The story of how Charlie Parker got the nickname Bird involves a dead chicken, a freezing Nebraska road and a car full of jazz musicians. The man driving that car was Jay McShann, and this episode is about him. Born James Columbus McShann on January 12, 1916 in Muskogee, Oklahoma, Hootie taught himself piano by secretly watching his sister's lessons and staying up to hear Earl Fatha Hines broadcast from Chicago's Grand Terrace Cafe. He was gigging professionally around Tulsa at 15 and by 1936 had moved to Kansas City, a wide-open town of all-night jam sessions where he formed a big band featuring Ben Webster, vocalist Walter Brown and, from 1937 to 1942, Charlie Parker.

We explore the August 9, 1940 session that produced Parker's first commercial recordings and the hit Confessin' the Blues, what the Kansas City style actually sounded like,  ...