Taking A Cue From The Master: Henry Perry, Barbecue King Of Kansas City

Press release from the Kansas City Public Library:

June 30, 2021

Henry Perry was one of the first members of his race in Kansas City to commercialize on the business of selling well-cooked barbecued meats. His stand at Nineteenth and Highland streets is literally a mecca for hundreds who come to buy his savory delicacies.

By a Call Staff Member

From coast to coast, and most of all where auto highways stretch their busy trails, barbecue is the food supreme. Thousands of establishments from the most primitive oven with canopied porch to scintillating nicked palaces, keep the hungry multitude supplied with beef, pork, mutton, and occasionally chicken and game. Somebody started all this migration of one of the best loved southern viands from its native hearth to nation-wide travel. Kansas Citians, familiar with their home surroundings, will be surprised to learn that their own Henry Perry is probably the man due the honor of bringing the old smoke pit and “come back” sauce into commercial greatness.

The barbecue business is about as prolific in the Missouri City as saloons are in Tijuana. And the leader of the procession is His Royal Highness, Henry Perry, the barbecue King, who holds forth at Nineteenth and Highland.

Barbecue, Barbecue,
Luscious, juicy, fat and lean.
Bestest meat you ever seen –

According to the barbecue king of Kansas City, there is only one correct way of cooking barbecued meat, and that is the way he does it.

Seated in a chair before the oven in his stand at Nineteenth and Highland streets, the barbecue king alternately turned short ribs, long ribs, ham and pork, and talked to The Call reported about barbecue in general, stopping every now and then to wait on a customer or customers, for he does a thriving business among those who like the different flavor of Perry’s barbecued meats.

It has been closed to fifty years now since the king first learned the art of turning meat over a slowing burning wood fire, to add piquant sauce and “hot stuff” all of which so tickles the palate that they come back again and again for more. Down in the sunny state of Tennessee, where barbecue is barbecue., Perry learned his art. That was years ago, perhaps nearly fifty.

Today, with 57 years behind him, he still sits before his oven and turns the cooking meats, watching with a careful eye to see that each piece receives just the proper amount of heat from the hickory and oak wood fire in the pit beneath the oven with its iron grilling.

Perry is known in Kansas City, and, indeed over the entire country, as the barbecue king. That title was not lightly bestowed or easily earned. For he was the first person in this country to cook barbecue meat for his living. Until he introduced the style of cooking in a commercial way, it was only used for especial purposes – at the big camp meetings of the South, at political pow wows, and gatherings of that nature.

Having well learned his trade in Dixie, Perry came to Kansas City in 1907 to open the first barbecue stand in the city and perhaps in the state or country. As he says, "As far as I know, at that time there was not another such establishment anywhere. I believe that I was the first to enter the field."

Proving that his judgement was good, others entered the barbecue filed until now similar stands dot the entire country. In Kansas City alone today there are more than a thousand barbecue stands, so Henry Perry really started something when he opened his first little stand for the cooking and selling barbecued meats, one of the succulent viands which have made southern Negro cooks famous. That is one of the reasons he is called "The Barbecue King."

"Another reason," says Mr. Perry, "is the special way in which I prepare my meats." Cooking only over a fire made from hickory and oak woods, the meat gets that delicious flavor which is the cause of the tremendous popularity of barbecued meats." Sensing the wide appeal of the barbecued meats, commercial manufacturing houses began to offer for sale special barbecue ovens, made of steel, and with plenty of attractive doodads.

Mr. Perry has been offered such ovens by competitors, who wish to trade the new-fangled devices for a course in the Perry style of barbecuing. With his characteristic humor, Mr. Perry remarked, "I told them that I wouldn’t even have one of the tings in my place. There is only one way to cook barbecue and that is the way I am doing it, over a wood fire, with properly constructed oven and pit."

This press release was produced by the Kansas City Public Library. The views expressed here are the author’s own.