60 years after their first show, Kansas City’s McFadden Brothers reunite for a new gig
The phrase “song and dance man” used to be common in the entertainment world. But in a contemporary industry rife with TikTok stars, Auto-Tuned rappers and TV competition winners, the phrase doesn’t resonate so much.
“The type of entertainment we do, most millennials have never seen it,” Ronald McFadden says.
With his brother Lonnie, the Kansas City pair — the McFadden Brothers — have been wowing audiences around the globe since the 1970s. Now, a full decade after they stopped performing together, the charismatic, seemingly ageless siblings are returning for a regular gig in a most irregular venue: a place that bears Lonnie’s own name.
Beginning March 13, the McFadden Brothers will appear every second Sunday of each month at Lonnie’s Reno Club. Housed in the lower level of the Ambassador Hotel Kansas City, the spot is an homage to KC’s Reno Club of the 1930s, where acts such as Count Basie once appeared.
“We’ll be doing the same show we did in Las Vegas and at jazz festivals in Europe,” Lonnie says. “To my knowledge, I don’t know of anybody else doing a show like this. Definitely not in Kansas City. But maybe not anywhere.”
Ronald says, “The biggest thrill of being back together is it’s happening at Lonnie’s Reno Club. I’ve done so many nightclubs that doing nightclubs is usually not exciting to me. But Lonnie’s Reno Club, from the decor to everything about it, is just so unique.”
Audiences can expect to see singer/trumpeter Lonnie and singer/saxophonist Ronald deliver a musical set that incorporates a healthy dose of tap dancing. Picture Rat Pack-era swagger as filtered through Kansas City-style jazz sensibilities. Key to their act is the brothers’ intrinsic chemistry.
“We’ve been performing together since we were 6 and 7, and it just feels right. I think together we may keep each other honest,” Ronald says.
Lonnie, 66, a year older than Ronald, has logged more solo shows over the decades than his brother — and he’s proud of his prolific headlining ventures. And yet …
“There is a certain kind of entertainment and certain style that I like to perform that I cannot perform without Ronald,” Lonnie says. “I don’t know if it’s better or worse (than my solo act). I think that would be up to the people to tell me if it’s better. I do know that I dance way more with Ronald. When I’m with myself, I don’t have to. So I don’t.”
Why has it taken this long for the brothers to reunite for a regular gig?
“I just missed his ugly face,” quips Ronald. “The truth is I’ve been raising girls, and my oldest now is 16 and youngest is 12. I’ve actually taken out the time to be daddy, where Lonnie was a daddy a lot earlier. That became a priority. Working in nightclubs, I often don’t get to see (my daughters). I had decided, ‘Well, I need to spend time with them.’”
Tap dancing brothers
The last time the McFaddens did a residency playing a full-blown nightclub show was in 2012, which coincided with a CD release at the Blue Room, in the American Jazz Museum. Although Kansas City is no stranger to talented musicians, it’s the tap dancing that really sets the McFaddens apart.
“The McFadden Brothers’ work is so distinctive because they sing, play trumpet and saxophone, choreograph tap dancing and tell stories about the history of jazz,” says Eric Willey, the director of food and beverage at the Ambassador. “It’s truly a lost art form this day and age, so you feel like you are stepping back in time.”
Well, not exactly lost, the brothers say.
“If we’re talking about the general public, what most people don’t understand is that tap is not a lost art form,” Lonnie says. “Ronald and I might still be the last two nightclub tap dancers — whereas up until the 1950s, it was common to see a tap dancer in a club. But there’s really a thriving tap community that is 50 and under … and they’re killing it! This is not something that went away.”
With origins in folk dance, modern tap styles are divided into rhythm (or jazz) and Broadway.
“Tap is probably more sound than dance,” Ronald explains. “A lot of people who teach tap dance, if they don’t teach the sound of the steps that they’re teaching, the student only gets half of the concept.”
The pair never cease to find joy in how the audience reacts to their old-school hoofing.
But when the pandemic hit two years ago, Lonnie watched as his full roster of bookings disappeared. So he began a livestream concert once a month. Then Willey invited Lonnie to the Ambassador to reveal how he had turned the parking lot into a nightclub.
