Tag: Kirk Whalum

Categories
Music Record Reviews

MonoNeon Reaches New Heights with Supermane

Cover artwork by Kii Arens

Though the pandemic might have slowed the roll of many mortals, MonoNeon has been busier than ever. In addition to his steady flow of re-soundtracked found videos, his original stock in trade, he’s been continuing as a member of Ghost Note, collaborating with Daru Jones, contributing to “All Bad” on Nas’ Grammy-winning King’s Disease album, and playing on Grammy-nominee Jacob Colliers’ song “In My Bones.” And, only days after the Grammy Awards, he dropped Supermane, a new solo EP loaded with some of the strongest material of his career.

While the bass virtuoso and multi-instrumentalist has always favored some strong 80s flavors in his arrangements, this eight-song album applies those flavors to some of the songwriter’s most focused material ever. The result is MonoNeon’s idiosyncratic, yet more disciplined, take on classic early George Clinton solo sounds, making that sound his own with the strongest singing of his career.

Of course, one hallmark of George Clinton’s work has been unrpedictability, and that is underscored by MonoNeon as well, when he opens with new wave indie rocker “Just Gettin’ High, Just Gettin’ By.” In a sense, it continues the politically charged material of last year (i.e., “Breathing While Black”), but this time as a near-punk experience, including shouting a rapid-fire catalog of the bizarre state of the world in this moment.

That segues seamlessly into more traditional Clinton-esque quirk-funk, full of tasty synth squeals, scratchy guitar and, of course, the supplest of bass lines. One unifying element is the herky jerky, presumably drum machine-driven rhythms that were such a cornerstone to classic Clinton and other 80s funk. That even applies to the tweaked, algorithmic swing of “Invisible,” wherein MonoNeon asks the musical question, “Don’t you wish you were invisible?… You can be whoever you wanna/And no one’s gonna judge ya/And you ain’t got nothing to prove.”

And on the culture-affirming “We Somebody Y’all,” he even mashes up a bit of Staple Singers vibe with some drums worthy of “Atomic Dog.”

By the album’s midway point, “Grandma’s House,” we get a glimpse of what may be one source of that soulfulness, MonoNeon’s family. The artist had recently paid tribute to his grandmother with an impromptu video of her singing with him. Now comes this joyful ode to such family visits. “Take me back to the good times we had at grandma’s house/We were kids, we were young/We were always havin’ fun,” he sings, in what may be one of the most wholesome funk jams of the century.

On all these tracks, the defining factor is focus. These are tightly constructed tracks, full of polished background vocal asides and synth fills that slot in to the arrangements seamlessly. That applies just as much to the second half, in which MonoNeon also introduces some impressive cameos from other artists, such as Mr. Talkbox, Ledisi, Wax, and, by the final title track, an actual band featuring guest musicians Cory Henry (organ), Jairus Mozee (guitar), and Derrick Wright (drums).

“Supermane,” the song, also features a notable crossover cameo in the sax playing of Kirk Whalum. It’s entirely fitting, as it has the feel of a classic gospel number made more universal by MonoNeon’s pop instincts. That’s entirely appropriate for both his and Whalum’s upbringing in some of the most musical churches of Memphis. And it’s the perfect capstone for a perfect album, a kind of existentialist hymn to live life to its fullest, reminding listeners that “The voice of God is in your mind.” Live like there’s no tomorrow, he sings to us all, and with material this strong, MonoNeon is clearly doing just that.

Categories
Cover Feature News

Jazz City: The Once — and Future — Sound of Memphis

CREDIT: Jamie Harmon

“Before I left New York, I had had tryouts for the band and that’s where I got all these Memphis musicians … I wonder what they were doing down there, when all them guys came through that one school?” — Miles Davis, Miles: The Autobiography

Sometime in the late 1940s, Herman Green, a teenaged saxophone player, found himself playing a show in Kansas City, and wound up speaking with another reed man. “How long you gonna be in Kansas City?” the older musician asked.

“Well, we just up here for the weekend. We gotta go back to Memphis,” Green replied.

“Oh, you from Memphis?” said the other player. “That’s why you’re playing the way you’re playing. ‘Cause you had some good teachers down there.” Green had never heard of the older fellow, but he would remember his name all his life: Charlie Parker.

Herman Green passed away recently, at 90, “at home, surrounded by family, listening to Coltrane,” according to a close friend. He was a revered figure in the local music scene — just as he was taught by “some good teachers,” he taught and mentored many here. And his life, crossing paths with the likes of Sonny Stitt, Lionel Hampton, and John Coltrane, was emblematic of Memphis’ place in the history of jazz, a place honored and treasured by a few, yet unknown to most. Tourists think of Memphis as a blues town. But these days, assuming the onslaught of a mismanaged pandemic is brought to heel soon, that may be changing.

Jamie Harmon

Kirk Whalum

For starters, the blues/jazz distinction doesn’t mean all that much to many musicians. Recently, renowned jazz saxophonist Kirk Whalum, a Memphis native, told me about the transcendent playing of organist Andre Stockard, whom he happened to see at B.B. King’s Blues Club. I asked him if what he heard that night was jazz. “As far as I was concerned, yes,” said Whalum, “but it was in the context of the blues. It’s all kind of mixed up, right?”

And that may just be the key to the unique qualities of Memphis players. Long before Sun or Stax, “the Memphis Sound” was a topic among music aficionados, beginning in the late 1920s, when Jimmie Lunceford, the city’s first public high school band director, put Memphis music on the map by transforming the Manassas High School band into “the Chickasaw Syncopators.” Eventually becoming the Jimmie Lunceford Orchestra, they were a crack ensemble that ultimately toured the country and cut scores of records. That may have marked the first time that the distinctive, bluesy soulfulness of the city’s players caught the public ear. But it wasn’t the last.

As the Miles Davis quote above suggests, Memphis players have long been sought after. The most obvious examples include George Coleman, Harold Mabern, and Frank Strozier, who played with Miles personally, but also include such 20th century luminaries as Phineas and Calvin Newborn, Booker Little, Hank Crawford, and Charles Lloyd. Later examples include pianists James Williams, Mulgrew Miller, and Donald Brown, all graduates of what was then Memphis State University, all of whom played with Art Blakey’s famed Jazz Messengers. And the list goes on, to this day (thoroughly explored in the locally produced podcast and WYXR radio show, Riffin’ on Jazz, which dedicates two episodes to the Memphis-Manhattan connection).

