Big Jay McNeely

Big Jay McNeely
Birth name Cecil James McNeely
Born (1927-04-29) April 29, 1927
Watts, Los Angeles, California, United States
Genres Jump blues, West Coast blues, jazz blues, rhythm and blues
Occupation(s) Musician
Instruments Tenor saxophone
Years active Late 1940s–present

Cecil James McNeely (born April 29, 1927, Watts, Los Angeles, California),[1] known as Big Jay McNeely, is an American rhythm and blues saxophonist.

Biography

Inspired by Illinois Jacquet and Lester Young, he teamed with his older brother Robert McNeely, who played baritone saxophone, and made his first recordings with drummer Johnny Otis, who ran the Barrelhouse Club that stood only a few blocks from McNeely's home.[1] Shortly after he performed on Otis's "Barrel House Stomp." Ralph Bass, A&R man for Savoy Records, promptly signed him to a recording contract. Bass's boss, Herman Lubinsky, suggested the stage name Big Jay McNeely because Cecil McNeely did not sound commercial. McNeely's first hit was "The Deacon's Hop," [2] an instrumental which topped the Billboard R&B chart in early 1949.[1] The single was his most successful of his three chart entries.

Thanks to his flamboyant playing, called "honking," McNeely remained popular through the 1950s and into the early 1960s, recording for the Exclusive, Aladdin, Imperial, Federal, Vee-Jay, and Swingin' labels.[1] But despite a hit R&B ballad, "There Is Something on Your Mind," (1959) featuring Little Sonny Warner on vocals, and a 1963 album for Warner Bros. Records, McNeely's music career began to cool off. He quit the music industry in 1971 to become a postman.[1] However, thanks to an R&B revival in the early 1980s, McNeely left the post office and returned to touring and recording full-time, usually overseas.[1] His original tenor sax is enshrined in the Experience Music Project in Seattle, and he was inducted into The Rhythm and Blues Music Hall of Fame.[3]

In 1989, Big Jay McNeely was performing with Detroit Gary Wiggins [4] (European Saxomania Tour II) [2][5] at the Quasimodo Club in West Berlin the night the Berlin Wall came down, "and Cold War legend has it that they blew down the Berlin Wall in 1989 with earth-shaking sonic sax torrents outside the Quasimodo Club in West Germany".[6] McNeely and Wiggins toured in Germany and Italy [7][8] with The International Blues Duo, Johnny Heartsman,[9] Daryl Taylor (who worked with Arnett Cobb and Archie Bell & The Drells), Roy Gaines,[10] Christian Rannenberg, Donald Robertson, Billy Davis, "Hyepockets" Robertson, Lee Allen.[11]

Big Jay McNeely regularly performs at the International Boogie Woogie Festival in The Netherlands, and recorded an album with Martijn Schok, the festival's promoter, in 2009. The album was entitled Party Time, and one track from the album, "Get On Up and Boogie" (Parts 1, 2, and 3)", was featured on the vintage music compilation This is Vintage Now (2011).[12]

Tenor saxophone honkers

The honkers were known for their raucous stage antics and expressive, exhibitionist style of playing. They overblew their saxophones and often hit on the same note over and over, much like a black Southern preacher, until their audiences were mesmerized. The style began with Illinois Jacquet's lively solo on Lionel Hampton's smash 1942 hit "Flying Home." Jacquet refined the honking technique in 1944 on the first Jazz at the Philharmonic concert in Los Angeles. Among the other saxophonists who started having honking hits in the late 1940s were Hal Singer (with the number one R&B hit "Cornbread"), Lynn Hope, Joe Houston, Wild Bill Moore, Freddie Mitchell, and many more.

McNeely was credited with being the most flamboyant performer.[13] He wore bright banana- and lime-colored suits, played under blacklights that made his horn glow in the dark, used strobe lights as early as 1952 to create an "old-time-movie" effect, and sometimes walked off the stage and out the door, usually with the club patrons following along behind. At one point, in San Diego, police arrested him on the sidewalk and hauled him off to jail, while his band kept playing on the bandstand, waiting for him to return. The honking style was fading somewhat by the early 1950s, but the honkers themselves suddenly found themselves providing rousing solos for doo wop groups; an example was Sam "The Man" Taylor's eight-bar romp on The Chords' 1954 "Sh-Boom." Bill Haley also used honking sax men Joey D'Ambrosio and Rudy Pompilli on his rock and roll records, including "Rock Around the Clock." However, the rise of the electric guitar essentially ended the dominance of the tenor sax in rock and roll by 1956. Big Jay among "his best student" [13] Gary Wiggins are those to keep this tradition still alive.[2]

Discography

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 "Biography by Bill Dahl". Allmusic.com. Retrieved December 21, 2009.
  2. 1 2 3 "Bman's Blues Report: Deacon's Hop - Big Jay McNeely and Detroit Gary Wiggins". www.bmansbluesreport.com. Retrieved 2016-07-14.
  3. ↑ "Blues Foundation Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony and Music Awards Set for May in Memphis". 2014-02-19. Retrieved 2016-07-14.
  4. ↑ "Quasimodo Berlin: SAXOMANIA TOUR 2". www.quasimodo.de. Retrieved 2016-07-14.
  5. ↑ Rauhut, Michael (2008-01-01). Ich hab den Blues schon etwas länger: Spuren einer Musik in Deutschland (in German). Ch. Links Verlag. ISBN 9783861534952.
  6. ↑ "Artists - Eleventh Annual Ponderosa Stomp - New Orleans - Schedule, Artists, Tickets and Lineup - Stomp #11, Stomp 2013". Ponderosastomp.com. Retrieved 8 January 2015.
  7. ↑ Jazz, All About. "Big Jay McNeely and Detroit Gary Wiggins". Gallery. Retrieved 2016-07-14.
  8. ↑ Jazz, All About. ""I have never heard such a great jazz concert", German Press, 1989". Retrieved 2016-07-14.
  9. ↑ Jazz, All About. "Big Jay McNeely, Detroit Gary Wiggins & Johnny Heartsman". Gallery. Retrieved 2016-07-14.
  10. ↑ BluesFilmer (2013-11-24), 9.SWF Blues Festival '89 Vol.2 Saxomania feat. Roy Gaines & Big Jay McNeely, retrieved 2016-07-14
  11. ↑ "Lahnsteiner Bluesfestival". www.lahnsteiner-bluesfestival.de. Retrieved 2016-07-14.
  12. ↑ "Big Jay McNeely on This is Vintage Now; Big Jay McNeely Bio". Thisisvintagenow.com. Retrieved 8 January 2015.
  13. 1 2 ""The Highlight of Unna Blues Festival", German Press 1989". Retrieved 2016-07-14.
  14. ↑ "At Birdland by Big Jay McNeely". iTunes. Retrieved 2016-07-14.
  15. ↑ "Big Jay McNeely - Blow The Wall Down (1990)". jazz-jazz.ru. Retrieved 2016-07-14.
  16. ↑ "Big Jay McNeely, Christian Rannenberg - Blues At Daybreak". Discogs. Retrieved 2016-07-14.
  17. ↑ "Eb Davis - Fool for the ladies". www.acoustic-music.de. Retrieved 2016-07-14.

Bibliography

External links

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 11/17/2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.