Maceo Parker

[Sundog]

I believe this release is already out in Europe and Japan. Coming to the U.S. sometime this spring. Roots & Grooves is a 2-disc set featuring Maceo with the WDR Big Band. Disc 1 is a tribute to Ray Charles, disc 2 features select originals from Maceo. How can this not be great?

[DukeCity]

Available for pre-order on the Concord website. Assuming that the arrangments are by Mike Abene, I'm interested to see what he does with those tunes.

[Free For All]

Assuming that the arrangments are by Mike Abene, I'm interested to see what he does with those tunes.

That's what I was thinking. It could be a very good side!

[JSngry]

Even w/o Abene, it could be a very pleasant side.

Maceo can play. Not everything. but what he can play, he can play really well, regardless of context.

He was kinda JB's Fathead, and if Maceo, good as he is, ain't the all 'round deep badass that Fathead is, then JB wasn't the musically omniverous gourmet that RC was either. Parallell universes, or something like that.

What I'd really like to do, and maybe this will be it, is to hear Maceo cast in a big band w/strings setting playing ballads and blues a la Hank Crawford.

Just curious, how much tenor has Maceo been playing lately? Seems like there's been lots of alto, which is...kinda....Eb-ish....

[DukeCity]

I haven't heard Maceo playing much/any tenor lately. The albums of his that I have are all alto.

There are some clips of Maceo and the WDR big band up on the YouTubes. Haven't checked 'em all out yet, but most of them appear to have been done with someone's camera phone with crappy audio/video. But, irregardless, Maceo is a master of that rhythmic, in-the-groove playing. Charts by Abene, and playing by the WDR band (with Dennis Chambers) is just a bonus!

Edited January 2, 2008 by DukeCity

[CJ Shearn]

ooh, looks good!

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

Didn't know this was out in Europe I was going to wait for the Concord issue (12 Feb).

Anyone know what the European label is?

MG

[Sundog]

Looks to be on Intuition records.

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

Looks to be on Intuition records.

Thanks a lot, Sundog. Got some ordering to do!

MG

[CJ Shearn]

just finished listening to this one, picked it up last night with the Horace Silver. "Life on Planet Groove" is the standard for live Maceo records, but this one joins that. The Ray Charles stuff is excellent as is the funk stuff, Dennis Chambers on "Pass the Peas"!

[Sundog]

My first impressions are very favorable as well. This one will be in rotation for quite some time.

[mjzee]

Has anyone heard the 3 available on eMusic?

Made By Maceo

Dial M-A-C-E-O

Funk Overload

I've always loved "Southern Exposure," with Maceo doing that hip dance move on the cover. I love the tracks with the Rebirth Jazz Band (genuinely exciting), and he does a respectable "The Way You Look Tonight".

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

Has anyone heard the 3 available on eMusic?

Made By Maceo

Dial M-A-C-E-O

Funk Overload

I've always loved "Southern Exposure," with Maceo doing that hip dance move on the cover. I love the tracks with the Rebirth Jazz Band (genuinely exciting), and he does a respectable "The Way You Look Tonight".

They're all excellent! None of them are as good as "Us", "Life on planet groove" or "Maceo" but they're equally as good as "Southern exposure" - slightly more Hip Hop than that album, but not a lot.

MG

[king ubu]

Maceo being this one?

The only one I've owned for a loooong time (before I got into jazz at all, found this when listening to funk - Crusaders, Earth Wind & Fire, etc). The other one I have gotten sometime ago is "Roots Revisited", but I never found that one so good.

[JSngry]

That's a baaaaaaad mofo rite there!

[king ubu]

That's a baaaaaaad mofo rite there!

Yes it is! But again: is this the one you (MG) mean above? I always referred to it as "Soundtrack"... Larry Goldings is on this, I think. And there's a terrific minimalist/groove bass solo on the first cut that I've always loved!

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

That's a baaaaaaad mofo rite there!

Yes it is! But again: is this the one you (MG) mean above? I always referred to it as "Soundtrack"... Larry Goldings is on this, I think. And there's a terrific minimalist/groove bass solo on the first cut that I've always loved!

Yes it is. It really is the soundtrack of a documentary about him, which was called "Maceo".

MG

[mjzee]

This is from yesterday's Wall St Journal:

Still Funky After All These Years

By JIM FUSILLI

When saxophonist Maceo Parker was in his early teens in Kinston, N.C., "I had to find out what's me," the now 65-year-old musician told me during a break last week in his current tour. "With everybody wanting to play jazz, I decided I'll play funky. It'd be nice if I could play like Cannonball [Adderly] or [John] Coltrane, but I'll just be really, really, really good at playing funky."

