These days it's all about Maceo


Maceo Parker will forever be associated with James Brown -- being the featured saxophonist in the Godfather of Soul's band for much of the '60s will do that to a man's reputation.

But Parker also carved out a reputation of his own, leaving Brown to found his own funk band in the 1970s, and on his latest CD, "Roots and Grooves," he pays homage to Ray Charles.

"I've always been into Ray Charles, ever since I was old enough to pick and choose what sort of music I wanted to buy and listen to," he said by phone recently from his home in Kinston, N.C. "I wanted to play saxophone like Ray Charles sang."

But on the new record, Parker also lays down some Ray Charles-like vocals on covers of songs such as "Hit the Road Jack." How did Parker, who's not known as a singer, nail the Ray Charles sound on the vocals?

"I was just into him at a very early age, then I discovered that my normal singing voice was really close to him. Then I knew all his mannerisms and how he phrased stuff. It was just kind of easy for me."

Growing up in Kinston (Parker's oldest daughter ended up attending the same elementary school he had attended), Parker's childhood was immersed in music, he said.

"My mother and father had rhythm -- they could dance really well and could sing really well. They sang out of the church, religious stuff. They sang all the time -- music, music, music all the time."

His older brother played trombone; his younger brother drums. Maceo picked up saxophone, and while still in high school the three Parker brothers were gigging around town, emulating an uncle who was in a regional band.

Parker said that the first time they ever got paid for playing music he was about 13 or 14, and remembered thinking, "Hey, man, this ain't bad." But money was never plentiful in their house, so the money went to help the family.

"We'd take all the money and give it to Mom, minus a barbecue sandwich," he said with a laugh. "It felt great because I had two brothers, so it was three times whatever it was. So we used to go around really feeling great about being able to go around and pick up that $20 gig. If you could do that three nights for a weekend, that was OK."

The brothers kept busy playing school dances and wedding receptions before graduating to some of the local nightclubs. But that brought the young Parker boys face to face with some of life's harsher realities, living in the Deep South in the 1950s and early '60s.

"There was a main place we used to play, a little venue, a segregated venue we used to play for the white kids in Faison, N.C."

Parker said the segregation didn't grate on him too much, because he'd been raised with it.

"That was what was happening at the time. We played some places that were predominantly black, and some places that were predominantly white. That's just how it was."


