Transcribed article: Twelfth and Vine, once the focal point of Kansas City jazz, can be this bleak at 10 p.m., when this photograph was taken. The darkened neon sign of the old Orchid Room, where jazz greats once played, looms above two musicians and a friend relaxing on the corner. Eddie Saunders (left), who played saxophone in bands in New York, Chicago and Washington, and Abdul Hameed (right), who played the trombone four years in the Count Basie band, tell Jimmy Smith, Saunders's cousin, that they don't work regularly because their is no place left to play. Kansas City Star, November 07, 1966. Tom Stites, a retired Star reporter who was present when this photograph was captured provided the following information: This photo ran with a story I wrote when I was a young reporter for The Kansas City Star. It was a cover feature for The Sunday Star's broadsheet “magazine” of that era, published November 7, 1965 (I have a clip). The topic, which Wes Lyle's great photo captures vividly, was how Kansas City jazz had faded away since its heyday. The night Wes made the image, I’d rounded up the musicians with their horn cases and we all converged at the iconic intersection of Twelfth and Vine. I’d not been aware that Vine had been made into a dead end street when the Charlie Parker Homes public housing project was built, but a Dead End sign was affixed to the pole that held up the street sign. Suddenly the possibilities for this photo got bigger. Then Wes walked over to group the musicians on the corner — right next to the Dead End sign — and spied the tumbleweed in the Vine street gutter about 15 feet to the south; who knows how it had found this desolate resting place or how long it had been there. Wes said he debated with himself for about a nanosecond and moved it into the frame. The tumbleweed added so much to the meaning of the image. Wes was the top photographer on the nightside staff in the era when the Star company published two dailies, the afternoon Star and the morning Times. He was famous for his artistic eye, and that night I learned how much he knew about the technical end of photography. He set up a tripod on the corner across Vine street from the musicians, the tumbleweed and the Dead End sign. He attached his Nikon to the tripod with a 135-mm telephoto lens, looking west on Twelfth street along a row of sad storefronts with weatherbeaten signs, including the a sign for the defunct Orchid Room, which had been a major nightclub in the jazz heyday. It was 10 PM. Wes pressed me into service. He gave me his flash gun and instructed me to walk along Twelfth street firing the flash, staring with a flash right at the tumbleweed and the musicians. He opened the lens and told me to get going. I did. When I got back he refined his instructions and had me do it again. And again. And again. We made 7 or 8 exposures. When Wes developed the film back at the office, I was amazed how much the negatives differed. He made a 10x12 print from the best one and that’s what ran in the paper -- and the print you have in your archuve is the print the engraving was made from. I was 23 when Wes and I teamed up. I'm 79 as I write this, and I've had a good run in journalism.
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