The memory of the American jazz

Nearly 50 years after his death, jazz legend Charlie Parker's fame hasn't waned - especially in his birthplace, where his legacy is everywhere, including the American Jazz Museum. The 55,000-square-foot structure, which also serves as home to the Negro League Baseball Hall of Fame and the Horace M. Peterson III Visitors Center, opened in 1997. It presents an array of artifacts, photographs and instruments, mostly spotlighting the work of saxophonist Parker, vocalist Ella Fitzgerald, composer Duke Ellington and trumpeter Louis Armstrong.

The former director of Detroit's African American Museum, said more than 350,000 people visit the American Jazz Museum and the Negro League Baseball Hall of Fame each year. The museum spans two floors, beginning with a huge map of 18th and Vine embedded in the floor of the lobby and ending with the Blue Room, a reproduction of an old nightclub near 18th and Vine.

The room has a bar and is open four nights a week with live music. Inside the visitors centre, a 25-minute video provides a visual narrative about early Kansas City jazz history. The film also explores the lives of some musicians who helped shape the Kansas City blues-riff style, including pianist/bandleaders Bennie Moten and Count Basie, saxophonists Lester Young and Coleman Hawkins, and blues shouters Big Joe Turner and Jimmy Rushing.

Also depicted are some of the old clubs that served as nurseries to these artists. From there, visitors are ushered into the Jazz Theater, where another film, narrated by singers Fitzgerald and Betty Carter and conductor/educator David Baker, addresses the evolution of jazz, from ragtime to more modern styles.