Powderly, Kentucky
October 11, 2022
Instead of one long post, I am going to write several posts about what I experienced yesterday. I went to Fort Knox (but did not stop), Hog Wallow, Cloverport, Whiteville, Oklahoma, Paradise, Powderly and Central City. Somewhere along the way I crossed into the Central Time Zone -- the only way I knew is that my clocks did not agree (two change automatically and one does not).
The above map shows towns I wish I had visited because of their names. I may need to go to Wisdom -- I could certainly use some!
But the one I am really sad I missed is Maceo, who you might remember was James Brown's sax player.
Posted on July 21, 2020 by needleandgroove
“I just want you to blow, Maceo.”
So says James Brown on the 1964 recording, “Out of Sight.” For some, this might have been their first introduction to the work of saxophonist Maceo Parker. It was not mine. I first encountered Maceo by accident. As a teenager, I walked into my local Barnes & Noble and headed for the CD section, intent on buying a Charlie Parker record I did not already have. As I sifted through selections under “Parker, C.,” I did not find any records I did not already own. (My local Barnes & Noble did not have a large Charlie Parker collection.) I didn’t – and still don’t – like leaving a record store empty-handed, so I continued looking through the available records when I came to the section marked “Parker, M.” There, I pulled out a record called Life on Planet Groove. I did not know who Maceo Parker was, but the album art had saxophones on it, so I purchased it and left.
When I got back to my car, I opened the CD and put it in the CD player. I was not ready for what I heard. While I was expecting something Charlie Parker-esque – fast tempos, dramatic chord changes (and a lot of them) – I did not expect to hear the repetitive and funky bass line of “Shake Everything You Got.” And when Parker said, “We like to do 2% jazz, 98% funky stuff,” I was confused. Confused and intrigued. It took me years, years, to get a grasp on what Maceo Parker was doing, but over that time I have come to understand that he is one of the most important musicians in funk history. Maceo has been at the forefront of funk since the beginning, playing with many of the most important funk bands: performing with James Brown, George Clinton and his Parliament-Funkadelic collective, Bootsy Collins and his Rubber Band. He’s also had a successful career as a bandleader, and later recorded and toured with Prince.
I hear this historical importance on his new record, Soul Food: Cooking With Maceo. The album pays homage to the place of New Orleans in funk history, with renditions of Allen Toussaint’s “Yes We Can,” The Meters’ “Just Kissed My Baby,” and Dr. John’s “Right Place, Wrong Time.” Yet Maceo keeps the funk alive, thriving, and developing by including younger funk-affiliated artists, such as Ivan Neville (of the band Dumpstaphunk) and drummer Nikki Glaspie (former drummer for Dumpstaphunk, part of Beyoncé’s all-female band). Maceo also notes Prince’s place in black music history by including a cover of the track, “Other Side of the Pillow.”
Maceo, of course, is steeped in the history of black popular music himself and has demonstrated it on countless recordings. His love of Ray Charles’s music is deep, inspiring many covers, including big-band renditions of Charles’s tunes on Roots & Grooves. His love of and facility with New Orleans music is long, including such memorable moments as the GREAT Rebirth Brass Band supported cover of Joe Zawinul’s “Mercy, Mercy, Mercy” on 1993’s Southern Exposure. One of my favorite moments – at least thus far – on the new record is the sly and funny call and response exchange he has with himself on “Just Kissed My Baby”: “Feel so good” – “why’s that, Maceo?” – “’cause I just kissed my baby.”
But what has always struck me about Maceo’s music, ever since that fateful moment when I put Life on Planet Groove on the CD player, is the way that Maceo’s music takes his “2% jazz, 98% funky stuff” mantra so seriously and embodies it so successfully. His statement succinctly highlights the vital relationship between improvisation (often associated solely with jazz) and groove, jazz and funk. For one of countless examples, listen to the over 3-minute solo on “Shake Everything You Got” as he moves up primarily by half-steps as he alters between eighth note, sixteenth note, and triplet note figures in his duet with the drummer. (It starts at 7:24 and ends around 10:41.) It is an almost perfect embodiment of groove and solo, a clear demonstration of, as a trumpet player told me years ago, of finding a figure, playing it, and then taking it somewhere. This combination of groove and solo comes through and engages the listener on Soul Food’s “Rock Steady”: his solo line focuses primarily on chord tones, but breaks out every now and then to hit an unexpected note, only to go right back into the groove.
I have had the opportunity to hear Maceo live, both as a band leader and as part of an ensemble. Back around 2009, I heard him live at the Theatre of Living Arts in Philadelphia. The show started around 9pm, and at midnight the band left the stage for intermission. Intermission. That night, they played for 3.5 to 4 hours. That kind of dedication and the attention to his craft has made Maceo one of the preeminent musicians throughout his decades-long career.
Prince often referred to Maceo as “the teacher” during his live shows, often encouraging the audience to chant “Maceo, blow your horn!” So, keeping blow your horn, Maceo. We still have a lot more to learn from you.
“COLD SWEAT”-JAMES BROWN (1967)
Widely considered to be the first full-fledged Funk song, “Cold Sweat” clearly establishes the concept of THE ONE. The accent is on the first beat and Brown calls for Maceo to “put it where it’s at.” Maceo complies.
Comments