The deaths of former performers such as Frank “Iron Jaw” Oakley, Rock’n’Rick Patterson and Millage Gilbert convinced Gilley that the festival needed to hold a final goodbye to the community’s elders before they were gone. “We really have gotten to the point where the Black elders of Kansas City that are still playing legit blues, that are front people… I have very little left at this point,” he says. That number only grows when counting the dozens of others who have passed since the festival began in 2000. Gilley says that since the start of the pandemic, more than 30 former performers have died. It's that so many of the musicians who frequented its stages have passed away. But it’s not city regulations or a lack of funding that's bringing it to an end. Gilley says he plans for this festival to be the last. It’s being billed as “The Last Waltz,” a celebration of all those who have performed at the festival over its nearly quarter century run. This year’s festival will be at Knuckleheads Saloon in the East Bottoms of Kansas City, Missouri. Now it's returning, but not to its former home at Lavender’s amphitheater. Then, as with many other live events, COVID-19 forced the festival to take the last two years off. The festival continued at Lavender’s amphitheater from 2016 to 2019. “It would comfortably seat 2,000 to 4,000, maybe 6,000 if we pushed it.” “Finally, this guy named Frank Lavender built us an amphitheater on a property at 49th Drive,” Gilley says. In 2010, Wyandotte County officials attempted to impose several new regulations due to it being a street event, causing the festival to halt operations until 2016. In 2006, the event was forced to move to Kaw Point Park to accommodate larger crowd sizes, beginning a lengthy history of operational challenges that prevented it from becoming an annual event.Īfter low turnout in 2006, the festival took a year off but returned in 20, at 13th and State. KCK Street Blues Festival A crowd gathers during the 2003 KCK Street Blues Festival. Over the next five years the festival grew in attendance and budget, with more than 10,000 people attending in 2005, the final year it was held on 3rd Street. Gilley reached out to several musicians from KCK and held the first festival on the section of 3rd Street from Parallel Parkway up to Troupe Avenue. Kansas City's a famous town, but we didn't act like it.” “The same artist that we're having in Kansas City, we could see at these other places. “This line up of these musicians, we could see that festival anywhere,” Gilley said. His brief time working on the event led him to consider creating the more localized KCK Street Blues Festival. “There wasn't this thing in KC where you could have a shiny moment as a Kansas City, Kansas, musician.”Īfter writing for Living Blues, Gilley worked on the Kansas City Blues and Jazz Festival, which was held at the Liberty Memorial in downtown Kansas City, Missouri, from 1990 to 2001. “It just became really evident listening to people's stories,” Gilley says. With each passing year there are fewer people left to take the stage.Įven before his work with Living Blues Magazine, Gilley says he saw the disparity in opportunities for Black musicians in the area. Now, however, this celebration appears to have reached its conclusion. Since then, the festival has seen its share of successes and setbacks. In response, Gilley worked with them to organize the first Kansas City, Kansas, Street Blues Festival in 2000. In the year and a half he spent interviewing more than 100 Black musicians, Gilley came to hear the concerns many of them had about the lack of opportunity for larger performances in their own communities. In the late ‘90s, Gilley began work on a profile of Kansas City blues artists for Living Blues Magazine.
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