Myra Taylor: Kansas City Jazz Legend By Lisa Bauer Myra Taylor One evening last October, KC jazz legend Myra Taylor spoke to a hushed audience at the monthly Jazz Ambassadors meeting. Best known for her singing and dancing, Myra is also a fascinating storyteller. And that night she took the Jazz Ambassadors on a sentimental journey down the streets of Kansas City in the '30s, into the nightclubs of gangsters, and overseas during the Vietnam War. Born in Bonner Springs, Kansas, Myra Taylor learned how to tap dance on the sidewalks of Kansas City. "Since there was no money for tap shoes, we would dance on the sidewalk," she recalled. The clickety-click tapping sounds rising from the pavement was enough to satisfy the young Myra for a while, and it gave her an opportunity to practice the steps that would enable a lifelong career of singing and dancing. Myra Taylor still remembers the first night she had the chance to perform. Her friend, Pearl, was already dancing in a club near 18th and Woodland and she asked Myra to join her one Halloween night. "Just for fun, I decided to do it," Myra said, "even though I had to borrow a costume from Pearl." The club owner was so impressed, Myra was hired on the spot... and her friend was fired. Myra disapproved. "When I found out Pearl had been fired, I quit immediately." At the tender age of 15 -- when many of us are still trying to figure out what we want to be when we grow up -- Myra Taylor began her career as an entertainer at the Sunset Club on 12th street. Joining her was another friend, Christiana Buckner, and it was a little tricky for two 15-year-old girls to get in at such a young age. "We would have to go around the back and crawl through the window... and we were laughing the whole time! You know, everything is so funny when you're 15 years old!" After performing to a packed house at the Sunset, the girls would crawl back out the window and walk over to the Reno Club, which was also located on 12th street. "The Reno was run by gangsters," Myra said. "So, unlike the black clubs, they never had to worry about the police coming in and saying anything about minors being there." Those gangsters were also "big tippers," but the house kept the money and the musicians were paid $14 a week. While performing years later in California ("I think it was around 1944"), someone from the USO heard Myra in a club and contacted her agent. She was then asked to join forces with a USO tour out of New York. "They (the USO) asked me if I wanted to go out for two weeks," Myra explained. "The first week out, I loved it. I loved it." That "two weeks" would become much more. Mostly because of travel. "Since we had to play all the military bases across the United States, it took six months to get from the West Coast to Garden City, Kansas. And another six months to get back to New York. We hit all the bases up and down the coast and throughout the southern United States." This was also during the time of a segregated military. "In those days, the military was divided. The blacks were on one side of the base and the whites were on the other. So, there would be a show for each area. The hospital show was the only one that wasn't segregated. Anyone could attend that one." In 1961, as the war in Vietnam was beginning to heat up, Myra traveled overseas to perform as a featured soloist "with military bands; any group my agent could book." She went straight to the front lines and performed everywhere, including the jungles of South Vietnam. "It was a dangerous time; we couldn't even drive over a piece of paper for fear is was a land mine." The performers carried machine guns, shotguns and pistols. In her lengthy career, Myra Taylor has performed all over the world, from Saigon, Vancouver and Juarez, to Dublin, West Berlin and the Philippines. (And that's not to mention her memorable 1940-41 stint as the vocalist with KC's Harlan Leonard.) On one occasion, the night before she was to perform at the Opera House in the Philippines, she attended a show at the same venue. Myra was impressed with the performance, but to her dismay, she discovered that no one applauded after that night's performance had ended. "After the performers finished singing, I was just clapping away... but then I realized no one else was! I thought: there is something wrong here! These entertainers are out-of-sight! And no one is clapping! I hated to go to work the next day for the opening of my own show." When Myra did go out on stage the following night, she performed her first two numbers, and, as it had done the previous evening, the audience remained silent. Disturbed by this, Myra decided to try something different. As she began her next song ("Personality"), she invited the audience to join in with her. "The audience joined in... and they went crazy as I strolled along the stage. They clapped and stomped so hard, the owner, who lived upstairs, came running downstairs to see what the commotion was about. He thought there was a riot! Never before had he heard that kind of noise coming from the theater!" Myra Taylor has not only been singing and dancing her way around the world these last 65 years, she has also appeared onstage in "Poison In The Grapevine" and "Africana," in the movies "Strange Fruit" and "Dribble," and she has made several appearances on the television sit-com, "The Jeffersons." And there was her hit R&B song, "The Spider and the Fly," inspired by an old nursery rhyme. While touring with the USO in 1944, she wrote the piece and then asked her friend Eubie Blake to listen to it and tell her how it should finish. "After singing the song for him, Eubie simply said, 'It's finished. It's right just the way you have it!'" "When I write a song, I visualize the whole thing," Myra said. "It's always about something that has happened... something I've seen, something that happened to me in my life. And I like to laugh, so I like to stay away from sad things. I like for people to be happy." One thing that puts a smile on Myra's face is reminiscing about the old 18th and Vine district. And what she remembers most about the district in its heyday are the restaurants with live music, and the crowds walking along the sidewalks. "It was almost like watching a fashion show." "(Today) 18th and Vine is nothing like what it use to be," Myra said. "They need to open four or five places that offer different kinds of music. And they need to bring in other cultures. For example, the Latinos are wonderful entertainers. If people have a variety of things to see and hear, it will keep them coming back." Myra Taylor is someone who, for over six decades, has kept them coming back. Her music, stories and memories have been warming hearts for years, and her well-earned status as a local jazz legend has its roots in the glory days of Kansas City jazz. Don't miss any opportunity you may have to enjoy a performance by this Kansas City jazz treasure. Myra Taylor will put a smile on your face, and a bounce in your step. And she will remind you that the authentic sounds of Kansas City jazz live on.     RETURN TO FEBRUARY 2000 MAIN INDEX ------------------------------------------------------------------------ © Kansas City Jazz Ambassadors 1996-2001. All rights reserved.