Search - Big Jay McNeely :: Central Avenue Confidential

Still slinky and swinging, Big Jay McNeely has retained the juice of his days as the saxophone demon of LA's Central Avenue scene--the West Coast's Harlem. Back then, he blew his way into history with a stomping style that made him one of the premier R&B honkers of the 1950s. Now, he's tempered his fiery approach with a taste for jazz-pop, composing the easy-listening melodies of "You Are My Life" and the like. That doesn't keep McNeely from the hard stuff; on an exuberant "Caravan," he delivers buoyant soprano and tenor sax solos that sprint around his young quartet, and there's a perky reprise of his signature, "Big Jay Shuffle." But the emotional peaks come when NcNeely settles on the grooves of smoldering cocktail jazz. As he applies his breathy tone to midnight gems like "I Want to Live" and the title track, his notes lift into the air as slow and easy as smoke, full of sweet bends and flats that seem to outline the ghosts of this music's wonderful past. --Ted Drozdowski