Jamie Harmon

Joe Restivo

Saturday Night and Sunday Morning

A common influence shared by this multi-generational roster is the two-headed beast of Saturday night/Sunday morning, aka, Beale Street and the church. As Stephen Lee, an accomplished jazz pianist who founded the Memphis Jazz Workshop, notes, the two styles rely on their heavy use of two chords in particular, most commonly associated with the “Amen” that ends nearly every hymn. “We get it from playing the blues on Beale street, from playing those same ‘one’ and ‘four’ chords. And it might not be the blues, but that one and four is in all gospel, the old gospel. There’s something in that one-chord to the four-chord change that stands out and has so much soul in it. Memphis is right there, between that one and four chord! It has a lot of meaning. You get it in blues and you get it in church.”

Joe Restivo, guitarist with the City Champs, the Love Light Orchestra, and his own quartet, tends to agree, adding that young players learn more than just notes from the blues/gospel milieu. “The really developmental gigs are in the R&B scene, and that’s gonna be on Beale Street. Preston Shannon [a Beale Street fixture] had so many great musicians run through his band and learn how to play a gig. Some of those people became jazz musicians. Like Anthony Crawford, Hank Crawford’s grandson, who went to L.A. and became a big time fusion jazz bassist. He went through that Preston Shannon school of learning how to play gigs and learning your instrument.

“To me, that’s the same thing as Herman Green and George Coleman and Charles Lloyd going through the B.B. King and Bobby Bland bands. They’re not necessarily playing jazz, but they’re learning their horn, they’re playing a gig, they’re learning the language and the repertoire, they’re learning how to act. You gotta show up on time, dress in a certain way, be professional. Learn the songs. Learn how to get house. Learn how to entertain.”

Courtesy Ed Finney

Ed Finney

Restivo is quick to point out that these same musicians are technical masters of their instruments as well. Memphis players, he notes, “were sought after and they were known for how soulful they were, and how hard they swung, and how funky they were. But also how virtuosic they were. That’s something people don’t realize. A lot of these musicians are also widely known for their technical acumen, not just their feel. Phineas Newborn was a virtuoso. Booker Little was a virtuoso. MonoNeon is a virtuoso.”

How It Began

The history goes back to the 1920s, as University of Memphis music instructor Sam Shoup notes. “If you’ve ever seen footage of the Jimmie Lunceford Orchestra, it’s incredible. It’s like James Brown times 10! When I first started one of the big bands at U of M, we did a tribute to Jimmie Lunceford and played three or four of his songs, and they were hard as hell! We had to work and work and work on them.”

Shoup sees the benefits of the city’s strong music education game every day at the U of M. “We’re getting some really good players. A lot of that has to do with the school system. Schools like Central, Overton, Briarcrest, and White Station have excellent jazz programs. The Stax Music Academy and the Memphis Music Initiative are doing some great things. They’re involved in all types of music, and they’ve been big supporters of jazz. Another big help is the Memphis Jazz Workshop that Stephen Lee is doing. There are middle school kids there that can really play, and now, since we started doing that in 2017, I’m starting to see high school kids who’ve done that coming to college, and they’ve got a leg up on everybody else.”

The University of Memphis has produced some downright legends. The Jazz Studies program there, founded by Tom Ferguson in the 1960s, has long been a beacon for those aspiring to professional jazz chops. Sam Shoup was inspired by the U of M student bands when he was in high school. A short while later, he was accepted there himself. “The best jazz scene I was ever around was in the 1970s, and the center of that was James Williams. At one time, we had James Williams playing in the A band, Mulgrew Miller playing in the B band, and Donald Brown playing in the C band. We all went to school together. These guys were just walking around in the hall every day. Mulgrew and Donald were in my theory class.”

Donald Brown went on to return the favor to posterity, ultimately becoming an instructor at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville, where one of his students was Stephen Lee. More recently, he taught and mentored the up-and-coming Maguire Twins, a drum and bass duo, and appeared on their debut album. Though neither plays piano, Lee points out that some of the wisdom gained from a veteran like Brown transcends technical instruction. “Some of my best lessons with Donald Brown,” he says, “were just conversations. Talking about other jazz musicians and their approach to music.”

James Williams exemplified another form of paying it forward. According to the hosts of Riffin’ on Jazz, he was “a conduit” for other Memphians seeking their fortune in New York. “They’d go up there, they’d look for James, and James would help them find gigs, help them get recordings. James was like the guru of New York.”

And he paid it forward when back home for the holidays as well, right around this, the most wonderful time of the year. “James would have that jam session at the North End around Christmas every year. So I’d go down and talk to him and Mulgrew Miller and Tony Reedus,” says Lee.

Jamie Harmon

Daru Jones and MonoNeon of Project Logic

The Mentorship Tradition

Guitarist Ed Finney, aka Jupiter Skyfish, who until recently could be seen almost every week accompanying singer Deborah Swiney, graduated from R&B to jazz thanks largely to the mentors he met along the way. Introduced to music by his father, who led the Harmonica Hotshots, Finney began performing with an R&B band at the Flamingo Club in 1964. “We played about six months and they became the Bar-Kays, without me,” he recalls. “And then I played at a club where the band leader, my first real mentor in jazz, was Floyd Newman. He was a great baritone sax player, and he was also writing horn charts at Stax; that was probably ’65 to ’67. So I got exposed to jazz. We were a rhythm and blues group, but we had a jazz bass player. And Isaac Hayes would come in and play piano with us.”

True to the process Restivo and Lee describe, simpler, groovier music was Finney’s stepping stone to jazz, as he plied his trade in clubs on Beale and throughout the region. “I played more in the rhythm and blues scene,” recalls Finney. “At that point, guitars were really rhythm instruments. And I played a lot. We were playing five, six nights a week, nine to three every night. And if I traveled with a band, I had to play as an ‘albino.’ It was illegal for me to play in a white club with a Black band. The thing about it, all those clubs had red lights in them, they were dark, and full of cigarette smoke. And I had kind of an afro. At the Tiki Club, the owner found out I wasn’t Black and said, ‘Well, you’ve been faking it for a year. Just come in the back door.'”

