This was written in 1952 by the team of Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, who went on to write hits for Elvis Presley, Ben E. King, and many others. Leiber, the lyricist in the duo, wanted to write a song like Count Basie's "Going To Chicago Blues," where Basie takes off for Chicago and leaves his woman behind. Leiber came up with a scenario where a woman is driving the singer crazy ("Well, if I don't leave that woman I know I'm gonna die"), so he heads for Kansas City, looking to find some of the "crazy little women" they have there.
Why is Kansas City the setting for this song? For one thing, it sings really well. For another, that's where Count Basie and Charlie Parker recorded, and Leiber and Stoller considered it a homage to the city.
Leiber and Stoller wrote this around the same time they composed "Hound Dog" for the blues singer Big Mama Thornton (the song later became a huge it for Elvis). And while "Kansas City" was one of the first songs by the duo that was widely recorded, it was not the first song they wrote, or even their first published song. The book Hound Dog: The Leiber & Stoller Autobiography names "Nosey Joe," "Hard Times," "Real Ugly Woman," "Ten Days in Jail," and "That's What the Good Book Says" as previously written and released songs.
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