This is November Public Radio's Jazz Beat. I'm Tom Meadie with a podcast edition of My Jazz Vlog, which you can find at nepr.net. This edition of Jazz Beat is devoted to the late Charles Neville, the saxophone playing member of the Neville Brothers. That's Charles Neville's 1991 recording of Charlie Parker's Diverse.
Neville died on Wednesday, April 25th, age 79, at his home in Huntington, Massachusetts, hidden ill for several months with pancreatic cancer. His brother Aaron, who appeared at a tribute concert for Charles at the Academy of Music in Northampton in February, confirmed his passing with WWLTV in New Orleans, and the sad news gradually reached us here in Western Mass, where the second oldest of the Neville Brothers had lived for 20 years. Kyle Homestead, a family friend who produced the tribute concert, phoned me that afternoon and said that Barack Obama had written a letter to Charles two weeks earlier, expressing concern for his health and gratitude for the pleasure of his music. And the New York Times ran a lengthy obituary of Neville by his longtime music critic, John Pirellis.
It was good to see Charles receive this kind of respect, for while his surname alone carries a high degree of recognition, his career had a distinct identity in jazz and R&B, apart from his membership in the world-renowned Neville Brothers. Aaron called him Charlie the Hornman, and as his brothers Art and Aaron were pursuing solo careers as singers in New Orleans in the 50s and 60s, Charles spent many long years on the road with R&B legends Johnny Ace, Jimmy Reed, Fats Domino, Big Joe Turner, Little Walter, Larry Williams, O.V. Wright, Bobby Bland, Clarence Carter, and Johnny Taylor. Following a prison term at Angola in the mid-60s, he spent a couple of decades in New York where he did studio work and connected with the city's modern jazz scene.
It was Charles' soprano saxophone solo that earned the Neville Brothers a Grammy Award in 1989 for Best Pop Instrumental Performance for the song Healing Chant. Charles was born in New Orleans on December 28, 1938, and raised in a musically rich, notoriously violent Calliope housing project. A living legend in his hometown, he became a local hero with his move in 1997 to Western Massachusetts, where his wife Kristen was raised. Ever at the ready-to-play, he quickly became a ubiquitous presence on area bandstands, playing soul-drenched solos with Evelyn Harris, Roger Saloom, Paul Arslanian, the late Art Steele, and the New England Nevels, the name he gave to his local band featuring his young sons Khalif and Talon.
Charles and Kristen took the lead in establishing the annual Springfield Jazz and Roots Festival at Court Square in 2013. The fest has brought a jubilant New Orleans flavor to downtown Springfield for the past five years, and while it's featured a wide array of big names, it's also brought attention to emerging local musicians and included a grassroots educational component. One now hopes that it will live on as part of his legacy. At the 2014 Jazz and Roots Festival, Charles surprised me when after completing his late afternoon set, he said he was heading to Hartford for a gig with guitarist Jeff Pitchell.
I asked him if he ever purposely took a night off. It's tempting, he replied, but I know I just sit at home waiting for the phone to ring. I felt especially honored when Charles agreed to appear at the Jazz on the 30th anniversary party in 2014. Just tell me the time.
I'll be there, was his ready answer. Here's Charles with his move to diversity, playing solid day buffets. I spoke to Charles on many occasions, but never before. Charles really interviewed him, largely because he shared so much of his life story with me in conversations, backstage, on the street, over a pot of tea, at community functions, that to have asked him to repeat it all in a Q&A behind microphones would have felt unnatural.
Now, of course, I wish I had, but Charles had a powerful story to tell, one that he was skilled at placing in the context of cultural currents, and was trusting and self-possessed enough to relate with remarkable candor and a good deal of humor. Notwithstanding the harsh and sometimes bizarre particulars of a career in which he hit the road as a 15-year-old in the segregated South with the rabbit-foot minstrels, and spent a decade with R&D cavalcades, battled heroin addiction, and served jail and prison terms, it was a story he unbearably told with a wry grin, hearty laugh, and infectious smile. Speaking of which, Aaron Neville, who, like his brothers Art and Cyril, often displayed a brooding look that belied the joyous harmonies and rhythms of their music, said that one look at Charles' smile on the stage next to me would make me smile too. One chapter of Charles' story that he related with a big measure of ironic detachment involved a gas station and general store in the Florida panhandle, where the proprietor was also the local sheriff.
It was sometime in the late 50s, and Charles was touring with Larry Williams of Boney Maroney fame. Williams' Lincoln Continental had a provocative hood ornament and a homemade rear bumper sticker reading, This car stops for white women. The sheriff spotted the sticker while filling the tank, and found some trumped-up grounds on which to lock the band up in a backroom holding cell of the store. Charles said that when it was lights out for business that evening, the place turned pitch black.
