Jim Jackson - Jim Jackson’s Kansas City Blues, Pts. 1 & 2

The importance of this song can not be understated. First of all, “Jim Jackson’s Kansas City Blues” was one of the biggest ‘race records’ of late 1927 and 1928. It has been argued that the song was the first million-selling record ever (although a number of other songs also have that claim). Such a hit from that early date already makes it important, but the song’s influence kept growing.

The melody of song was reworked repeatedly. Most notably, a direct line can be traced from “Kansas City Blues” through Charley Patton’s 1930 “Going to Move to Alabama,” finally turning up as the basis for Hank William’s “Move it On Over” from 1947. Both the melody and the style of that song were in turn used by Max Freedman and James Myers in 1952 when they wrote “Rock Around the Clock” for Bill Haley. Haley finally recorded the song in 1954 and released it as a single B-side. In 1955 “Rock Around the Clock” was played over the opening credits to the film Blackboard Jungle, after which it finally became the genre-defining hit we remember it as. ”Kansas City Blues” was also the inspiration for Wilbert Harrison’s 1959 rock and roll hit “Kansas City.”

Among the lyrics were a number of lines with interesting significance. “It takes a rocking chair to rock / a rubber ball to roll / Nice looking teasin’ brown to satisfy my soul” was only the third recorded instance of the terms “rock” and “roll” together and only the second to possibly carry a sexual connotation. The next verse begins: “T is for Texas, T’s for Tennesse.” Only a month and a half after Jim Jackson recored “Kansas City Blues,” Jimmie Rodgers recorded “Blue Yodel No. 1 (T for Texas)” which itself became a huge hit and helped “hillbilly music” (eventually called country music) take off.  The fact that those lyrics show up in both songs shows the role that ‘floating lyrics’ and stock phrases played in blues and folk music as it developed before and during the early years of recording.

Finally, I have no proof of this, but I see the popularity of this song possibly having an influence on the city of Kansas City becoming a hot-spot for jump blues and blues shouters in the 1940s (Louis Jordan and Big Joe Turner were from Kansas City while regional blues shouters like Wynonie Harris from Omaha and Jimmy Rushing from Oklahoma City made Kansas City a prime destination). Since “Kansas City Blues” was such a big hit I can see the song as just one of those things that imbedded subconsciously in the minds of the people who heard it…