MACEO PARKER with THE JONES FAMILY SINGERS because we couldn’t believe it. I’ll never forget that day. It was like Christmas morning and New Year’s morning combined.” He adds: “I got into Ray at a very early age. I’d listen to him sing and I’d try to equate that with playing the saxophone…He was always the cat for me.” Parker joined James Brown’s band in 1964, originally as a baritone player. He came as part of a package deal when Brown hired his brother, drummer Melvin Parker, but the sax player quickly established himself as a valuable member of the team. The first sides he cut with Brown, “I Feel Good” and “Out of Sight,” became some of the most famous of Brown’s canon. When St. Clair Pinkney, Brown’s regular tenor player, took ill for a couple of weeks, Parker took over. After Pinckney returned, the two sax men alternated between tenor and baritone, until Parker became the full-time tenor player. Parker’s first tenor outing on vinyl was Brown’s classic “Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag.” Onstage, Parker served as the perfect foil to the Godfather of Soul—punctuating the frontman’s incendiary vocals and mesmerizing stage choreography with horn blasts that were equal parts melody and percussion. At the height of their collaborative powers, it was difficult to tell where the genius of one ended and the other began. Parker left Brown’s band in 1970 to launch his own outfit, Maceo & All the King’s Men, but reconnected with Brown three years later— switching to alto sax and laying down horn tracks for Brown’s “Cold Sweat,” “Lickin’ Stick” and “Mother Popcorn.” Parker released his first solo record, Us People, in 1974, followed a year later by Funky Music Machine. Throughout the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, he was a featured player with George Clinton’s ParliamentFunkadelic and Bootsy Collins’ Rubber Band. After a brief hiatus, he returned to James Brown until the latter’s incarceration at the end of the 1980s. At this point Parker’s solo career began developing into what we are familiar with today. A steady stream of records followed, beginning in 1990 with his first album in this solo period, Roots Revisited, which set the benchmark by remaining number one on the jazz charts for over 10 weeks. It was the seminal Life on Planet Groove in 1992 that brought Parker to the attention of younger, college-aged audiences and gave him a strong following throughout the world. Some of Parker’s more recent solo projects include Funk Overload (1998), Made By Maceo (2003) and School’s In (2005). He joined the Heads Up International label with the 2008 release of Roots & Grooves, a two-disc set
that positioned him front and center with Germany’s WDR Big Band, arguably the hottest jazz orchestra on the European continent. Roots & Grooves is equal parts Ray Charles tribute and a showcase for some of Parker’s own classic material. In 2011, Parker reunited with the WDR Big Band at the Leverkusener Jazz Festival in Germany. The performance included fully orchestrated arrangements of soul classics by American icons like James Brown, Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin and more. Nine of the songs from the festival set are captured on Soul Classics, Parker’s CD released in 2012. Without question, Parker’s body of work over the past four decades stands on its own merits, yet he sees the music as part of an even greater message. “At all my concerts, I try to say ‘love’ as many times as I can,” he says. “I think if we all use that word as much as we possibly can, the idea will flourish, and all that other negative stuff will diminish. So I’m definitely going to do what I think is my part by just showing the spirit of love throughout the world as much as I can.”
THE JONES FAMILY SINGERS Consisting in part of five sisters, two brothers and their father, The Jones Family Singers have been tearing up churches and festivals for over two decades. But they had never before made a studio album that displays the depth of their pure musical gifts quite like The Spirit Speaks, recorded to analog tape at Jim Eno’s Public Hi-Fi studio in Austin, Texas, and released in April 2014. The Wall Street Journal declared the group “Modern practitioners of a long musical tradition…infusing their joyful, reverent songs with elements of vintage soul and R&B.” Yep, it’s gospel music—but fans of Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings and Vintage Trouble will also find a hip-shaking and spiritually uplifting workout at the core. “The three-generation gospel collective’s high-energy performances are the living embodiment of the indelible connection between the black church and its rock and soul offspring” noted the Austin Chronicle. “It was all joyful praise, brilliantly timed with one crescendo after another” boasted The New York Times, while both Rolling Stone and NPR called them “a must see act” at SXSW in 2014. The Jones Family Singers received a standing ovation at Lincoln Center the summer of 2014, and showcased at New York City’s globalFEST and The Kennedy Center in Washington, DC in January 2015. These stand-out performances were followed up with domestic and international appearances at the Newport Folk Festival, Playboy Jazz
Festival, Winnipeg Folk Festival, Monterey Jazz Festival, a two-week tour of Russia and more. Impressed by the band’s fervor onstage and humility off, Austin filmmaker Alan Berg (“Outside Industry: The Story of SXSW”) decided in 2012 to make a documentary that explored the triumphs and tribulations of this working gospel band. The artistry he witnessed onstage along with the compelling family dynamic came to fruition at film festivals in 2015 where Berg’s The Jones Family Will Make A Way was first screened. Besides churches, nightclubs, concert series and music festivals, they’ve also brought their powerful musical ministry to prisons, interfaith events and community celebrations.
BISHOP FRED A. JONES Bishop Fred A. Jones, Sr. Th.D. is pastor/ founder of the Mt. Zion Pentecostal Holiness Church of Markham, Texas and is CEO of Family-Styled Records, which is family-owned and operated. Bishop Jones is married to Lady Sarah Jones and together they have six girls and two boys, hence The Jones Family Singers. Bishop Jones has a Bachelor, Masters and Doctoral Degree in Theology and an AAA in Audio/Video Curriculum. Licensed as an International Evangelist in the Church of God in Christ (COGIC), he is well traveled and loves preaching and singing.
SARAH M. JONES First Lady Sarah M. Jones is the wife of Bishop Fred Allen Jones, Sr. and the mother of six girls and two boys. She handles the product management and uniform design for the group and also serves as First Lady and Overseer of the Women’s Work at the Mt. Zion Pentecostal Holiness Church of Markham, Texas. Sister Jones loves gospel music as well as plenty of traveling. She loves the Lord and is a very powerful Bible teacher in her own right. She wholeheartedly supports her husband and her family whether at home or on the road.
encoreartsprograms.com 29