Gifted with both talent and indefatigable curiosity, he soon fell in with Herman Green. “He’d been in New York,” says Finney. “He sounded a lot like ‘Trane when he first came back, into that ‘sheets of sound’ kind of thing. He was a great, great tenor player. Obviously one of the best that’s ever come from this city. He was a mentor to me. I played with him for three or four years, off and on. I traveled a lot. I went to New York and played with some great musicians there. Jack DeJohnette, Bob Moses, and Insect Trust.”

The fact that Finney is still playing and composing to this day (still working with pioneers like Bob Moses) is a testament to the through line of inspiration and instruction that carries the Memphis jazz legacy forward. Herman Green, educated first at church, then at Booker T. Washington High School, then mentored by Rufus Thomas on Beale Street, goes on to travel the world, playing with some of the greatest innovators in jazz. Inspired by Coltrane’s radical approach, the cascading cacophony of “sheets of sound,” he returns home and mentors Ed Finney, among many others, who in turn goes on to make a name in the world of free jazz, and continues to do so, even as his mentor passes on.

Courtesy Stephen Lee

Stephen Lee

The Memphis Sound

Thus history reveals the ever-evolving forms of jazz, in which a thread of “the Memphis Sound” can still be discerned. Restivo, whose Where’s Joe? album proffers an edgy take on classic jazz and jump blues sounds of the ’50s and ’60s (even as the City Champs mine funkier, boogaloo-rooted territory), tends to take the long view on all the avenues open to today’s jazz pioneers, once they’re grounded in the Memphis experience. “You’ll see some players take it in a certain direction, a more modern jazz sound, like Booker Little or George Coleman,” Restivo says. “Or maybe it’s someone who wants to pursue a smoother contemporary jazz sound, like Kirk Whalum. Or maybe they want to be more R&B or hip-hop. It all comes from that same place. And the community’s very supportive. Everybody knows everybody. I’m seeing a whole new, young crop of songwriters and players and singers and instrumentalists. They’re all very impressive.

“I think it’s individual. Some people tend to look backwards and explore their voice through older aesthetics, and some people are more futuristic. Like MonoNeon. But even he has that classic approach in there. Once you have that foundational stuff, you can go anywhere you want with it. Do you want to focus on Charlie Parker and Bud Powell’s music, or focus on Herbie Hancock, or maybe take it in the direction that guys like Robert Glasper are going now, synthesizing hip-hop and jazz. That guy’s music is amazing, drawing from both Duke Ellington and J Dilla. He was at the New School when I was there. He’s a huge titan in the current jazz world. Whatever you want to do with it, if you’ve got these foundational elements, you can do that.”

IMAKEMADBEATS, hip-hop producer and founder of the Unapologetic collective, is an unlikely champion of this inclusive, pioneering spirit of the music, and, along with the youth making such strides under Stephen Lee’s guidance, may be paving the way for a Memphis jazz Renaissance. “Memphis is very blues and soul oriented,” he says, “but if you’re willing to dive into the underground, it’s definitely there. Even in stuff that’s more electronic, that jazz influence is definitely there and appreciated. I’ve found some really great jazz musicians who I work with. I like to defy and disrupt. To me, that’s the heart of jazz. That’s why hip-hop samples jazz; there was no ‘classical music era’ in hip-hop. The most sampled music in hip-hop is jazz, because jazz disrupts.”

It’s that unpredictable quality that draws even hip-hop artists to jazz of all eras, but also makes it a tough sell in tourist-dominated sectors like Beale Street. Yet all the artists I spoke with long for a space they can call their own, once live performances become possible again, a place where the spirit of adventure meets a respect for living history: a bona fide jazz club.

“It’s been talked about for years, ever since I was a teenager,” says Restivo. “Joyce Cobb had her club briefly. I remember seeing Herb Ellis there, and it was a very formative experience for me. I wish we had a club like Rudy’s in Nashville. Or Snug Harbor in New Orleans. A jazz room, where jazz is what you’re coming for. Kansas City has a couple; that town has really fostered and maintained its history. An art space built on the nonprofit model, like the Green Room at Crosstown, is important. But it would be awesome to have a real jazz club.”

It’s hard to believe that Finney launched his career, so representative of all that is untethered and pioneering in jazz, on Beale Street. But his memories of that era may yet point us to the future. “There was probably jazz in Memphis before there was jazz in New York,” he reflects. “Beale Street was not a blues street. It was a street for Black elites. People that were movers and shakers in the Black community. Like writers, journalists, owners of shops, whatever. When you went to Beale Street, you’d walk in the club and you’d hear something more like Duke Ellington’s band. Everyone was all dressed up. Yes, blues is important, and I love blues. It’s the mother of it all. But I am a little sad that Beale Street is only a blues street now, because that’s not what it was.”

Having seen the next generation firsthand, Stephen Lee is hopeful. “The youth will have to bring the scene back. There are a lot of kids in Memphis, really good musicians, all under 30, with no gigs. And this is even before COVID. They’re practicing, rehearsing, and a couple are teaching. There’s a scene here, just waiting to be cultivated.”

Categories
Music Music Blog

Music On Film: Two Inspiring Documentaries To Curl Up With This Week

If “a picture’s worth a thousand words,” as they say, then the value of 24 frames per second is incalculable. Two albums recently featured in the pages of the Memphis Flyer also feature accompanying films about their respective artists, and fans of either album will want to seek these out to enhance their appreciation of the music.

First up, we have the little gem tucked in the sleeve of Fat Possum’s recent all-star tribute to Mose Allison, If You’re Going to the City. The two LP set itself is a gem, but it wasn’t until I’d listened to it a few times that I stumbled across the accompanying DVD, Mose Allison: Ever Since I Stole the Blues.

This is a BBC documentary dating from 2005, directed by Paul Bernays, with production values in keeping with previous documentaries Bernays has made, such as 1959 : The Year That Changed Jazz. For this, he was able to journey with Allison to Tippo, Mississippi, where Allison was born, to speak with members of his family and gather images of the local family legacy, including the gas station once run by Allison’s father.

“He’s the only man that ever got rich in Tippo. The only man,” says Victor Buchanan, speaking of Mose’s father, his former employer, who owned more than one business and much real estate in the area.

The film, having been made over a decade before Allison’s death, is perhaps the last great record of the man revisiting his past. “Growing up in Tippo, Mississippi, I probably heard more varieties of music than any other place I could have grown up…the service station was where one of the jukeboxes was,” Allison comments early in the film, as we see him strolling down back roads in his unassuming leisure wear. Now that he is gone, such moments are laden with significance.

