Jazz Articles about Maceo Parker

Maceo Parker: Soul Food: Cooking With Maceo

by Ian Patterson
August 15, 2020

After a trio of albums with the WDR Big Band, funk legend Maceo Parker returns to the more familiar, small ensemble terrain. It can be a challenge for any artist whose natural turf is the live arena to reproduce the same electricity in a studio setting--and for almost six decades Parker has been a road animal with James Brown, Parliament-Funkadelic, Prince, and his own bands--but with Soul Food: Cooking With Maceo, the seventy-seven year old saxophonist comes pretty close. Like ...

Maceo Parker in Denver

by Geoff Anderson
April 19, 2010

Maceo Parker Cervantes Masterpiece Ballroom Denver March 12, 2010

Maceo Parker doesn't just play funk. He IS funk. He's one of the innovators, being there not just for its conception and birth, but for the child-rearing, shaping and development of the musical form. After extended stints with James Brown starting in the mid-60s, and later George Clinton, Bootsy Collins and Parliament/Funkadelic through the 70s, he's been leading his own band and touring extensively since ...

Maceo Parker: Roots & Grooves

by Woodrow Wilkins
February 18, 2008

There's something about the WDR Big Band of Cologne that when you see that name on a recording, you know you?re in for a treat. In recent years, this German-based ensemble has turned in some magnificent performances alongside some jazz heavyweights, including Randy Brecker and the late Joe Zawinul. Now the WDR Big Band has joined alto saxophonist and vocalist Maceo Parker for Roots & Grooves, a two-disc set recorded during a European tour in February and March 2007.

Maceo Parker: Roots & Grooves

by C. Michael Bailey
January 18, 2008

Maceo Parker Roots & Grooves Heads Up International 2007

In jazz, the term “swing" is used to describe that special “thing" that makes jazz jazz. Elusive to definition, swing may best be thought of as that physical propulsion providing the music momentum from one bar to the next. Or as critic Martin Williams wrote more poetically, “any two notes played in succession by (bassist) Paul Chambers." “Funk" is another word in ...

Maceo Parker: School's In

by Woodrow Wilkins
January 6, 2006

Shakespeare was never so funky. “To Be or Not to Be, Maceo Parker's funky tribute to the playwright, is an attention-getting opener to School's In, a curriculum of funk education. And who better to do it than Parker? Over the course of his career, this alto saxophonist, percussionist, and vocalist worked with the Godfather of Soul in the 1960s and the masters of 1970s funk, George Clinton and Bootsy Collins, among others.Parker was born in Kinston, North Carolina. ...