SAX
LEGEND MACEO PARKER JOINS WDR BIG BAND IN HEADS UP DEBUT
Roots & Grooves
celebrates the music of Ray Charles
and digs deep into the soul/funk groove
While James Brown is generally credited
with redefining and re-energizing R&B and soul music in
the 1960s, turning that revolutionary vision into a reality
would not have been possible without the help of his creative
collaborator, stage foil and right-hand man, saxophonist Maceo
Parker. Like no other sax player before him, Parker stretched
the potential of his instrument to unprecedented limits, exhibiting
an uncanny ability to alternate the saxophone from a melodic
instrument to a percussive one, and then back again, in the
span of just a couple of beats, often less.
Four
decades later, after recurring stints with Brown and funk
titans George Clinton and Bootsy Collins in the ‘70s,
and a solo career that has propelled him through the ‘80s
and ‘90s, Parker’s skills are just as tight and
precise as they were during those highly charged early days,
and his creative audacity is equally undiminished.
SAX
LEGEND MACEO PARKER
JOINS WDR BIG BAND IN HEADS UP DEBUT
Roots & Grooves celebrates the music of Ray Charles
and digs deep into the soul/funk groove
While James Brown is generally credited with redefining and
re-energizing R&B and soul music in the 1960s, turning that
revolutionary vision into a reality would not have been possible
without the help of his creative collaborator, stage foil and
right-hand man, saxophonist Maceo Parker. Like no other sax
player before him, Parker stretched the potential of his instrument
to unprecedented limits, exhibiting an uncanny ability to alternate
the saxophone from a melodic instrument to a percussive one,
and then back again, in the span of just a couple of beats,
often less.
Four decades later, after recurring stints with Brown and funk
titans George Clinton and Bootsy Collins in the ‘70s,
and a solo career that has propelled him through the ‘80s
and ‘90s, Parker’s skills are just as tight and
precise as they were during those highly charged early days,
and his creative audacity is equally undiminished.
For perhaps the first time, the breadth and scope of Parker’s
musical prowess is fully realized in a new recording that positions
him front and center in a fully orchestrated setting. Roots
& Grooves (HUCD 3134), a two-disc set scheduled for
release on Heads Up International on February 12, 2008, unites
this brilliant sax innovator with Germany’s renowned WDR
Big Band. The album is both a tribute to R&B/soul legend
Ray Charles and a showcase for Parker’s own fiery hybrid
of R&B, soul and funk.
“I run out of words when I try to describe exactly how
good and kid-like this project made me feel,” says Parker,
who counts Charles among his earliest and most important influences.
“I’m playing the same saxophone I always play, but
it was like a whole new adventure for me to play with a big
band. And it’s very rewarding to get the kind of feedback
I’ve been getting from people about this project. We started
with a blank sheet and we ended up with this whole big wonderful
thing.”
On the first disc, Parker and the band move expertly through
lush orchestrations of Ray Charles classics like “What’d
I Say,” “Hit the Road Jack,” “I’m
Busted” and “Hallelujah, I Love Her So.” Parker’s
vocals on these tracks uncannily resemble those of Charles,
particularly on the ballads like “You Don’t Know
Me” and “Georgia On My Mind.”
“I got into Ray at a very early age,” Parker explains.
“I’d listen to him sing and I’d try to equate
that with playing the saxophone…That was the goal. I was
only 16 or 17 years old, trying to come up with that kind of
concept, and it was just from listening to Ray Charles. So he’s
always been the cat for me.”
As far as WDR director and arranger Michael Abene is concerned,
Parker’s early affinity for Charles’ overall style
paid off – not just on the instrumental side, but on the
vocal side as well. “If you close your eyes, it sounds
just like Ray,” he says of the first half of Roots
& Grooves. “I didn’t realize the depth
of it until we got together for rehearsals. I knew his playing,
but when he started to sing it just knocked me out. I think
people are going to be amazed by his singing.”
The second disc ratchets up the funk quotient by aligning Parker
with the air-tight rhythm section of bassist Rodney “Skeet”
Curtis (formerly of Parliament-Funkadelic and currently with
Maceo’s own band for nearly a decade) and drummer Dennis
Chambers (another P-Funk alum, currently with Santana and armed
with a resume that includes jazz collaborations with a host
of artists). This second set shifts away from the classic Ray
Charles repertoire and plunges into big band arrangements of
some well known Parker originals: “Off the Hook,”
“Uptown Up,” “Shake Everything You Got,”
and the early ‘70s funk anthem, “Pass the Peas.”
Throughout both sets, numerous WDR soloists step up to the plate
and deliver the goods. Among them are guitarist Paul Shigihara
(“I’m Busted”), alto saxophonists Heiner Wiberny
(“Them That’s Got”) and Karolina Strassmeyer
(“To Be Or Not To Be”), and tenor saxophonists Olivier
Peters (“What’d I Say”) and Paul Heller (“Hit
the Road Jack”).