This being a U.K. production, there is a lot of commentary by British artists, which is quite in keeping with Allison’s influence on the history of rock. Pete Townshend recalls, “When I first heard Mose Allison, I thought he was black, because he sounded so authentically from the Delta.” The Who’s version of “Young Man Blues,” of course, helped bring Allison to a new, global audience.

Music On Film: Two Inspiring Documentaries To Curl Up With This Week

“He’s the premier lyricist in jazz, you might say, because he’s put all this wit and commentary into it,” says Elvis Costello, whose collaboration with Amy Allison, Mose’s daughter, is one of the highlights of the tribute album.

But there is more than reminiscing in this film. The bulk of it captures nearly complete performances of Allison in the kinds of clubs where he spent most of his life. If tribute albums can at times lose sight of the ostensible honoree in the white hot glare of celebrity guest artists, this one at least offers the corrective: a world-class time capsule from a time when Mose walked among us.

Speaking of world class, Kirk Whalum’s new album, Humanité, is also being co-released with a documentary, sold or streamed separately from the audio release. Titled Humanité: The Beloved Community, the film is clearly striving to be more than a promotional clip for the new album, a visionary labor of love by Whalum, who consciously created the album as a gathering of players from around the world.

From the start, Whalum’s friend, film director and producer Jim Hanon, was involved. This film was clearly a labor of love for him as well, as he functions as co-producer, director of photography, editor and director all at once. And to be sure, the photography here is delectable, a perfect compliment to the extremely polished, cosmopolitan jazz-pop of the music.

The first thing one notices about the music, in the context of the film, is that it’s not particularly Southern. It’s disorienting because the opening imagery is primarily of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., with Whalum’s voice-over recalling his youth in Memphis churches. The soundtrack, unlike so many documentaries with similar images and narration, is not drawn from iconic African American spirituals, but is rather a largely instrumental track echoing the easy sing-song soulfulness of Bob Marley, with all the edges smoothed out. Ultimately, a chorus joins in with the words “We shall overcome,” but it’s not the same old protest song we know.

As the film unfolds, it becomes apparent that this disorientation is partly the point. As Whalum journeys through the world, cameraman in tow, he’s trying to show common threads in the struggles of the poorest people in the world, including Memphis. And the touches of world music that inflect all the album’s tracks become, in essence, that common thread. Ultimately, the team offer a creative approach to the film’s stated goal of channeling “the ethos of civil rights in a raw and compassionate tale of harmony in a divisive world.”

As it turns out, Whalum’s recollections of growing up in churches where his father preached, including one that was little more than a shack, are just the beginning. He’s not the only musician here to evoke the development of a life dedicated to music and faith: in every locale across the globe where he records, the struggles and triumphs of the musicians he works with are highlighted. And they are beautifully illustrated by Hanon’s roving eye.

Music On Film: Two Inspiring Documentaries To Curl Up With This Week (2)

If this is the season when the world’s demands are put on hold, a time when we can strive to see the bigger picture and the common threads, what could be better than augmenting one’s love of music with these two in-depth glimpses of the stories behind the the art? From Mose Allison’s combination of homespun wisdom and rapier wit, to the more open-ended search for community that leads Kirk Whalum across the world, these films will help you start the new year in a more philosophical, thoughtful place. 

Categories
Cover Feature News

“Faith Cometh By Hearing”: The Gospel Roots Behind the Memphis Sound

In covering the Memphis music beat, I talk to a lot of inspired artists — composers, singers, and performers who have rattled the world with their choice of notes, their tone. And they’ve worked in a variety of genres as sprawling as the city itself. But through all the conversations, all the life stories that come pouring out of them, there’s a common thread: church music.

Herman Green, recalling the days of his youth in the 1930s, before he’d ever imagined mastering the saxophone: “I played guitar with a blind pianist man named Lindell Woodson, who played piano for my stepfather’s church. I don’t even know how he could tell what key it was, but he’d get all over that piano like Art Tatum. And it was the Church of God, [claps and sings], you know? It was that kind of thing.”

Photographs by Justin Fox Burks

Fellowship Baptist Church

Booker T. Jones, on his earliest years as a musician: “I want you to mention Merle Glover. She was the organist, and she played the pipe organ. That was the first organ I ever played, at Mt. Olive Cathedral, over by Porter School on Vance Avenue. I was the pianist for the men’s Bible class. I was there at 9 o’clock every Sunday morning for years.”

William Bell, reminiscing about “You Don’t Miss Your Water,” his first hit for Stax Records: “At that particular time, I had been singing secular music in clubs, but the training and the background was strictly gospel. Most soul singers and country singers, we all came out of church … You sang with the choir for a while, and those choir rehearsals taught you how to sing in tune and treat a lyric and express an idea. So all of that helped as we created a career.”

DJ Squeeky, producer of 8Ball & MJG and Young Dolph, recalls growing up playing drums at First Baptist Church on Beale Street, where his mother has always gone. His uncle was “cold” — a master of any instrument in the church, able to jump in and accompany any singer, on any song.

MonoNeon

MonoNeon, trailblazing funk and avant garde bassist: “Eventually I started playing in church. That’s where I really got most of my skill from. Olivet Fellowship Baptist Church on Knight Arnold.”

Vaneese Thomas, noting how she and siblings Carla and Marvell grew up a little differently from most: “Our church was not the gospel experience people expect from Memphis. We grew up in a very straight-laced Baptist church. So we sang hymns and anthems.”

And that’s just a small sampling. Everywhere you turn, the influence of African-American churches on the Memphis sound — even in the era of hip-hop — is inescapable. The church crops up in nearly every musician’s biography, yet remains under-recognized for what it is: a crucible for musical talent and skill without parallel.

Minus Red Productions/Candied Yam Music

Kirk Whalum

In order to dig a little deeper into this milieu, I could think of no better guide than Kirk Whalum, composer, producer, and sideman extraordinaire, whose command of the saxophone has carried the tones and phrasing honed in his father’s church across the world.

“It’s that thing that we take for granted many times, but other people go, ‘Well, that’s just exactly what I need,'” Whalum reflects. “Whether it’s Quincy Jones — as many sessions as I’ve done with him — or many other artists, they hear Memphis in my sound. Not just Memphis, but Memphis church. And it’s specifically the black church. I mean, Aretha Franklin — her dad was pastoring a black church here. And, you know, Maurice White and David Porter were singing in a black church group in their formative years. So those are the things I’m talking about when I say it’s all about that soul that you get from that place. And that makes its way into art.”