“(Willey) asked if I’d be interested in playing. Of course I was interested. I was unemployed,” Lonnie recalls.
One evening, Ambassador owner Paul Coury requested that Lonnie join his table to discuss the venue’s entertainment options.
Lonnie says, “(Coury) asked me some questions, and I started giving him ideas about what to do with the band and different conceptual things. I’m thinking he’s just picking my brain. After I got halfway through everything, he said, ‘I love this. I’m going to do exactly that. And we’re going to name it after you.’ I had only known him for maybe seven or eight minutes!”
Willey describes Lonnie’s new venue as “a dark, warm-lit, speakeasy-style nightclub that captures the time period of the original 1930s Reno Club.”
He remembers the first time he saw the McFaddens partnered onstage was at a one-off reunion gig in November 2020.
“I said to myself, ‘I’m going to get them back together on the same stage for an entire performance one day.’ Anyone who knows me knows that I won’t take no for an answer,” Willey says. “I finally wore them down and convinced them that this was a good idea, and they both have embraced the experience and have told me about their sense of rejuvenation working together.”
“For now, the McFadden Brothers are performing once a month together, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it turns out to be more.”
KC to Vegas and around the world
The McFaddens originally took the stage at the behest of their father, Jimmy McFadden, a renowned KC entertainer known as “Pops.” He brought the 6- and 7-year-old brothers up for a song-and-tap version of the Broadway tune “Hey, Look Me Over” at the Hotel Muehlebach.
The brothers took years of piano and tap lessons. By the time they were attending Lincoln High School, their father had schooled them in music to the point where Lonnie says, “Both of us were starting to distinguish the difference between a Charlie Parker and a Maceo Parker.”
Lonnie and Ronald honed their professional chops in a Top 40 band, which brought them to Japan for four months in 1976.
“We were the only Black people you’d see in any city. But everybody was so nice,” Ronald says.
They played seven days a week, with only one day off a month. They returned for extended stays in Japan an additional six times.
The first official McFadden Brothers show was alongside singer Oleta Adams on July 30, 1983, at the Kansas City Music Hall. Their next extended gig was at Worlds of Fun, playing six shows a day, six days a week.
By the mid-1990s, the duo had joined Las Vegas legend Wayne Newton’s stage act, which was housed at the MGM Grand Las Vegas and Las Vegas Hilton. The McFaddens were barely in their 40s by the time they’d already done thousands of shows.
“One of the best descriptions I’ve heard for what we do came from Wayne Newton,” Lonnie says.
“One night we were getting ready to go on, and Wayne was doing interviews. And they asked him about us. He said, the reason he picked up the McFadden Brothers is because ‘they represent a style of entertainment that doesn’t exist anymore.’ And he said he’s from that same school — the Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis, Rat Pack old-school. That same school he’s from, he saw that in us.”
The two brothers also see something in each other.
Ronald says, “It’s Lonnie musical arrangements. It’s the way he hears music, the chord structures, the way he can put it together — that’s his greatest skill.”
Lonnie answers, “I think one of Ronald’s greatest skills is as a choreographer. … We have our own visual style. We don’t do like the Nicholas Brothers or the Berry Brothers. We’re the McFadden Brothers. And the way that we dance, he took what our father taught us and mixed in the styles we grew up with.”
They’re not sure how long all that style, energy and charm will continue.
“We’re 65 and 66. But when we’re 75 and 76, we won’t be able to do this,” Lonnie says. “You want to check us out before the expiration date!”
Jon Niccum is a filmmaker, freelance writer and author of “The Worst Gig: From Psycho Fans to Stage Riots, Famous Musicians Tell All.”
McFadden Brothers monthly
Lonnie and Ronald McFadden perform together every second Sunday of the month, starting March 13, at Lonnie’s Reno Club, in the lower level of the Ambassador Hotel Kansas City, 1111 Grand Blvd. Admission is $125, which includes a three-course meal, champagne toast and the show. The venue opens at 6:30 p.m., with the performance running from 7 to 10 p.m. Guests can also attend the show only after 8 p.m. for $25. See lonniesrenoclub.com.
This story was originally published March 10, 2022 at 5:00 AM with the headline "60 years after their first show, Kansas City’s McFadden Brothers reunite for a new gig."