Jazz legends jam for benefit of others

Date: 05/18/03
Credit: The Kansas City Star
Byline: JEFFREY SPIVAK

Their names are synonymous with Kansas City's jazz heyday. They shared stages all over the world. But by now, their performances together are as scarce as a comet in the sky.

On Saturday night, though, they put away their canes and walked with slow, stiff steps onto the Gem Theater stage. Once they were seated, their hands fluttered on their instruments like wings on a bird.

Pianist Jay McShann and fiddler Claude Williams were sharing the stage again.

What brought these two legends together for the first time in years was a cause, the Coda Jazz Fund. They performed at the fund's
second annual concert, a fund-raiser for jazz musicians who die practically penniless.

"This is a great thing they've got going," McShann said in an interview. "They've come to the rescue of the musicians. A lot of
the cats, you know, went out broke."

The Kansas City Star launched the fund last year to eulogize well-loved musicians who passed away but didn't leave enough money for a coffin, a gravestone or a funeral.

Trumpeter Clark Terry of New York headlined Saturday's concert.

The rest of the bill came close to a collection of the greatest living Kansas City-rooted jazz players: Grammy-nominated vocalist
Karrin Allyson, saxophonist and recording veteran Bobby Watson, the long-running Scamps band, plus McShann and Williams.
Even with all that talent, the two "elder statesmen" stole the spotlight.

The 95-year-old Williams made the violin sound like a fiddle, his right hand swinging the bow and his left fingers tapping the strings like raindrops in a storm. The 87-year-old McShann sang "Pinney Brown Blues" - with the line "standing at 18th and Vine" - as his hands pounded the keys like a Globetrotter bouncing two basketballs at once.

When they were done, the two shook hands as the sold-out audience of 500 stood clapping. Then former Mayor Emanuel Cleaver, the master of ceremonies, summed up the occasion: "There is a sense in which no gift is really ours until you thank the giver. That is our opportunity tonight, to thank two men who have given us and the world so much."

Williams and McShann were both born, by some golden coincidence, in the same town: Muskogee, Okla. Williams tasted fame first. He joined Count Basie's band at the Reno Club here in 1936 as a guitarist. He then made his name as an amplified violinist.

McShann landed in Kansas City about that time. He went on to organize a big band that included Charlie Parker early in his career.

Their blues-tinged recordings hinted at the bebop that would eventually become the jazz mainstream.

After Kansas City's jazz heyday, Williams and McShann found better-paying gigs out of town. Both toured the world. They played festivals together in Europe, recorded together - including the album "The Man From Muskogee" - and even played together occasionally in Kansas City. But less and less.

The concert, sponsored by Sprint, was expected to raise about $25,000 for the Coda Jazz Fund. Since the first benefit concert a
year ago, the fund has paid for two funerals and four gravestones.

The fund stands at about $43,000, with a goal of $100,000.

In music, a coda signifies the end of the journey for a performer, a passage from the rhythm and melody to the last chords of
the finale.

For many at Saturday's concert, seeing McShann and Williams together onstage again, at their advanced ages, may have been a coda of sorts for Kansas City jazz .

- To reach Jeffrey Spivak, call (816) 234-4416 or send e-mail to jspivak@kcstar.com.
 

REPRINTED WITH PERMISSION FROM THE KANSAS CITY STAR