RIP Jay McShann . . . Kansas City jazz pianist . . .

http://www.jaymcshann.com/inmemory.htm

Kansas City pianist, bandleader and songwriter Jay 'Hootie' McShann has died in hospital today (Dec. 7) after a brief illness. He was 90 years old. He was the last of the great Kansas City players, and the creator of a style that combined swing and blues and changed the course of popular music. A piano player with a unique and subtle touch, he was a bluesman at heart. His best known composition 'Confessin' The Blues' has been recorded by artists like The Rolling Stones, BB King, Little Walter, Esther Phillips, and Jimmy 'Spoon' Witherspoon among many many others. McShann was born in Muskogee, Oklahama in 1916.

Settling in Kansas City in the mid-'30s, he soon formed a small group, but by 1940 had a large band which included a young alto sax player called Charlie Parker. His links to Parker are widely known, but McShann's later role in building the career of singers Walter Brown (who co-wrote Confessin' the Blues) and Jimmy Witherspoon has been largely overlooked. Typecast as a blues band, McShann's group recorded few of his more complex jazz arrangements, but they helped build his reputation and he was able to move to New York in 1942 - however, the second World War intervened, McShann was drafted, and moved to Los Angeles after his discharge two years later. For many years, he languished in relative obscurity, but emerged again in 1969, taking up a heavy touring schedule that brought him international fame. Along the way he recorded for numerous labels, including Decca, Mercury, Vee Jay, EmArcy and Atlantic.

- more . . .

http://www.jaymcshann.com/inmemory.htm

I saw him with Pat Metheney (another KC musician!) in the eighties. One of the Last of the Blue Devils.

Never got to meet him, saw him a few times years ago at jazz events but never got the chance to meet him.

RIP Jay and thanks for the music.

Harvey Pekar and R. Crumb were both big fans of his.

More history:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jay_McShann

both volumes 1 and 2 . . . I think one of them may even be authgraphed . . . he played several times at a jazz/blues club I managed in the 70s . . . great player who left a wonderful body of work . . .

is that I came to the blues & jazz so late in my life, and late in theirs. We are now losing so many of these men; national treasures all. RIP sir.

I got to shake his hand once and tell him how much I enjoyed his work. I think about that often. It made me one degree separated from Charlie Parker.

Jay McShann
City blues pianist
Published: 09 December 2006
James Columbus McShann, pianist, blues singer and bandleader: born Muskogee, Oklahoma 12 January 1916; married (three daughters); died Kansas City, Missouri 7 December 2006.

The saxophonist Charlie Parker worked as a sideman in the pianist Jay McShann's band from 1940 to 1942. His association with Parker was to dominate the rest of McShann's life; he was never able to escape the glare of Parker's sunspots. This was inevitable but unfair, for McShann was a major player in the development of Kansas City blues style. He was its last survivor.

He had been able to cope better than any other leader with the impossible Parker. "In those days," said McShann, he would take another cat's horn, pawn it, and then take the ticket to him and say, "Man, you want your horn? Here's the ticket."

Living in Muskogee, McShann's deeply religious parents managed to pay for piano lessons for his elder sister, but couldn't afford them for him. But he listened and found out how to pick out the melodies that his sister played at home on the piano and later in church on the organ. The young boy found jazz in the late-night radio broadcasts by Earl Hines's Orchestra. Although, by the time he entered Fisk University, he could make his way on the piano, it was to be some time before he learned to read music. Short of money, McShann left halfway through his course and hiked to Tulsa:

"Soon after I got to Tulsa I was passing a hall where I heard some guys rehearsing. It was Al Denny's band and they had no piano player! I sat and listened to them and memorised the tunes that they played. I went up to see one of them and said, "Look man, I think I can play those tunes." They put the music in front of me and they thought I was reading it. I had a good ear, but they soon found out I couldn't read. Then they helped me and I learned fast."
(snip/...)

http://news.independent.co.uk/people/obituaries/article2060033.ece