If Whalum takes a philosophical perspective on the idea, perhaps it’s a family thing, given that his late father, Kenneth Whalum Sr., once was pastor of the Olivet Baptist Church on Southern Avenue, and his brother, Kenneth Jr., now presides over that church’s latest incarnation, the New Olivet Baptist Church. It’s only natural that Kirk looks beyond the more superficial influence of, say, the gospel repertoire.

“I think it’s more of an approach. In white culture — what represents Western white culture? I think ballet. In ballet, the more intense you get, the higher you get: literally, physically higher. And the pinnacle of ballet is en pointe. You’re on your toes, you know, and you’re reaching for the sky. And just the opposite applies to African music. When you hear people talking about getting down, it’s like the pinnacle of the African musical experience: You’re almost on the floor. You’re bending down all the way.

“I think that’s a good metaphor for the approach that you get from black music. It’s not about someone ‘playing soulful,’ it’s about believing in something and being a part of something and someone. In this case, Jesus. That brings about a completely different approach. It’s not so much the technique or those other things that we all aspire to. The main thing is that feeling, that conviction.”

Yet there’s another force at work here as well, something larger than oneself that players can reach for and one that often goes hand in hand with the church: family. This too arises over and over again in Memphis musicians’ stories, with such a diversity of what “family” actually means that it need not be reduced to a simple Norman Rockwell image.

Barry Campbell with John Black and Austin Bradley

Musical families have marked the evolution of Memphis music since before that history was written. Herman Green never knew his biological father, Herman Washington Sr., a player in W.C. Handy’s band who was murdered when Green was only 2 years old. But his stepfather, Rev. Tigner S. Green, played a major role in his love of music. Other Memphis families were even more legendary: the Newborns, the Jacksons, and the Thomases, from father Rufus to his three children, to name but a few.

The Whalums, of course, are a formidable musical force in this town, yet they are far from the only dynasty springing from a fortuitous union of both religious and filial continuity. Take the Barnes family: Deborah Gleese, daughter of Rev. James L. Gleese, was, for a time, a Raelette, one of the background singers for Ray Charles, before she married gospel singer Duke Barnes and family life demanded that she leave touring behind.

Converting to the Seventh Day Adventist Church, the couple sang and played around Memphis regularly, ultimately incorporating their children into the show. Today, the Sensational Barnes Brothers, brothers Courtney and Chris, are a gospel act in their own right on the newly minted Bible & Tire Recording Company, while their older brother Calvin is the Minister of Music at the Olivet Fellowship Baptist Church.

Seeing him lead the band this past Sunday was an excercise in polished euphoria. From the mellow background passages, bubbling under Dr. Geno Gibson’s sermon, to the band and choir syncing flawlessly with a spritely drum machine and video projections, the service was a master class in stage craft. In the context of references to young congregation members who had recently been murdered, and in Gibson’s unflinching critique of the New Jim Crow, the music’s shimmer was a welcome blast of ecstatic community.

Jonny Pineda

Jason Clark

Mostly, the service created a spirit of inclusiveness, and, it turns out, the church band is itself a testament to such openness. Calvin Barnes remained a Seventh Day Adventist for years when he began playing for Olivet Fellowship, before finally joining the church where he works nearly a decade ago. This is not uncommon. Jason Clark, executive director of the Memphis-based Tennessee Mass Choir, puts it this way: “Sometimes it’s difficult to find the level of talent you need right within a congregation. Sometimes you have to be a part of a congregation that’s willing to support the music industry financially, and that doesn’t always come from your home church.”

In the case of the Olivet Fellowship (which splintered from the New Olivet Baptist Church some years ago), that openness to outside talent extended to allowing one young drummer to rehearse his secular band in the church during off-hours. Calvin Barnes recalls meeting the drummer’s bass player, a kid named DJ, whose father was a well-known bassist already. “The first time I met him, he was playing with this little group, kids really, and some of them were members of my church. DJ was probably around 12 and came in with his bass bigger than him, and when he played it was like ‘Oh. My. God.’ He wasn’t as good as he is now, but he was playing like a grown man. At that time he was super shy. But when the church ended up losing our bass player, we said, ‘Why not DJ?'”

Though DJ didn’t know the formidable gospel repertoire, he soon mastered it. Calvin nurtured both his idiosyncracies and his ensemble chops. “I really took him under my wing,” says Barnes. “And on the music tip, I would challenge him. Because he’s always been that avant garde-in-the-making type. So when the pastor gets up to preach, musicians typically go off to the side because they’re done for the moment. They just chill. Not him. He would sit there in his chair, turn his volume down, and start practicing bass. He’d do that through the entire sermon, every week. Over and over and over. And I would tell him, ‘You’re gonna be major.'”

Calvin Barnes, Minister of Music at Olivet Fellowship Baptist Church, on keyboards

As he coached the young bassist, little did Barnes realize that DJ’s idiosyncracies were what would lead him to greater renown. Some years later, DJ began posting YouTube videos of his more off-the-wall music, under the name MonoNeon. One such video caught the ear of Prince, who flew him to Paisley Park in Minneapolis to jam and record several times before the mega-star’s untimely death. Today, MonoNeon continues to ride that momentum, both with his own albums and in collaborative bands like Ghost-Note.

Church bands, it seems, are especially open to child prodigies. Jason Clark remembers well one young talent in particular: “When I played at Abundant Grace, close to 28 years ago, there was a young guy named Stanley Randolf, who was 9 years old. He was one of the most phenomenal drummers that I had ever heard. Now he’s Stevie Wonder’s drummer, to this day! We have quite a bit of those stories here.”

Clark himself is no stranger to being a prodigy nurtured by both a musical family and the church. Both playing in a church band and directing the Tennessee Mass Choir, which pulls talent from across the state to Memphis, he seems to have been destined for a life in music. “The choir was actually started by my mother, Fannie Cole-Clark, back in 1990. Next year we’ll be celebrating 30 years. Our mother passed away six years ago, so it was handed over to me when she passed. A lot of people remember her from back in the day, when she started the Fannie Clark Singers, produced by the late, great Willie Mitchell. It was a gospel group. I actually started out playing tambourine for the Fannie Clark Singers when I was 6 years old.”