A while later, when the band heard the door to the place creak open, they got real nervous, but much to their surprise, it was the sheriff's wife bringing them a delicious home-cooked meal. Here's Larry Williams. Another of Charles' stories involved Angola Penitentiary, where he did time between 1963 and 66 a sentence of hard labor for possession of two joints. He remembered it as four-plus years of constant concern for his safety and well-being.
But in one respect, Angola was a step ahead of his New Orleans hometown, which forbade black and white musicians from appearing on stage together well into the 60s. Charles explained that Angola maintained segregation between inmates, but there was only one music room, so white and black musicians shared that. Neville's fellow inmates included pianist James Booker and drummer James Black, and he said there were excellent white musicians in the population, too. He recalled that when the 1964 Civil Rights Act required the prison to integrate, white and colored signs were covered only with whitewash rather than paint, so certain were officials that the federal legislation would be overturned.
Here's a feature that Charles played with the Neville brothers at Tipitina's in New Orleans in 1991. Thank you, buddy. Here we've got our brother we call in the horn, man. You've got the brand new boy when he's acting on with Dr.
Charles Neville. Charles was often eager to recall the golden age of the dewdrop-in, the fabled New Orleans nightclub and hotel that served African Americans between the late 30s and 1970 when it closed. The property is still owned by the grandson of its longtime proprietor, Frank Panilla, and was recently designated by the Louisiana Landmark Society as an endangered historical building. A campaign is underway to restore it.
Charles emailed me a few years ago to say that he and Kristen had toured the dilapidated structure, and they'd love to play there again. You know, it's so hard to be in love with someone. It's so hard to be in love with someone that don't love you. And it carries a heavy burden on your heart to know that the someone they love is your very best friend.
I tell you, when somebody else is rocking your cradle, better than you can rock your cradle yourself, there's only one thing left in this world for you to do. Pack your clothes, turn around, walk slowly out the door, look over your left shoulder, hang your hair, and say, if you ever think about me, if I ever cross your mind, girl, girl, you'll ever think about me, pretty baby, if I ever cross your mind, well, you know, you know, I know, I know, I know you're mine. The dude drop-in that Charles worked in as a member of the house band was not only a hotbed of blues and R&B in the Crescent City, but a club that hosted drag queens, Patsy Fadalla and Little Dot, R&B legend Bobby Marchand, who occasionally worked as a female impersonator, and Little Richard. Its motto was, night or day, drink, dine, and be gay.
He spoke with respect and sadness for the white women who chanced hanging out at the club and risked being harassed and arrested by New Orleans police, and he told me in harrowing detail of an incident in which a white female patron was beaten by police. Charles battled drug addiction for several decades, but he turned his life around in the mid-80s. It was moving to see this gentle master making music with his young sons and to hear him speak before at-risk kids in Springfield about the life-enhancing affirmative power of music. Aaron Neville said his brother had a transporting power as a saxophonist.
He could take me to Egypt with one note, he told a New Orleans TV station. A listener to Jazz on a mode wrote to say that he didn't realize Charles was such a superb purveyor of what he called a romantic jazz tenor tradition until he saw him in recent years playing standards with the Green Street Trio at the Northampton Jazz Workshop. Here's Charles on soprano saxophone playing summertime. The Green Street Trio on tape, but that hit recorded more jazz albums.
He made a couple at least, including Charles Neville and Diversity, an excellent 1990 release that featured his New Orleans homies Tim Green, Michael Ray, Johnny Vodakovich, and James Singleton. Charles also soloed masterfully on Aaron's recording of the classic blues ballad Since I Fell For You. It's on Aaron's standards album, Nature Boy. Alas, but Charles' passing, the memory of Aaron's appearance at the Academy of Music, where he was joined by Brantford Marsalis for a set of sublime pop and R&D standards will resonate for a good long while.
I guess I've never seen a lie I get the blues most every night Since I fell for you I guess I've never seen a lie Charles Neville died on the eve of this year's New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival In fitting tribute, his image was displayed on banners around the festival grounds and most of the performers dedicated their sets to his memory Many of us have been mourning up here in New England too for Charles was a wonderfully warm and soulful presence in these parts always reflecting what his brother Cyril saw as a man who brought light and love everywhere he went In the second act that he enjoyed as a clean and sober man Charles cultivated an inner peace through his study of Eastern philosophies and his practice of Tai Chi and he lived his last year's feeling as he titled another of his albums, Safe in Buddha's Palm One of Charles' final recordings was a performance of his beautiful song, African Eyes Khalif Neville reprised the tune with Brantford Marsalis at the February 3rd tribute concert and here it's played by Father and Son on Khalif's new album, Vision It's played by I am I am In the second act Transcription by CastingWords Transcription by CastingWords Transcription by CastingWords Transcription by CastingWords Transcription by CastingWords Transcription by CastingWords Transcription by CastingWords Transcription by CastingWords Transcription by CastingWords Transcription by CastingWords