Jay McShann, RIP

Well, we lost him. The last of the Blue Devils is no more. Jay McShann died today at the age of ... we're not entirely sure. Maybe 90. Let's say of him what Kup often said of legends: Jay was ageless.

There are many tributes already online to McShann, who arrived in Kansas City in 1937 as an ambitious young piano player and quickly created one of the most important sounds in the history of jazz music.

Let me share one memory, because it's pretty special.  Just about three years ago, I'm in my car and the phone rings. It's Mark Pender, Conan's trumpeter and a native of the area.

"Hey, man," he says, "I'm here at Soundtrek studios with Jay McShann and I thought you might want to bring your video camera by and shoot some of our session."

Would I!  So I did, and even though I had shot less than 10 hours of film and really didn't know what I was doing, I managed to gather enough tape to make for some interesting footage for Mark's next CD/DVD set.

And more to the moment, you will see my footage from that session -- one of the very last recording sessions, if not the last, McShann ever did -- on the video that our staff produced this week for this special Jay McShann tribute page on KansasCity.com.