Jay McShann

Early life and education

McShann was born in Muskogee, Oklahoma, and was nicknamed Hootie. During his youth he taught himself how to play the piano through observing his sister's piano lessons and trying to practice tunes he heard off the radio. He was also heavily influenced by late-night broadcasts of pianist Earl Hines from Chicago's Grand Terrace Cafe: "When 'Fatha' (Hines) went off the air, I went to bed." He began working as a professional musician in 1931 at the age of 15, performing around Tulsa, Oklahoma, and neighboring Arkansas.

Career

McShann moved to Kansas City, Missouri, in 1936, and set up his own big band which variously featured Charlie Parker (1937–42), Al Hibbler, Ben Webster, Paul Quinichette, Bernard Anderson, Gene Ramey, Jimmy Coe, Gus Johnson (1938–43), Harold "Doc" West, Earl Coleman, Walter Brown, and Jimmy Witherspoon, among others. His first recordings were all with Charlie Parker, the first as the Jay McShann Orchestra on August 9, 1940. The band played both swing and blues numbers, but played blues on most of its records; its most popular recording was "Confessin' the Blues" with Walter Brown on vocals.

The group disbanded when McShann was drafted into the Army in 1944. After his return two years later, he found that small groups were now taking the place of big-bands in the jazz scene. After World War II McShann began to lead small groups featuring the blues shouter Jimmy Witherspoon. Witherspoon began to record with McShann in 1945 and, fronting McShann's band, he had a hit in 1949 with "Ain't Nobody's Business".

1945–2006

McShann had a modern rhythm and blues hit with "Hands Off", featuring a vocal by Priscilla Bowman, in 1955. In the late 1960s, McShann often performed as a singer as well as a pianist, often with violinist Claude Williams. He continued recording and touring through the 1990s. Well into his 80s, McShann still performed occasionally, particularly in the Kansas City area and Toronto, Ontario, where he made his last recording, Hootie Blues, in February 2001, after a recording career of 61 years.

In 1979, he appeared prominently in The Last of the Blue Devils, a documentary film about Kansas City jazz. One of McShann's favorite stories to tell was how band member and friend Charlie Parker got his nickname "Bird". During their drive to a gig in Nebraska with a car full of musicians, the driver of the car accidentally hit a chicken. According to McShann, Parker requested the driver turn around so he could get the bird, and sat with it in the backseat of the car all the way to Lincoln.

Once they arrived he asked the keeper of the home they were staying in to cook it up for him. McShann died on December 7, 2006, in Kansas City, Missouri at the age of 90.