
Dave Glenn, spent much of his career in New York City. Gary
(Fike) Barr, Jim Weinberg, and Ben Gowler played in Las Vegas.
Greg Howard was the assistant musical director at Worlds of
Fun and later toured with bands. Bill Noll, lead alto of the first
band, became an orchestra conductor.
Some former Junior Kix Band members blended their
musical lives with musical professions. After L.A., Doug Bundy
worked for a music company. Ben Gowler left Las Vegas to
become a high school band director and Dave Glenn – now in
demand for jazz camps all over the world – ran the jazz department
at Whitman College.
Chris Mayer, who died in 2012, became a Kansas City
lawyer. Jim Weinberg returned to Kansas City from Las Vegas
and, until his death in 2011, was a builder. Reich Gardner runs
a successful financial planning firm, as did Greg Howard until
his recent retirement.
Hal White was valedictorian of his Princeton class, obtained
a Ph.D. in economics at MIT and spent his career as a
professor of Economics at the University of California in San
Diego. His 2012 obituary described him as “one of the world’s
leading economists.” But perhaps the statement that best defined
White, and the spirit of all his big band brothers regardless
of generation, was this: “He carried his trumpet with him on
travels around the world in case the opportunity to play with
a local group arose.”
Carolyn Glenn Brewer’s book Changing the Tune: the Kan-
sas City Women's Jazz Festival
will be published in March,
2017 by the University of North Texas Press.
JAZZAMBASSADORMAGAZINE•OCTOBERNOVEMBER 23