Clark went off to a life in religious music and credits his success, in part, to time he spent at one of the city’s most pre-eminent musical ministries, Mississippi Boulevard Christian Church. “Dr. Leo Davis is one of the best Ministers of Music that I’ve worked under,” he says. “I know he single-handedly trained a lot of musicians here in the city. And to this day, they have probably one of the top five bands in the city. I think that’s due to his leadership.”

Now Clark’s an accomplished keyboardist, while his brother Jackie is a go-to bass player for the likes of Kirk Whalum and others. But for Clark, the luck of being born among musical folk is not a prerequisite for thriving in the church music scene. “No, not really,” he says. “There of course are a few like that, but there are some who are just gifted. There are some who went to school. That’s the beauty of church musicians. You get such a variety. That’s why our genre is more diverse than any other style of music. It encompasses jazz, to pop, to that gritty bluesy feel, to classical. I really credit that to the fact that not everyone grew up in church, just playing gospel music. So you get this whole eclectic feel within the gospel arena. There are just so many different beginnings to it.”

And, as it turns out, there are happy endings as well. While church bands can foster talent in the making, they can also offer a haven to great players who once toured the world. Such was the scene I stumbled upon at the historic Mt. Pisgah Christian Methodist Episcopal (C.M.E.) Church in Orange Mound, which only last month celebrated its 139th anniversary. Attending their service on that Sunday was like turning the calendar back a half century. On either side of the 90-year-old building’s proscenium, high above the altar, were two vintage Leslie speakers, hard-wired to a classic Hammond organ. At the keyboard sat Winston Stewart, longtime member of the Bar-Kays throughout their ’70s and ’80s heyday. Playing bass behind him was Barry Campbell, who was in demand as a New York session player for nearly 20 years, playing with the likes of Eric Clapton, David Bowie, and Quincy Jones. Together with drummer and singer Austin Bradley, guitarist John Black, pianist Davida Winfrey, and the earnest choir led by City Councilwoman Jamita Swearengen, they created magic.

As one friend noted, finding such talent in unassuming corners of the community is as Memphis as it gets. And it helped me appreciate the phenomenon of the church band as a haven as well as a hothouse for youth. As Campbell tells me, “When I was in New York, the music industry began to change. Everyone went for that MIDI programming thing, like with hip-hop and rap. And the rent in New York City kept going up. After a while I was like, ‘Why am I here?'”

So he returned to the community where he grew up. “It’s a church in the ‘hood,” he says. “It’s old-school. It’s a good church. Young people want that contemporary stuff, those mega churches with flat screens and big sound systems. But musically, at Mt. Pisgah we’re still kinda doing it the way they did it back in the ’60s and ’70s. We’re not really throwing in much of the jazz fusion that’s going on now. We’re more soul and blues-oriented. We don’t get into too much Kirk Franklin-type stuff because we don’t have a youth choir. Everybody in the choir is old enough to be my big brother or daddy or mama.”

Neither Campbell nor Stewart grew up playing in the church but came to it later in life. For Campbell, this was partly a practical matter. “Live music isn’t as popular as it once was. So a lot of musicians have gone to the church over the last 30 years. Once I came back, all my guys had a church gig. Every church had at least a bass drum and keyboard. Some churches even had synthesizers. Some had bands. I even knew white churches that had orchestras. It just expanded to where it’s a thing now.”

On this late autumn Sunday, I was glad it was a thing, as Winston Stewart coaxed waves of emotion from the Hammond organ in a minor key, playing even the drawbars’ shades of timbre deftly, while the bass and drums defined a slinky pocket. Though Stewart’s a relative newcomer to the gospel idiom, it was clear that his lifetime of music and soul was pouring out of those speakers, as one extended organ showcase piece after another evoked waves of blues-drenched sorrow and joy.

It was then that the Reverend Willie Ward stepped up and quoted Romans 10:17. “Faith cometh by hearing!” he declared. Still recovering from the reverberating wooden chambers of the organ, bass, drums, and guitar, topped with those soaring voices, I was inclined to believe it.

Categories
Music Music Features

Kirk Whalum’s New Album, Humanité, is a Global Effort.

Kirk Whalum is a native Memphian, and, although he’s lived around the world and traveled widely as a star saxophonist, he’s living back in his hometown these days, and he’s a primary force in helping reinvent Memphis as a true city of the world. Nowhere is that more apparent than on his latest release, Humanité (Artistry Music), and the accompanying film, Humanité: The Beloved Community.

The new album is a truly global effort. It exudes a sort of international cosmopolitan spirit that could sound at home on radios from Jakarta to New York, evoking a sense of connectedness with the wider world, as experienced through the struggles of its least powerful citizens. Precisely because of its global vision, it may be his most personal record to date.

Kirk Whalum

Memphis Flyer: How would you describe the sound of your new record? I see it’s been produced using artists and studios all over the world.

Kirk Whalum: It’s definitely groovin’. That was one of the objectives. The narrative might lead you to believe it was kind of world music. But it’s only world music in the sense that there is really a world platform behind the idea of it. But sonically, it’s definitely pop, in the sense that it’s danceable and, you know, groovy.

How did this album come to be?

It started with this recurring scenario where I was encountering these artists, whether emerging or established, in some faraway lands. And I came to this point where I was looking at turning 60, and I was like, “Geez, wait a minute. That happened way too fast.” And that really sobered me. I said, “All right, dude, what are you gonna be doing? What you intended to do right now, are you doing it?” And the answer was no. You know, I consider myself kind of a global citizen, but I just didn’t feel like I was living that. So I was like, “Man, I’m gonna be all about it.” That’s when this project kind of coagulated, and I was off to the airport. I didn’t wait for a record company. I just started going. And I told my friend John Hanon, an award-winning filmmaker, about the project, and he said, “Well, let’s go. We’ll deal with the business later, but let’s get this done.” And sure enough, he made an amazing documentary, Humanité: The Beloved Community.

The things that you and I do to help facilitate a global perspective are more important than ever. I would be remiss to not mention this reactionary space we’re in as a country, and in our world right now. We need all the help we can get to just keep each other reminded.

Are there any of these songs in particular that address that need for global awareness?

I would point out two: “Now I Know” and “Kwetu.” “Now I Know” features the No. 1 artist in South Africa, Zahara. She lives in Johannesburg, and yet her story is about being from a little village out in the bush. The main thing you get in English is, “Now I know who you are,” and for me that would be God and Christ. “I’ll never be afraid again. Now I know who I am, I’m never letting go of love.”

