Jay McShann

Kansas City got a little quieter yesterday with the death of legendary jazz and blues pianist Jay McShann.

I count myself as especially lucky to have met this warm, kind and gentle gentleman on three or four occasions.

I am a member of a very small and elite club that will never open the membership rolls ever again. I worked for perennial Handy winner Roger Naber at the (original)Grand Emporium for a couple of years when we first hit Kansas City, and I was so burned out on health care that the sight of a set of scrubs made me shriek and pull my hair and run away.

Back then, the Grand Emporium was a juke-joint and now it's just another nightclub. No musicians tending bar during the day, no luthiers repairing guitars in the corner as tourists from all over the world marvel at the presence of the nights headliner (Taj Mahal, Dave Alvin, Leon Russell, Lavay Smith, Michelle Shocked, Dick Dale, Marcia Ball, John Mayal, Dave Edmonds, Lonnie Brooks - fill in your favorite GE artist here) - sitting at the bar the afternoon before their show, feasting on Amazing Grace's bar-b-que and joking with the staff and daytime regulars just like a normal person.

Everyone else knows Patrice Pike as the singer Tommy Lee called a bitch on Rockstar: Supernova (fellow MOblogger Strannix has the best Supernova coverage I've seen). I know her from the Grand Emporium.

Everyone else knows Kathleen Sebelius as Kansas Governor. I know her first and foremost as a drinker of martinis and lover of the blues; and as a genuinely nice person (which is probably a prerequisite for electoral politics).

It was at the GE that I met over 90% of the people I know that other people have heard of, and Jay McShann was one of those people. Sometimes I scroll through my cell phone and I will see a phone number I just can't believe I actually have, and wouldn't have if not for that job at that bar.

But because of that bar, I am not just sad today, the day after the world lost Jay McShann. No, because of that bar, he became more than his music, and today I am heartbroken.