Big Jay McNeely
Living Legend Big Jay McNeeley is available for recording sessions and live performances.
He is also offering saxaphone lessons for a limited time only!
He is currently writing a book about the art of performance and the honking sax.
Contact him at
323 756 4487
BIG
JAY MCNEELEY ROCKED THE HOUSE AT THE APOLLO
by Bob Davis (11/2001)
From a musical standpoint, Big Jay McNeely's performance at the Pioneer Awards show what the absolute HIGHLIGHT of the evening for me!
This 72 year old man ROCKED THE HOUSE with a WAILING, SHOUTING, HONKING SAX, the likes that I have NEVER experienced in my life, and had the Apollo crowd JUMPIN UP AND DOWN, CLAPPING THEIR HANDS and STOMPING THEIR FEET like they were in church!
He JUMPED UP ON THE APOLLO STAGE from as he
entered NOT from backstage, but from the AUDIENCE!!!!
As Big Jay McNeely got up on to the stage,
he began to prance around, continuing to WAIL AWAY ON HIS SAX.
Then suddenly...
· ...he bent over
· ...he laid on the floor
· ...laid on his back
· ...he started to SPIN
· ...all the while continuing to WAIL
· ...THIS 72 YEAR OLD MAN WAS BREAK
DANCING WHILE PLAYING THE SAX
but Big Jay...wasn't thru yet
· ...the lights were dimmed, the theater
was now dark
· …a black light was turned on
· …and suddenly it was revealed
Big Jay had fluorescent gloves on
He had painted the sax blue (I think?)
The keys on the sax were painted red (I think?)
So what we saw was a SPINNING saxophone being played by a pair of WHITE GLOVES!!!!!!!!!!!
When I met Big Jay McNeely at the press conference the day before the show, what I saw was a frail old man walking around with a cane & a cowboy hat, being ignored by the press corps!
So naturally, I went over and talked with him....:)
The first thing he said to me was that he
had a NEW CD and he wanted me to have a copy of it.
Then he told me about the importance of treating
females right, especially your own mother
I quickly turned on my tape recorder, because
the man was in a "conversational zone" that I wanted to capture!
Then when he was finished, I introduced him
to Mike and we talked for a bit about Soul-Patrol.
He said to us...
"Your mother must be proud of the two of you..."
Then he told us that he wasn't going to be
singing during the show, but that instead he was going to just play his
sax.
He also told us that he was going to write
a book on the HONKING SAXOPHONE, because it had become a "lost art"
IN NO WAY DID THIS ENCOUNTER PREPARE ME FOR WHAT I WITNESSED ON THE STAGE...
it BLEW MY MIND!!!
Big Jay McNeely
Nervous Man Nervous
Big Jay McNeely in 3-D
by Jonny Whiteside LA
Weekly, February 2000
FUROR, TUMULT, MADNESS: ALL CALLING CARDS FOR rhythm & blues tenor-sax originator Big Jay McNeely, a man who exudes uncommon power. Known during his 19491955 peak as "The Go Go Go Man," "The Deacon of Tenor Sax," "King of the Honkers," "Pied Piper," even "Big Jay McSquealy," he found his mutinous brand of R&B derided by jazz critics as freakish, the work of a deranged exhibitionist, but his audience response was unprecedented. As Ebony magazine reported in May 1953: "A young white lad got so hepped up over Big Jay's music that he jumped out of a balcony onto the main floor where he miraculously landed without hurting himself and went into a riotous dance. In Redondo Beach . . . last summer, a teen-aged white girl was sent into raging hysterics by the violent sounds of Big Jay's horn. She did not recover her balance until her boy friend had slapped her face vigorously about a dozen times."
The exotic sway McNeely held over a crowd was so notorious that his managers once circulated a tale that he'd been hauled before a psychiatric board of examination. The reality was just as far-fetched: wild crowds of black kids, drape-shape pachucos and white teenagers all going nuts at Big Jay's shows at the Shrine and Olympic auditoriums. "He'd play 'Dirty Boogie,'" fan Chris Strachwitz recalls of McNeely's early-'50s gigs, "and the kids would be unzipping their flies." After McNeely began to draw armies of white youths -- who, according to one local paper, invariably began "acting like Watusis" -- he was forbidden to perform in most of Los Angeles County. Even today, says promoter Ronnie Mack, when Big Jay plays at Mack's Barndance, the girls lift up their shirts and flash him.
for the rest of the article, click
here!
Biography
Born Cecil James McNeely in 1927,
Los Angeles tenor saxophonist Big Jay McNeely is one of the pioneers of
the wild, honking style of sax playing that emerged from dance halls during
the late 1940's. Big Jay is best known for "Deacon's Hop," which reached
number one on the R&B charts in 1949, as well as "Wild Wig" and "There
is Something On Your Mind."
Los Angeles was a major player in the rise of early rock and roll. Big Jay was raised there by a musical family--two older brothers and both parents were so inclined. In high school, he played with a school band called "The Earls of [the class of] '44" (named for pianist Earl Hines.) Originally a scholarly music student, studying music theory and classic jazz, he happened to attend, in '47, Bardu Ali and Johnny Otis' new club in LA. called the Barrelhouse, a showcase spot for talent in the field of untamed music not yet called rock and roll.
What he saw there changed his ideas about how to please a crowd. The wild music, the rhythm, the frantic crowd screaming over turbocharged bands, with boogie pianists hammering away, trumpeters walking through the crowd blaring one-note rhythms, and sax men and women on their backs twirling in circles without missing a honk. Soon, he found himself honking thusly, and making a career of it. "K & H Boogie," includes a shift of rhythm by the drummer towards the end, from the shuffle rhythm to a back beat which is rock and roll by definition. McNeely continued honking in this manner through the 50's and 60's, took a job for the Post Office in 1971, which he quit in 1983.
He is still playing rock and roll
to the new crowd of kids whose parents were too young to know this type
of music, still in top form. from
http://www.hoyhoy.com/bigjay.htm
Links:
Nervous
Man Nervous- Big Jay McNeely by Jim Dawson
Big Jay McNeely was in supreme form; Bo Diddley was a charmer Saturday, June 24, 2000
Big Jay McNeely with Jesse Scinto & the Dignitaries June 2, 2001 - "Rosa's Lounge", Chicago/USA
Big Jay McNeely & The Bad Boys
Record Review: Big Jay McNeely, Central Avenue Confidential (Atomic Theory Records, 2000)
Collectables Jazz Classics Big Jay McNeely Swingin'
BIG JAY MCNEELY, PT. 2 - THE GOLDEN YEARS by Larry Benicewicz