And the other song, “Kwetu,” features the children of a neighborhood in Nairobi called Korogocho — and by the way, there’s another song called “Korogocho” — but on “Kwetu,” these kids are playing their instruments. And they live next to the city dump. When they burn all that refuse, the toxic smoke wafts over to their little school. But this little ray of hope is their music program, called Ghetto Classics. To have them in the studio was just precious, man. Those two songs really get to the heart of what the music’s about. You’ll feel a little more in touch with the global reality we’re in, in a positive way.

Hear Kirk Whalum with his regular concert series, Kafé Kirk at Crosstown Theater, with special guest Wendy Moten, Sunday, December 1st, 6 p.m.

Categories
Film/TV Film/TV/Etc. Blog

Music Video Tuesday After Memorial Day: Kafé Kirk

Kirk, Kortland, and Kameron Whalum

Yesterday was Memorial Day, but music videos never sleep, so we’re kicking off your 20-percent shorter work week with Music Video Tuesday After Memorial Day!

On Sunday, June 2nd, Memphis musical legend Kirk Whalum is staring a new series called Kafé Kirk at the Crosstown Theater. Here’s what he says about it:

“The language of music speaks more powerfully, clearly, and profoundly to more people, across more boundaries and in more diversely creative ways than any other language. There’s no fear in the music! The wider the gulf between cultures, faith traditions, preferences…the better. And this is the spirit of Kafé Kirk! A groovy musical hang where it’s O.K. to be other, and super-O.K. to be unabashedly spiritual. Do. Not. Miss. This. Kafé Kirk is a musical, spiritual hang with special guests from all over the world, at the brand-new, state-of-the-art Crosstown Theater here in Memphis. Between sets I sit down with my special guest to chat about their spiritual and life journey. Then, we make more music!”

Whalum’s first guests for Kafé Kirk will be his nephews, Kortland Whalum, a vocalist who teaches at the Stax Music Academy, and Kameron Whalum, trombonist for Bruno Mars. Here’s the Whalum clan wailing on a spiritual on the stage of Crosstown Theater.

Kafé Kirk with Kirk Whalum, Kortland Whalum & Kameron Whalum from Crosstown Arts on Vimeo.

Music Video Tuesday After Memorial Day: Kafé Kirk

If you’d like to see your music video on Music Video Monday, email cmccoy@memphisflyer.com

Categories
Film/TV Film/TV/Etc. Blog

Music Video Monday: Top 20 Memphis Music Videos of 2016 (Part 2)

Dr. James Gholson leads Craig Brewer’s ‘Our Conductor – Artists Only Remix’

 Let’s do this.

10. Kphonix “When It’s Tasty”
Director: Mitch Martin
What goes with disco better than lasers? Nothing.

Music Video Monday: Top 20 Memphis Music Videos of 2016 (Part 2)

9. Hormonal Imbalance “That Chick’s Boyfriend”
Director: Jamie Hall
Rising Fyre Productions gives Susan Mayfield and Ivy Miller’s gross-out punk the no-holds-barred video they deserve. Not safe for work. Or life.

Music Video Monday: Top 20 Memphis Music Videos of 2016 (Part 2) (2)

8. “Our Conductor – Artists’ Only Remix”
Director: Craig Brewer
When the Memphis Grizzlies hired Craig Brewer to make a promotional video to help persuade Mike Connelly to stay, he gathered an A team of Memphis talent, including producers Morgan Jon Fox and Erin Freeman, cinematographer Ryan Earl Parker, assistant director Sarah Fleming, Brandon Bell, and Firefly Grip and Electric. Prolific composer Jonathan Kirkscey was tapped to write an inspiring score, which would be performed by musicians from the Stax Music Academy and members of local orchestras, and the Grizzline drummers. Dancers from Collage Dance Collective, joined jookers from the Grit N’ Grind Squad.

After a shoot at the FedEx Forum, Editor Edward Valibus cut together a b-roll bed to lay the interviews on. His rough cut turned out to be one of the best music videos of the year.

Music Video Monday: Top 20 Memphis Music Videos of 2016 (Part 2) (3)


7. Brennan Villines “Crazy Train”
Director: Andrew Trent Fleming
This unexpectedly poignant Ozzy cover was the second music video Villines and Fleming collaborated on this year, after the stark “Free”. Where that one was simple, this one goes big.

Music Video Monday: Top 20 Memphis Music Videos of 2016 (Part 2) (4)


6. Lisa Mac “Mr. Mystery”
Director: Melissa Anderson Sweazy
There’s no secret to making a great music video. Just take a great song, a great dancer, a great location, and some crackerjack editing. All the elements came together brilliantly for Sweazy’s second entry in the countdown.

Music Video Monday: Top 20 Memphis Music Videos of 2016 (Part 2) (5)

5. Marco Pavé “Cake”
Director GB Shannon
Shannon used the WREC building as the main setting in his short film “Broke Dick Dog”, and he returns with a cadre of dancers and a stone cold banger from Pavé. Go get that cake.

Marco Pavé "Cake" Music Video from VIA on Vimeo.

Music Video Monday: Top 20 Memphis Music Videos of 2016 (Part 2) (6)

4. Chackerine “Memphis Beach”
Director: Ben Siler

This three minute epic keeps switching gears as it accelerates to a Jurassic punchline. Its sense of chaotic fun took the prize at the revived Indie Memphis music video category.

Music Video Monday: Top 20 Memphis Music Videos of 2016 (Part 2) (7)


3. Yo Gotti “Down In The DM”
Director: Yo Gotti
It was Yo Gotti’s year. The Memphis MC racked up a staggering 101 million views with this video, which features cameos from Cee-Lo Green, Machine Gun Kelley, YG, and DJ Khalid. The video must have worked, because the song peaked at number 13 on the Billboard Hot 100.

Music Video Monday: Top 20 Memphis Music Videos of 2016 (Part 2) (8)

2. John Kilzer & Kirk Whalum “Until We’re All Free”
Dir: Laura Jean Hocking
Two things brought “Until We’re All Free” to the list’s penultimate slot. First, it’s a perfect example of synergy between music and image, where both elements elevate each other. Second is the subtle narrative arc; Amurica photobooth owner Jamie Harmon selling false freedom seems suddenly prophetic. The social justice anthem struck a chord with viewers when it ran with the trailers at some Malco theaters this spring. The parade of cute kids helped, too.

