Big Jay McNeely, influential R&B sax player, dies at 91

Big Jay McNeely, a tenor saxophonist whose crazed stage antics and honking style of rhythm-and-blues presaged the rise of rock ’n’ roll in the 1950s, died Sept. 16 at a hospital in Moreno Valley, Calif. He was 91.

His son, Richard McNeely, confirmed his death from prostate cancer.

Beginning with the 1949 R&B chart-topper “Deacon’s Hop,” McNeely recorded a string of hits — “Wild Wig,” “Nervous, Man, Nervous” and “3-D,” among others — whose titles telegraphed a gleeful frenzy within the grooves.

His style, built on fast repetitive riffs with honking low and screaming high notes, was rock ’n’ roll in all but name. And McNeely brought an outsized showmanship to the proceedings. Horn in hand, he’d blow his way through the crowd from the back of the venue to the stage. Once there, he’d often strip down to his shirt in mid-solo and finish playing on his back while kicking his legs in the air.

Jazz saxophonist Ornette Coleman once saw McNeely, who was African American, perform in the black section of Fort Worth and recalled him as a musical pied piper.

“I saw this big-looking guy, all dressed up in this fine-looking zoot suit, and he was honking one note, over and over, with one of the biggest saxophone sounds I’d ever heard,” Coleman said, according to the New York Times. “He came walking out of the theater, still playing, and a whole line of people came marching out after him. The band inside the theater was wailing away, but Jay led his people around the block and inside the club again.”

The theatrics were not lost on the wave of rock performers who followed. A Seattle teenager and aspiring guitarist named Jimi Hendrix saw McNeely perform in 1958 and later adapted many of the saxman’s moves into his own stage show.

By the mid-1950s, McNeely found his music embraced by white and Chicano teenagers at Los Angeles venues such as the El Monte Legion Stadium and Grand Olympic Auditorium — though the pandemonium created at the height of segregation did not go unnoticed.

“I was raised in Watts and we had about three miles of comfort there. We couldn’t come out of that comfort zone, you know,” McNeely told the Ventura County Star in 2011, referring to the Los Angeles neighborhood. “We’d go to South Gate, Lynwood, Compton and we’d get locked up. It was very, very prejudiced.”

He added, “There were 5,000 or 6,000 white kids really going crazy [at concerts] — just like the pictures that you see and they couldn’t stop it. So they just barred me out of Los Angeles so I couldn’t play. My manager was able to get me into the Apollo Theatre and Birdland in New York and the Band Box in Atlantic City.”

Cecil James McNeely was born in Watts on April 29, 1927. His father worked as a porter for a shipboard casino near Santa Monica. His mother, of American Indian heritage, made and sold Indian blankets. Both parents played piano.

In addition to his son, of Los Angeles, survivors include a daughter, Jacquelene Jay McNeely of Moreno Valley; four grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.