UNITED KINGDOM: AMERICAN SAXOPHONIST MACEO PARKER SPEAKS TO REUTERS ABOUT HIS LOVE OF PERFORMING

Record ID: 392226

  • Title: UNITED KINGDOM: AMERICAN SAXOPHONIST MACEO PARKER SPEAKS TO REUTERS ABOUT HIS LOVE OF PERFORMING
  • Date: 12th November 2001
  • Summary: VARIOUS: MACEO PERFORMING/ AUDIENCE DANCING; APPLAUDING (5 SHOTS)
  • Embargoed: 27th November 2001 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: LONDON, ENGLAND, UNITED KINGDOM
  • Country: United Kingdom
  • Topics: Entertainment
  • Reuters ID: LVA5ULHDBJO8QZ6HVPKP7I9EGHKB
  • Story Text: Maceo Parker has made incomparable contributions to the music world - and as we enter a new century, the saxophone legend's career is seemingly just beginning. Reuters caught up with Maceo at his recent appearance at the London Jazz Festival.
    Maceo Parker was born into a musical family. Raised in Kinston, North Carolina, he saw both his parents play gospel music in their local church and was mentored by his uncle, who headed local band the Blue Notes.
    At age 8 Maceo picked up the saxophone, and his brothers Melvin (7) and Kellis (9) chose drums and trombone respectively.
    The three Parker brothers formed the Junior Blue Notes and grew up admiring such heroes as Hank Crawford, Cannonball Adderley and King Curtis.
    From then on, the only way was up.
    It was his first experience of the stage that perhaps goes some way to explaining a love affair with performing: "I love touring. I enjoy taking the music and the performances to the people. I think, it's sort of like an equation or just the way it's set up, where you have some who entertain and some who have to be entertained. And it just so happens that I'm on the side of the entertainers. If people go to work Monday through Friday or Saturday or whatever the case is and you happen to feel that, hey I've done my week or I've gone to school, I've done what I do normally and now it's time to party."
    "In order to keep a high energy level throughout all the performances that we do, I think it's important that you love what you do and that's how I feel. I mean I really love performing. And because I love it it comes easy. I love performing, I love people and I think it's important that we bring a sense of peace and happiness and joy through the music and through performances to the people."
    On an evening in 1962 (while Maceo was out of town with another band), his brother Melvin was performing with a funky outfit called Apex, when James Brown wandered in for some late night food.
    Impressed with the young drummer's style, that night James offered Melvin to play with him. Both brothers would approach J.B. a year and a half later. In his autobiography James Brown, remembers he really wanted Melvin, "but I figured I had to hire Maceo, too, if I wanted to get his brother. I didn't know what I had got!"
    And that was only the beginning of Maceo's popularity: "I'm trying to get to the point where I get signature tunes, maybe some of the James Brown stuff, but that's all you need. If you're with a group of people that doesn't want to party and have fun , you get a chance to wave your hands in the air, and show your dance and show you get into your party mood and all that. We try to fit those situations, try to provide music in those situations where people really really have fun."
    "Most of the times when there's a track or a song that fits my particular cup of tea - if it's funky, somebody may say let's get Maceo to play this. For example Prince did a song and kept listening to it and he went man I got to get Maceo play on this and nobody else but Maceo. And I enjoy that. I really like it when people say, wow, let's try and get Maceo to play on this. It only makes me feel that I've accomplished something, whatever it is that I put in all these years that was really worthwhile and it's rewarding. It's rewarding to have a chance to perform with so many other musicians and that sort of keeps it to a point where you never wanna stop."
    In the early 90's Maceo released two successful solo albums entitled Roots Revisited (which spent 10 weeks at the top of Billboard's Jazz Charts in 1990) and Mo' Roots (1991).
    But it was his third solo release, the 1992 live album Life on Planet Groove that would launch Maceo's contemporary career as a solo artist for a college aged audience and brought into being Maceo's catch phrase "2% Jazz, 98% Funky Stuff."
    "My songlist for the performances now include, first of all I came up with an equation, you know when I'm asked what do you play, how would you describe your music and I came up about four - five years ago with the phrase two per cent jazz, 98 per cent funky stuff. It sort of holds true, I understand now that people really look forward to the funkiness that we do, that we can provide. So this is what I do. I try not to disappoint them as a twenty per cent jazz... that's a little bit too much...I would like to slow it down into a ballad, something that people can recognize, maybe an Elvis Presley tune, something like "Love me Tender" that works between funky songs. But I take a little bit of the James brown stuff, and few surprises here and there, and there's a party going on."
    Maceo is currently on your across Europe and the US.
    ENDS
  • Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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