- published: 06 Sep 2015
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Kansas is an American rock band that became popular in the 1970s initially on album-oriented rock charts, and later with hit singles such as "Carry On Wayward Son" and "Dust in the Wind". They currently tour in North America and Europe.
Dave Hope (bass), Phil Ehart (drums, percussion), and Kerry Livgren (guitars, keyboards, synthesizers) formed a progressive rock group in 1970 in their hometown of Topeka, Kansas, along with vocalists Lynn Meredith and Joel Warne, and keyboardist Don Montre, keyboardist Dan Wright, and saxophonist Larry Baker.
A year earlier, Meredith, Montre, Wright and Livgren were performing in a band called The Reasons Why. After changing the band's name to Saratoga, they started playing Livgren's original material with Scott Kessler playing bass and Zeke Lowe on drums. In 1970, they changed the band's name again to Kansas and merged with members of rival Topeka progressive rock outfit White Clover. This early Kansas group, which lasted until 1971 when Ehart, Hope, and some of the others left to reform White Clover, is sometimes referred to as Kansas I.
Kansas (i/ˈkænzəs/) is a U.S. state located in the Midwestern United States. It is named after the Kansas River which flows through it, which in turn was named after the Kansa Native American tribe, which inhabited the area. The tribe's name (natively kką:ze) is often said to mean "people of the wind" or "people of the south wind," although this was probably not the term's original meaning. Residents of Kansas are called "Kansans."
For thousands of years what is now Kansas was home to numerous and diverse Native American tribes. Tribes in the Eastern part of the state generally lived in villages along the river valleys. Tribes in the Western part of the state were semi-nomadic and hunted large herds of bison. Kansas was first settled by European Americans in the 1830s, but the pace of settlement accelerated in the 1850s, in the midst of political wars over the slavery issue. When officially opened to settlement by the U.S. government in 1854, abolitionist Free-Staters from New England and pro-slavery settlers from neighboring Missouri rushed to the territory to determine if Kansas would become a free state or a slave state. Thus, the area was a hotbed of violence and chaos in its early days as these forces collided, and was known as Bleeding Kansas. The abolitionists eventually prevailed and on January 29, 1861, Kansas entered the Union as a free state. After the Civil War, the population of Kansas grew rapidly, when waves of immigrants turned the prairie into farmland. Today, Kansas is one of the most productive agricultural states, producing high yields of wheat, sorghum and sunflowers. Kansas is the 15th most extensive and the 33rd most populous of the 50 United States.
Steven J. "Steve" Morse (born 28 July 1954) is an American guitarist and composer, best known as the founder of the Dixie Dregs, and the guitar player in Deep Purple since 1994. Morse's career has encompassed rock, country, funk, jazz, classical, and fusion of these musical genres. In addition to a thriving solo career, he enjoyed a brief stint with Kansas in the mid 80s.