Kansas City’s Drum Room at the President Hotel is a throwback to an era that no longer exists. For most of us it mainly existed in films and album covers featuring Frank, Dean, Nat and others engaged in being cooler than anyone we would ever know personally.The renovated Drum Room on the bottom floor of the hotel offers an abundance of the elegance that once graced the interior walls. Walls that echoed with the sounds of the afore mentioned acts and other jazz greats that worked the circuit in the forties and fifties when Kansas City was known for more than an also ran football team and baseball team that is better at hitting the skids than a curveball.
It was an era where acts played rooms this size regularly and could look everyone in place square in the eye while performing “My Funny Valentine” or maybe “You Go To My Head.” There was no one by the door selling shirts and mugs with their picture on them. Just outside the door was someone who would park your car for you and open the door for the dame on your arm.
I took the misses there for our anniversary and we had a wonderful dinner and split a martini that resembled an elevated candy dish. As Raymond Chandler might say “the drink packed more of a punch than Lamotta in his prime.“ The music didn’t come within a light year of the ghosts that hovered in the air. The “jazz stylings” of Max Groove saw to that. Aimless faux fusion jazz misses wildly on the hip scale at this blog.
The tab eclipsed my last couple of cable bills, but it was worth every penny. We left with a great photo and a sense of a time before the internet and the hurry up and wait times we live in. We now know that there was once a time where you could live in the moment and savor it because you couldn’t go home and hit rewind. You could only wait until the next time you could get out for another round.
1 comment:
We've been meaning to step once again inside The Drum Room since its reopening but have yet made the trip.
As for Milton's, nothing will ever top it for me. Back in the 1970's I'd walk in with an armful of jazz records for consideration and would wind up drinking for free on a trade out. Many nights Milton would invite me to sit with him at his table just inside the front door. One night sitting with him was a cat they called "Jew Baby", whose real name now escapes me. He was an old friend of Milton's from back in the 1930's. My the stories they told. "Jew Baby" added character to a place that already had it in spades.
...so catch me if you can, I'm goin' back...
m&s
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