Parker calls Roots & Grooves “a dream come
true” in more ways than one. The album not only serves
as his opportunity to pay tribute to an revered mentor, but
also illustrates how those early influences laid the groundwork
for the funk sound and sensibility that Parker himself helped
spawn. “As soon as I started hearing rumors that perhaps
I could do some kind of big band project, my brain raced right
to the Ray Charles stuff that I knew, because I’ve always
wanted to do that. And to hear those funk tunes blown up to
big band proportions is really something else!”
That sense of unhampered enthusiasm makes its way into every
note of this R&B-drenched, funk-fueled collaboration. Catch
a saxophone legend alongside one of the greatest big bands on
either side of the Atlantic. Dig the roots, ride the groove.
While most sax players have followed in the
footsteps of jazz legends like Charlie Parker and John Coltrane,
Maceo Parker has consistently marched to a different tune. Since
his earliest days, he has gravitated to the more rhythmic and
soulful end of the spectrum, following figures like Louis Jordan,
Ray Charles and James Brown – all of whom were innovators,
each pushing their respective sound and style to the point of
becoming something entirely new. It was Parker’s recurring
stints in Brown’s band, in fact, that not only produced
some of the most enduring entries in the vast canon of American
soul music, but also sowed the seeds of the funk revolution
of the 1970s. In hindsight, Maceo Parker has been as innovative
as the people whom he cites as his own influences.
Born in Kinston, North Carolina in 1943, Parker picked up the
saxophone during his pre-teen years and played in a band with
his brothers. One of his earliest influences was Ray Charles,
who by the late 1950s had already become a monumental figure
in the burgeoning blues-and-jazz hybrid that had come to be
known as rhythm and blues. Parker still remembers coming home
from school with his brothers one day and hearing “What’d
I Say” on the radio for the first time: “Man, we
almost tore that place all to pieces because we couldn’t
believe it. I’ll never forget that day. It was like Christmas
morning and New Years morning combined.”
He adds: “I got into Ray at a very early age. I’d
listen to him sing and I’d try to equate that with playing
the saxophone…He was always the cat for me.”
Parker joined James Brown’s band in 1964 – originally
as a baritone player. He came as part of a package deal when
Brown hired his brother, drummer Melvin Parker, but the sax
player quickly established himself as a valuable member of the
team. The first sides he cut with Brown, “I Feel Good”
and “Out of Sight,” became some of the most famous
of Brown’s canon. When St. Clair Pinkney, Brown’s
regular tenor player, took ill for a couple weeks, Parker took
over. After Pinckney returned, the two sax men alternated between
tenor and bari, until Parker became the full-time tenor player.
Parker’s first tenor outing on vinyl was Brown’s
classic “Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag.”
Onstage, Parker served as the perfect foil to the Godfather
of Soul – punctuating the frontman’s incendiary
vocals and mesmerizing stage choreography with horn blasts that
were equal parts melody and percussion. At the height of their
collaborative powers, it was difficult to tell where the genius
of one ended and the other began.
Parker left Brown’s band in 1970 to launch his own outfit,
Maceo & All the King’s Men, but reconnected with Brown
three years later – switching to alto sax and laying down
horn tracks for Brown’s “Cold Sweat,” “Lickin’
Stick” and “Mother Popcorn.”
He released his first solo record, Us People, in 1974,
followed a year later by Funky Music Machine. Throughout
the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, he was a featured
player with George Clinton’s Parliament-Funkadelic and
Bootsy Collins’ Rubber Band. After a brief hiatus, he
returned to James Brown until the latter’s incarceration
at the end of the 1980s.
At this point Maceo’s solo career began developing into
what we are familiar with today. A steady stream of records
followed, beginning in 1990 with his first album in this solo
period, Roots Revisted, which set the benchmark by
remaining number one on the jazz charts for over 10 weeks. It
was the seminal Life on Planet Groove in 1992 that
brought Maceo to the attention of younger, college-aged audiences
and gave him a strong following throughout the world.
Some of Parker’s more recent solo projects include Funk
Overload, 1998, Made By Maceo (2003) and School’s
In (2005). He joins the Heads Up International label with
the February 2008 release of Roots & Grooves, a
two-disc set that positions him front and center with Germany’s
WDR Big Band, arguably the hottest jazz orchestra on the European
continent. The first half of Roots & Grooves is
a big band tribute to Parker’s first and most important
influence, Ray Charles. The second set recasts some of Parker’s
own classic material – “Off the Hook,” “Uptown
Up,” “Shake Everything You Got” and others
– in richly layered big band arrangements.
Without question, Parker’s body of work over the past
four decades stands on its own merits, yet he sees the music
as part of an even greater message. “At all my concerts,
I try to say ‘love’ as many times as I can,”
he says. “I think if we all use that word as much as we
possibly can, the idea will flourish, and all that other negative
stuff will diminish. So I’m definitely going to do what
I think is my part by just showing the spirit of love throughout
the word as much as I can.”
