Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Jay McShann, born James Columbus McShann on January 12, 1916 in Muskogee, Oklahoma began played the piano from the age of 12. His primary education came from Earl “Fatha” Hines late-night radio broadcasts from the Grand Terrace Café. Leaving home he spent time at college and working with bands throughout Oklahoma, Arkansas, Arizona and New Mexico.
In the 1930 Jay moved to Kansas City working with both local groups and his own band with his 1938 band comprised of Charlie Parker, Bernard Anderson, Al Hibbler, Paul Quinichette, Earl Coleman, Ben Webster and Walker Brown, creating a music that would become known as the Kansas City sound.
Nicknamed Hootie, it was during the 1940s that he stood at the forefront of the blues and hard bop jazz musicians mainly from Kansas City. His first recordings were all with Charlie Parker, the first as “The Jay McShann Orchestra” on August 9, 1940. After World War II he began to lead small groups featuring blues shouter Jimmy Witherspoon. Witherspoon started recording with McShann in 1945, and fronting McShann’s band, and had a hit in 1949 with “Ain’t Nobody’s Business”.
Jay McShann was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame, was nominated twice for a Grammy Award, performed regularly with violinist Claude Williams and continued to recording and touring into the nineties around Kansas City and Toronto, Ontario. The blues and jazz pianist Jay McShann, whose career spanned more than sixty years, passed on December 7, 2006, at St. Luke’s Hospital in Kansas City.