A Crazy Way of Lovin'

Going to a Go-Go #4: "Kansas City" (1968)

“Kansas City” 
Joya Landis
Treasure Isle JM, 1968

 

Singer Joya Landis was born in Mound City, Kansas in 1936. She died 76 years later in Lawrence, Kansas. 

At some point in her early 30s, she visited the West Indies, where she cut three recordings that were big hits in Jamaica: “Kansas City,” “Moonlight Lover,” and “Angel of the Morning,” an early version of the song that Juice Newton would take to number 4 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1980. Before that, it was a single recorded in NYC that brought her to the attention of Jamaican producer Arthur “Duke” Reid. 

I’m not a student of 1960s Jamaican reggae. But it’s easy to imagine “Kansas City” cut quickly, along with the other two singles. And then…whoosh. Joya Landis effectively vanishes into Kansas suburbia, to focus on her family. One tiny pinprick of impact in the lives of so many listeners, not to be repeated again. 

But what a pinprick it is. Jubilant, frothy, letting in as much light as the sky will allow.