Today’s Impromptus is a Kansas City Journal, and it begins with a song: “Kansas City,” from Oklahoma! A reader had a different song in mind. He says,

When you started by saying there was a song you couldn’t get out of your head, I immediately flashed to the ring tone on my phone, which is the opening few bars of “Kansas City” — the one sung by Wilbert Harrison. In my opinion, it’s right up there with “Rock around the Clock,” “Pretty Woman,” and “Be-Bop-a-Lula” as one of the best rock-’n’-roll songs of my formative years.
So, if you write about K.C. again, please give Wilbert some credit — one of the great one-hit wonders.

To listen to that song, go here. Also in my column, I write about Tom Pendergast, the boss of K.C. during the ’20s and ’30s. A reader writes,

I grew up in the North End — it’s called Columbus Park now. My father used to say that when the politicians came into the North End to get votes, Pendergast’s boys would bring the woman of the house a live chicken. My father would say, “Both sides were crooks, but at least with Pendergast you got a chicken.”

Our reader — a splendid Italian American (and NR cruiser) — adds, “When I was a teenager, ‘dagos’ were routinely stopped by the police if they were anywhere near the Southwest area of K.C.”