I’ll be honest here; I knew nothing really of the man Jackie McLean. What I mean is, I knew Jackie McLean the jazz musician, especially from his run of fabulously designed releases on the Blue Note record label in the mid 1960s.
If I have my way, EVERYONE would have the albums ‘Its’ Time!’, ‘Right Now!’ ‘Let Freedom Ring’ ‘Jackie’s Bag’ and ‘A Fickle Sonance’ in their record collections.
If you don’t know them, then Google Image those titles first and if after seeing them you aren’t curious to then YouTube or Spotify the titles to listen to the music, then immediately stop reading this and get yourself a ticket for the next Ed Sheeran concert at Wembley. You’ll be happier there among the strange ones.
Trust me, I know these things.
But, I see you are still reading. Then welcome to the world of wonderful design and great music which somehow syncs together so well in the world of Mr. McLean.
So, back to Jackie the man. As I say, I had no real knowledge of him, until recently I read on the blog site ‘Jazz Wax’ of an online documentary on the man called ‘Jackie McLean On Mars’ from 1979. I saw that it was half hour long, so dived straight in.
By the end of those 30 minutes, I had nothing but respect for the man. He spoke straight, honestly and I found him very engaging.
From being at the top of his game and falling foul of a crippling drug habit, which meant him losing his cabaret card, preventing him from performing live and therefore earning a living, he retrained himself to be come an educator and began teaching jazz and his life experiences in general to the youth of an American high school.
Born John Lenwood McLean in New York in 1931, he was raised in a musical world from the kick off with his father John Snr. being a member of the Tiny Bradshaw orchestra. Through that musician network, he became a protégé of Charlie Parker and mixed regularly with the likes of Thelonius Monk and Bud Powell in the neighbourhood as well as playing in the band at Harlem’s Benjamin Franklin High School with Sonny Rollins. He studied soprano and alto sax from the age of 14 and quickly became a player of very high reputation.
He was a regular on the jazz club scene from a very early age, making his debut at Birdland in 1949 aged just 18 and recorded at 20 on Miles Davis’s first album ‘Dig.’ He went on to become a member of Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers.
First signed to the Prestige label, he landed at Blue Note from 1959 and stayed there until 1967. As mentioned earlier, his heroin addiction came early – his first bust came in 1957 – which meant he struggled to maintain his performing career, so earnings were generated by recordings. In that golden period, he played alongside many of the greats such as Lee Morgan, Dexter Gordon, Freddie Hubbard and Donald Byrd, to name but a few.
His technique of hard bop within a modal sound, followed on from the ‘new’ jazz of the likes of Ornette Coleman and latterly John Coltrane.
Once his recording contract at Blue Note came to an end, he began a teaching role at The University of Hartford and later became director of the African American Music Department there, later renamed the Jackie McLean Institute of Jazz in his honour. He and his wife Dollie were also active in the field of preserving and providing instruction in dance, theatre music and visual arts with the emphasis on African culture.
McLean was also a key interviewee for the documentary ‘Jazz’ by that great filmmaker Ken Burns.
Jackie remained a player, an educator and an activist for the remainder of his life.
He finally succumbed to a long illness at 74 in March 2006, survived by his wife and three children.
The Mumper of SE5
