K. C. Jazz Gets the Spotlight in The Hot KidThat Kansas City's different than anyplace else I've ever been. (318, The Hot Kid) Elmore Leonard mastered the glib, tough-guy (and sometimes gal), action genre long ago. He's got 38 writing credits to his name in the Internet Movie Data Base, not to mention production credits. He's given us Hombre and Stick and Jackie Brown and Chilli Palmer. And, in The Hot Kid (2005), he gives us Carl Webster ... and Jay McShann. Webster is a fictional U. S. Marshal who cooly tells the Dust Bowl Oklahoma bank robbers and other troublemakers whom he encounters, "If I have to pull my weapon, I'll shoot to kill." There is some doubt as to whether the weapon is already pulled and no doubt as to whether the bad guys get shot dead. McShann is our own original Jay McShann, still alive and performing when the book was originally published, though he has since passed on. The fictional Webster encounters the historical McShann at the equally historical Reno Club while the marshal is in pursuit of the beautiful but equally fictitious, and almost as dangerous, Louly Brown. McShann tells Webster about coming up from Oklahoma himself and leads the marshal to Louly, and along the way Webster, McShann and Leonard drop some other historical references to people and things uniquely connected to Kansas City: Union Station, Andy Kirk, Count Basie. About 54 pages of the action in the 387-page paperback edition of the novel take place in Kansas City, and almost all of it is fictional; though it clearly reflects the tenor of Pendergast Era Kansas City, complete with mob-connected ward-healer and wide open bars. And Julia Lee, Kansas City's First Lady of the Blues, even gets a bit of descriptive text as "the best piano player around for making money 'cause she knew the tunes everybody liked and asked you to play" (233). But among the honest-to-god real people in the book, it's Jay McShann who clearly gets the most attention. In fact, a writer for The Toronto Star, Jack Batten, found the prominent appearance of McShann "odd and distracting." In a review originally published 16 May 2005 and reproduced in full at "The Official Elmore Leonard Website," Batten writes Having fun must be what Leonard had in mind with Jay McShann in The Hot Kid. If so, it's a terrible idea. All that the presence of McShann accomplishes in the book is to send mystified readers to their computers to Google the names of all the other marginal characters. McShann is a distraction, and Leonard himself emerges from The Hot Kid, which is otherwise a very entertaining book, as the sort of fellow that Carl Webster might be: a bit of a show-off. But what's Batten know? He lives (presumably) in or near Toronto. That is in Canada. And while he obviously is (otherwise) a fan of Leonard and appears to bear no grudge against McShann for showing up in the book, he's clearly preoccupied with whether that appearance adds to or detracts from the experience of reading the book. Who cares? It's a book! For fans of Jay McShann (and Jazz and Kansas City (and not necessarily in that order)), the more important question is: does Leonard's attention to Jay McShann, to Jazz and to Kansas City add to or detract from KC, Jazz and Jay? I'm thinkin' it "adds to," if only by a smidgin; and that's a good thing. As reproduced at the Elmore Leonard site, Batten's review is headlined "Leonard tease drives reader off to Google." I'm thinkin' Canadians need to spend more time Googlin' things Kansas Citish. It might help them to wear less plaid. Carl Webster is also featured in the less warmly received Up in Honey's Room (2007). Kansas City is not. |
More Links:There is an excellent article on Jay McShann at Club Kaycee, although you have to wonder why the site's designer thought our computer monitors would never have resolutions higher than what? 800 x 600? A Jay McShann performance on KMBC-TV's "Dimensions" show has been uploaded to YouTube. There is an article on Jay McShann at Wikipedia. |