12th Street Reno Club (1930s) and Count Basie

Now a parking lot, this was the site of one of Kansas City's leading jazz clubs of the 1930s. Prior to 1939 when reform elements took control of Kansas City, this was the site of the original 12th Street Reno Club, one of the most successful jazz clubs during the era when Kansas City's jazz scene thrived under the "protection" of Tom Pendergast. Here, patrons could see jazz legends such as Count Basie, Charlie Parker, Hot Lips Page, and Mary Lou Williams. This was also the location of experimental radio broadcasts that shared the sounds of Kansas City Jazz with audiences well beyond the city. Like most establishments in the city, the Reno Club was segregated with the main floor being reserved for white patrons while African Americans could be admitted to the balcony.

The historic 12th Street Reno Club was once located here near the northeast corner of 12th and Cherry. Today this location is home to a parking lot, but in the 1930s, it was home to the legendary Reno Club where Jazz Greats such as Count Basie, Charlie Parker, Hot Lips Page, and Mary Lou Williams performed. In 1935, Count Basie first performed with the orchestra that would become the world-famous Count Basie Orchestra and in 1936 experimental radio broadcasts took this Kansas City sound worldwide.

Count Basie recalled “The Reno was not one of those big fancy places where you go in and go downstairs and all that. It was like a club off the street. But once you got inside, it was a cabaret, with a little bandstand and a little space for a floor show, and with a bar up front, and there was also a little balcony in there. There were also girls available as dancing partners. It was a good place to work. I liked the atmosphere down there. There was always a lot of action because there were at least four other cabarets right there on that same block, and they all had live music and stayed open late.”

The Reno Club also had a complicated relationship with the law. The club was owned by the notorious Pendergast family and there was a space behind the club where Pendergast and his associates would meet. The club was also a location for Pendergast associates to deal in drugs and prostitution. As recorded in Nathan Pearsons book, Goin' to Kansas City, John Hammond, the record producer who discovered Basie said of the club, "I'll never forget the first night, I went to the Reno...There was a whorehouse upstairs...and there wasn't enough money for liquor so obviously it would be, everybody grew pot in the backyard in Kansas City. This is how the band was able to exist."

In 1939 the Pendergast Era ended and reforms swept through the city. Many historic jazz venues were shut down or died out without the support of Pendergast associates including the historic Reno Club which shut its doors in 1939.

Driggs, Frank, and Chuck Haddix. 2005. Kansas City Jazz : From Ragtime to Bebop--a History. Oxford University Press. https://search-ebscohost-com.proxy.library.umkc.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&db=cat07616a&AN=umk.b5199034&site=eds-live&scope=site.

Pearson, Nathan W. Goin’ to Kansas City. University of Illinois Press, 1987. EBSCOhost, https://search-ebscohost-com.proxy.library.umkc.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&db=cat07616a&AN=umk.b1999332&site=eds-live&scope=site.

, KC Jazz Ambassadors. The Reno Club, Back in the Day, November 30th, 2020. Accessed March 27th, 2023. http://www.kcjazzambassadors.org/post/the-reno-club-back-in-the-day.