Big Jay Mcneely
Flamboyant saxophonist known as the ‘King of the Honkers’
BIG JAY MCNEELY, who has died aged 91, was celebrated as King of the Honkers, the generation of flamboyant tenor saxophone players who put the characteristic frenzy into early rhythm and blues, and later into rock’n’roll. No one ever accused Big Jay of exercising good taste. Flat-out raucous was his preferred style.
Cecil James Mcneely was born in the Los Angeles suburb of Watts on April 28 1927, the youngest son of a croupier on an offshore floating casino. At the age of 15 he took over the saxophone belonging to his elder brother, who had been called up. After a few lessons, he set about emulating saxophonists he admired, in particular Illinois Jacquet, who made a speciality of extreme high and low notes – “squealing and honking”.
His first professional gigs were at the Barrelhouse, a club in Watts owned by the drummer, Johnny Otis. Later in life, Mcneely pointed out that Watts was the only area in Los Angeles where he could have worked, since beyond its confines, in those days, a black youth was likely to be arrested on sight.
His playing on one of Otis’s early recordings was spotted by a producer at Savoy Records and he was signed up. He was also given the name Big Jay, Cecil being judged unsuitably tame.
In early 1949, Mcneely’s record, The Deacon’s Hop, came top of Billboard’s R&B chart. It made his name and placed him alongside Bull Moose Jackson, Sam “The Man” Taylor and even Jacquet himself, as a leading Honker. When it came to stage appearances, however, Mcneely was way out in front. He wore extraordinary suits of clashing colours, jigged about under strobe lights, looking like a figure in a silent movie, and when the lights went out, his saxophone, sprayed with special lacquer, glowed in the dark.
When the mood took him, Mcneely would play while lying on his back, or jump off the stage and march about among the crowd, blowing lustily. If there was a bar in the room, he was apt to climb on to it and stroll up and down while playing. One night in 1953, in San Diego, the crowd followed him out through the exit and into the street, where he stood, honking at the traffic. The performance ended with his arrest on a charge of disturbing the peace.
Performers who have popular stage acts often do less well with records, and this was the case with Mcneely, although he scored a few more R&B hits, the biggest being There Is Something On Your Mind (1959). This came out under Neely’s name because Little Sonny Warner, the vocalist who should have been its star, was in jail when it was released.
On the whole, Mcneely’s singles and albums sold reasonably well, mainly on the back of his live shows, and he kept his band, the Blue Jays, going with occasional changes of personnel. His brothers, Dillard and Bob, were members for some time. Work became increasingly sparse towards the end of the 1960s as popular styles changed. In 1971 he dismissed the band and took as job as a postman.
But tastes changed again, particularly in Europe, and 12 years later he was back. He toured regularly, and had a notably keen following in Germany and Holland. He happened to be appearing in West Berlin on the night the Berlin Wall came down, prompting him to claim at least some of the credit. He continued performing until a few months before his death.
Many musical greats have acknowledged Mcneely as an early influence. They include Rudy Pompilli (of Bill Haley’s Comets), Little Richard, and even Jimi Hendrix, who claimed to have been inspired as a teenager by the sheer brazen excess of the man.
Mcneely married once and was divorced. He is survived by a son and a daughter.