Danny Cox obit

Kansas City musician Danny Cox, a man of 'unwavering strength and passion,' has died at 82

He was not on the list.

The first time Danny Cox visited Kansas City, as a nationally touring musician, a clerk at the Muehlebach Hotel told him Black people couldn't stay there. He eventually made a home across the state line in Kansas — and inspired generations of fans.

Kansas City musician Danny Cox, a revered figure who embodied the spirit of music and the Civil Rights Movement, has died.

Nate Cox posted news of his father's death on on social media late Friday afternoon. His father's heart gave out after a medical procedure, the younger Cox told KCUR.

"My dad always taught us that you only have so much energy in this life, your body can only produce so much energy," Nate Cox said. "He gave so much energy to the world, to his family, his friends, his fans, his music, his art. He was out of energy. He spent his energy in an amazing way."

"You lived life on your own terms with unwavering strength and passion," Nate Cox wrote in a tribute to his father on Facebook. "You sold out Carnegie Hall four times, toured the world, and shared your gift with so many."

Danny Cox recalled those Carnegie Hall shows in a 2015 conversation with KCUR's Gina Kaufmann.

"I remember walking back up to the dressing room past these pictures of all these incredible people that had been there, just in this daze," Cox said. "And the guy came back and got me and says, 'Hey they want you for an encore.'"

Cox also shared stages with Ray Charles and Jefferson Starship. He recorded albums, performed in children's plays and wrote commercial music jingles.

When Cox spoke with Kaufmann, he was 72 and had a monthly gig at the Record Bar. By then a father of 10 with grandkids, Cox treated the Record Bar gig like a family reunion, Kaufmann wrote. "He takes the stage early in the evening, before things get too rowdy, and all his grandkids come and have fun."

Cox's voice stayed even as he turned 80, said Carol Smith, who played social justice folk music for more than 40 years with Rosy's Bar & Grill.

“Throughout his life he was just a force," Smith said. "How he could sing, how he could tell a story how he could be a presence and communicate with his audience through the power of song and the power of his words.”

Cox arrived in Kansas City from Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1967, and played in iconic local venues including the Vanguard Coffee House and the Cowtown Ballroom.

He'd always been a fighter for social justice, Cox told KCUR's Chuck Haddix in 2018, recalling how he'd participated in the Civil Rights Movement in Cincinnati.

"So I started going to the jail in the 8th grade," Cox said with a laugh. "And, of course, they didn't know what to do with me. Here's a little kid, you know? They knew how to put the dogs and the hoses on the adults, but they didn't quite know what do (with a kid). I've been doing it ever since, I've been trying."

In a 2023 conversation on Up To Date, Cox recalled his own experience of discrimination when he visited Kansas City on a tour in 1963, a year before the Civil Rights Act banned racial discrimination in public places. Cox was denied entry to the Muehlebach Hotel downtown, but was accepted across the river at a Holiday Inn in Kansas City, Kansas.

Cox said he could feel the difference between what had historically been a slave state and a free state.

"Oh my, just how different it was just a couple of miles away," Cox said. "The difference was so apparent."

Cox was as versatile with folk as he was with blues and jazz. He told Haddix he was able to bend and blend musical genres because he wasn't "pretending."

Cincinnati's proximity to Appalachia exposed him to "that real mountain music, not country-western music, that's blues, you know." His uncle had a famous gospel quartet called the Silvertone Gospel Singers. His brother sang opera.

"So I was just blessed in being able to move to this music," Cox said. "And not pretend that I'm singing it. In music, man, you know, you've got 13 tones of passion. We all got to sing 13 tones. If you can feel the passion, you'll be accepted."

"I just want everybody to know how much my dad truly loved Kansas city," Nate Cox said, noting that his father had given up an art scholarship in Paris to pursue his music career, that he'd lived in San Francisco and Los Angeles and had a horse ranch in Mexico.

"He was so talented in so many ways, with all the things he loved. He lived his life to his fullest. That’s what he taught us: Follow your dreams, follow your passion, live your life, and at the end of it, hope you made your mark. He definitely did with his children and grandchildren and great grandchildren and his whole family. We’re sad but he’s always going to be here with us."

Nate Cox said the family would plan "a big hootenanny where everybody can come out." That’s what his father would have wanted.

"He wouldn’t have wanted people crying and grieving," he said. "He'd want people celebrating and remembering the good times. He was a child of the '60s, so he'd want everybody up on stage jamming and singing songs."