And so Mr. Parker started his journey to become the funk sax player. In 1964, at age 21, he joined James Brown's band and soon his playing on alto, tenor and baritone sax became an identifiable part of Brown's sound -- in part because the singer frequently shouted out "Maceo!" on recordings and in concerts. From there, Mr. Parker joined George Clinton's eclectic, ultra-funky Parliament-Funkadelic groups, before returning to the Brown band in 1984. He began playing in Prince's New Power Generation in the late 1990s and worked in the studio with rock acts clamoring for his distinctive sax.

"They say, 'Why don't we get that guy who did that James Brown stuff?" the ebullient and effusive Mr. Parker said of the musicians like Ani DiFranco, Dave Matthews, Jane's Addiction and the Red Hot Chili Peppers who have featured him on their discs. "The way James called my name, they think, 'He must be all right.' When they call me, they want me."

And, since the late 1980s, Mr. Parker has been leading his own band too, mixing jazz and funk during countless concerts and on a dozen albums that form a body of work both mature and fun.

Mr. Parker's latest recording finds him fronting not his own group but the Cologne, Germany-based WDR Big Band. "Roots & Grooves" (Heads Up) is a two-disc live set cut about a year ago: On the first CD, he plays and sings the music of one of his early heroes, Ray Charles. Mr. Parker ensures that the big band pays tribute to Charles's sax players -- including David "Fathead" Newman and Hank Crawford, who both had an influence on Mr. Parker's style. The second CD is pure Maceo Parker funk, including five of his compositions and Brown's "Pass the Peas." The disc explodes as Dennis Chambers, who also worked with Mr. Clinton, takes over the kit from the WDR drummer and, along with Rodney Curtis on bass, sets a deep groove that Mr. Parker gleefully, and characteristically, exploits.

Joe Zawinul, the ex-Adderly keyboardist and co-founder of Weather Report, who has since died, recommended the WDR band to Mr. Parker's producers. Mr. Parker, in turn, suggested the Charles tribute. He said he enjoyed the temporary change of direction. "I experienced the big-band stuff in college," he said, "but I never longed to work with a Count Basie. Ray Charles, maybe. But having said that, it was great. I've always loved a lot of horns."

While Mr. Parker is probably best known for his staccato bleats, melodic flourishes and impeccable timing over relentless percussion and modal vamping by keyboards and guitars, the horn sections in which he played often featured long, harmonically rich lines akin to the unison parts in big-band music. "That big-band sort of phrasing," he said, "I've always done that. That's me." It was King Curtis too, who also was an early influence on Mr. Parker, as was trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie, whose music, Mr. Parker said, taught him that "if you play it right, intricate sounds simple."

On "Roots & Grooves," Mr. Parker's compositions are performed with a kind of precision that seems contrary to the free-flowing funk Mr. Parker displays: If a big-band soloist is granted 24 bars, he needs to complete his statement before the band re-enters. But when Mr. Parker is running the show with his own group, the vamping goes on as long as he likes. "There's no written rules on how long or how short each tune has to be," he said. "I give a signal -- touch my head, do a turn or something -- and we move on."

On Sunday night at the Roxy, here in Los Angeles, he conducted his powerhouse band with a series of unorthodox gestures -- in one he appeared to mimic a man bailing water from a leaky boat; in another, he looked like he was spinning a carnival wheel -- and his eight backing musicians responded. Mr. Parker allowed Greg Boyer on trombone and Ron Tooley on trumpet plenty of space to solo, but the show's best moments came when Messrs. Parker, Boyer and Tooley played knotty, smile-provoking lines together.

In a lively mood, Mr. Parker, who wore a light-gray suit he'd drenched in sweat by the second number, donned a pair of sunglasses, imitated Charles's walk, and sang an affecting version of "You Don't Know Me." It gave way to "Uptown Up," a blast of funk that featured the horns and bassist Mr. Curtis, who turned in a remarkable night's work. The group made Paul McCartney's "My Love" a moving blues, and as if to indicate how well the horns know each other -- Mr. Boyer also plays with Prince, while Mr. Tooley backed Brown -- they tossed in a bit of the R&B chestnut "Compared to What" amid Mr. Parker's composition "Shake Everything You Got." What the horns played together embodied Mr. Parker's philosophy of making the challenging sound simple, as it often does on "Roots & Grooves."

"I've been playing in front of strangers since I started in the fifth grade," Mr. Parker told me. "In the beginning it's all good -- your grandmother is showing people your picture and telling you how great you are. But when you go to the other side of town and they like you, you're onto something. By the time I started with James Brown, what was inside of me was longing to come out. I've been playing me for a long time."