'Ain't that a bitch?' said Jay McShann
Jay McShann of Kansas City gets interviewed at the Vine
Street Bar & Grill.
One
of the grand old warriors of jazz passed through town
one summer not long ago: Jay McShann, the rarely seen Kansas City pianist and band
leader who gave Charlie Parker his first big break
Readers of album liner notes know the latter fact, just as they know that
drummer Gus Johnson and bassist Gene Ramey played with McShann before they
went on to better-known things — Johnson as the man who drove Count
Basic's comeback band in the early 1950s and Ramey, who was also with
Basic, as one of the hottest rhythm-section men in New York City.
McShann also had Al Hibbler, who later starred with Duke Elllington, on
vocals, and Jimmy Forrest on tenor saxophone, who later wrote “Night
Train.”
It was quite a pioneering outfit, this ensemble McShann led back when
bebop was being born. The boys made a little splash in New York and won
some fans in L.A., but when McShann entered the Army in 1945, they
dispersed. Aside from a few fairly well-known records like "The Jumpin'
Blues," their sound entered big-band Valhalla, where it holds ghostly sway
with the Billy Eckstine band of the same period.
Since
then, "I been gettin' older and uglier," McShann said as he
sipped on a whiskey and water in his dressing room at the Vine Street Bar
& Grill. He let out a big laugh that showed his gold front tooth.
The dental touch betrayed his game.
That and the performance he had just given with Ed Green, drums; Allen
Jackson, bass; and John Bolivar, saxophones and flute.
Deftly, sweetly, but with a deadeye bead on the blues, he rocked through a
set that began with "Willow Weep for Me’’ which he decked out with
boogie-woogie interludes that never blocked its lyrical flow. He sang
"Cherry Red" with authoritative intimacy and ended with his all time hit "Confessin'
the Blues,” a wry ballad of humility.
This
guy's game is being a world-class tickler of the barrelhouse
piano-playing line that goes back to Jelly Roll Morton, who wore a diamond
in his tooth; James P. Johnson, who was built like McShann
but wore a derby when he played; and the impish Fats Waller, of which we
all know what he looked like.
Now, in the dressing room, McShann turned to his vocalist, Priscilla
Bowman, who had just shared the spotlight with him singing a memorably
satiric version of "Release Me."
"I'm puffin' and blowin' up there, so I know you tired," he said to her.
"I know you tired. Hell, I'm twice older than you, what the hell
you thinkin' about. She's 40. And I'm 80." And he let out an even louder
laugh.
Is he as old as Benny Carter? "Well, I'm sure close, I'm after him. I'm
damn near 80. Oh, I was out here to Los Angeles, in 19 — was it '43 or
'44? Way back then.: played out here at the Plantation Club. I played out
here in Hollywood. I played at NBC, did a lot of stuff with NBC. I had the
big band then.
"And then later on, I got kids; You got to put them kids in school and
take care of 'em. That shut it off after then. Now I got two
great-grandkids, three grandkids. Ain’t that a bitch? Whoo-ee!"
He
first met Bird, as Parker became known, when the immortal-to-be
was toting his alto saxophone around his native Kansas City, Mo., after a
trip to the Ozarks with George Lee's band. Parker was 17.
"I ran into him, heard him blowin' and we talked. So I said, 'Well, if we
get a chance, we'll blow together.' So we did, it happened that way."
The veteran jazzman smiled wisely.
"At one time, Bird came to me and said, 'Man, this John Jackson (the other
alto player) is readin’ rings around me.' We had a lot of new music at the
time. He says, 'I gotta go in the woodshed for a couple of days. And when
I come out the woodshed, if I don't cut that stuff by sight, you can fine
me.' Bird came out and Bird cut it better than anybody."
Before
he reached town on that rare 1987 visit, McShann had been
playing at a club in Kansas City, Mo., where he still lives. Before that,
he tore it up in Otter Crest, Ore., at the annual jazz festival there.
He's on his way to Oslo, Norway, for another festival. "I'm just going
over there and I'll be playin' with some guys over there. I don't know
who-all's on the bill, you know. A lot of gigs I do are like that, I never
know who I'll be playing with.
"And I do some of those things they have on television like MT, what is
that?"
MTV?
"Yeah, and those things that they do, on, uh, PB ..."
PBS?
"Yeah, PBS.
"I've been moving around a bit more, these days. I'm kinda moving around
quite a little bit more than I have been."
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