So I found Kansas City to be a heavenly city-- music everywhere in the Negro section of town, and fifty or more cabarets rocking on Twelfth and Eighteenth Streets.

[...] This was my first visit to Missouri's jazz metropolis, a city that was to have a big influence on my career.

With my sisters, Lucille and Louise, who knew every speak-easy in town, I began to make the rounds from Hell's Kitchen on Fifth Avenue to a club on Eighteenth where I met Sam Price. Sammy was playing an unusual type of blues piano, which I thought could hardly be improved upon. I had the luck to hear him again when we were both in New York during 1934.

One night we ran into a place where Ben Pollock had a combo, which included Jack Teagarden and, I think, Benny Goodman. The girls introduced me to the Texas trombonist, and right away we felt like friends.

After work, he and a couple of musicians asked us to go out, and we visited most of the speaks downtown. One I remember particularly because it was decorated to resemble the inside of a penitentiary[. ...] In these weird surroundings I played for the boys and Jack got up and sang some blues. I thought he was more than wonderful.