[Dixielandjazz] Inside Pinky Vidacovich

[ROBERT R. CALDER]

Thought I'd respond to Harry Callahan's curiosity about John Malco.....  (what was the name again? 
 
Jay McShann was heard by lots of people after he departed the twilight of R&B and (apparently just as US bookings were decreasing) started touring Europe.
 
Of course he was a jazz rather than a blues pianist. 
The Kansas City background and his own immense gifts let him work as a blues player, and even market demand dictated what was recorded earlier in his career. The bluesier side of his big band's repertoire was recorded, omitting rather  a lot.  
 
I wish I still had the recording of the Handful of Keys type stride composition of his own which McShann produced in a studio in the 1940s.  He did know Donald Lambert among many others. 
And there was the gig when he suddenly went into overdrive and to the amazement of bassist and drummer delivered Billy Strayhorn's LOTUS BLOSSOM and a set of other things not in the least associated with blues rather than jazz. As well associate Fiddler with his long career playing guitar in the R&B context.  Or Al Casey with the same sort of thing. 
Or Prince Robinson, though he was doing the raucous tenor thing in the 1920s.