Music Video Monday: Top 20 Memphis Music Videos of 2016 (Part 2) (9)

1. Don Lifted “Harbor Hall”
Director Lawrence Matthews
Matthews is a multi-tasker, combining visual art with hip hop in his live performances and controlling his videos. His two videos from his album Alero feature his beaten up domestic sedan as a character. Its the total artistic unity that puts “Harbor Hall” at the pinnacle of 2016 videos. Because my rules limited each musical artist to one video, Matthews’ 11-minute collaboration with filmmaker Kevin Brooks “It’s Your World” doesn’t appear on the list. I chose “Harbor Hall” because of its concision, but “It’s Your World” would have probably topped the list, too.
Here it is, Memphis, your Best Music Video of 2016:

Music Video Monday: Top 20 Memphis Music Videos of 2016 (Part 2) (10)

Keep those videos coming, artists and filmmakers! Tip me off about your upcoming music video with an email to cmccoy@memphisflyer.com.

Categories
We Recommend We Recommend

The Gospel According to Jazz Christmas at Clayborne Temple

Kirk Whalum’s coming home for an all-star Christmas concert benefitting Memphis’ history-rich Clayborn Temple. The jazz saxophonist won’t be here for long, though. He just returned from Africa long enough to tour with A Gospel According to Jazz Christmas shows. After a few more dates stateside, he’ll be playing Japan.

Not so very long ago, Whalum thought he was moving home to Memphis, settling down, and touring less, but he blew it. The 12-time Grammy nominee became a first-time winner in 2011 and suddenly found himself busier than ever.

Kirk Whalum

“I said I’d never move home,” Whalum says, still a little surprised he ever did. “My wife and I moved [back to] Memphis after more than a few times having literally said ‘I will never move back.’ We lived in L.A. for a while, and we lived in Paris. Then, 10 years ago, my father got really sick, and we thought maybe we’d go home for a while and regroup. Then we’ll move to New York. We’ve never lived there before.” Whalum never made it to Manhattan, though. “We fell in love with Memphis,” he explains. “It just kind of hit us sideways.”

Whalum’s show for Clayborn Temple, the former home base for Memphis’ striking sanitation workers, promises to mix equal parts jazz, gospel, and R&B.

“You can be an atheist and have a blast,” Whalum says of A Gospel According to Jazz Christmas, a show he also describes as being “unabashedly” about the birth of Christ. “I thought there was probably a niche for people who want to celebrate Christmas and bring their kids, but they may not be churchgoers. They may not be gospel music fans. So this is a little of all of that. And the cool thing is, I get to bring a couple of my really, really good friends who are world-renowned artists, like Grammy-winning guitarist Norman Brown and Keiko Matsui, who’s one of the best pianists in the world. We also have Sheléa, a vocalist who’s been performing with Stevie Wonder for the last two years. And I played with Whitney Houston, so when I say she’s killing it, she’s killing it.”

Categories
Film/TV Film/TV/Etc. Blog

Indie Memphis Wednesday: Filmmaker Laura Jean Hocking’s Prolific Year

There are several Memphis filmmakers with multiple projects appearing in this year’s Indie Memphis Film Festival. One of the most prolific local filmmakers is Laura Jean Hocking, who boasts involvement in eight different projects screening during the weeklong festival. She co-directed the short narrative film “How To Skin A Cat” and the short documentary film “A.J.”; and created music videos for John Kilzer and Alex Da Ponte. As an editor, she cut the music documentary Verge and the narrative feature Bad, Bad Men. Melissa Anderson Sweazy’s music video “Bluebird”, and did initial assembly on frequent collaborator Sarah Fleming’s “Carbike”. Oddly enough, it all started because of her culinary prowess.

Jamie Harmon

Filmmaker Laura Jean Hocking

It was early 2000s and Laura Jean Hocking was doing craft services and props for her friend’s films. While helping out with her husband C. Scott McCoy’s film Automusik Can Do No Wrong, Hocking wound up peering over the shoulder of The Invaders director Prichard Smith. “I watched Prichard edit, and it just clicked. It was an epiphany,” said Hocking. “And I knew right then and there that I wanted to do this for a living.”

Hocking’s epiphany sparked an insatiable thirst for editing jobs. After she purchased an instruction book for Final Cut Pro, and completed every lesson in it, Hocking set out to edit a feature film she had just finished writing with McCoy. “It was 52 speaking parts, and everyone thought I was out of my mind to tackle that as my first editing project,” recalls Hocking. “After that, I wanted to edit any and every thing.”

Solomon Phillips in Laura Jean Hocking’s video for John Kilzer and Kirk Whalem’s song ‘Until We’re All Free’

More than 15 years later, Hocking pretty much has. She’s also produced, directed, or written countless other films. Two of her Indie Memphis projects in particular showcase Hocking’s ability to tackle subjects that can elicit a wide range of emotional responses.

In “A.J.” a short documentary that introduces audiences to the delicate work of the Kemmons Wilson Center for Good Grief, Hocking, fellow producer/director Melissa Anderson Sweazy, and producer/cinematographer Sarah Fleming decided to focus on an element of grief underexplored in documentaries — recovery. “We see the dark side represented in film plenty,” said Hocking. “We wanted to show how people get out of grief and how they get to the other side of it.”

‘A.J.’

On the flip side, the short film “How to Skin A Cat” demonstrates of Hocking’s ability to transition from the somber to the asinine within a single production year. And if you pressure Hocking enough, she’ll tell you it’s the film that she might love just a tiny bit more than her other film-children this festival, due largely to the ability to pay the actors and crew, thanks to the $7,500 in IndieGrant funds the project received. “Do you know how big that was? To be able to pay our actors?”Hocking asks.

In spite of a rapidly expanding filmography, Hocking has her sights set on the Memphis horizon and the future of Bluff City filmmaking. When people ask if she ever would consider moving to L.A., Hocking’s answer is a flat no.“Why would I want to move to L.A.? Here, I can make a difference,” Hocking notes. “It’s here that I have artistic freedom that isn’t usually given to you by way of a big studio.”

With a location of choice and the support of a close-knit film community, Hocking is poised to continue her constant self-challenge to try all things new in the world of filmmaking. And because her personal belief is to never cease trying new things, we are likely in store for watching a filmmaker whose list of works will continue to push norms. “After all,” Hocking added, “If you’re not learning, you’re dying.”

Categories
Film/TV Film/TV/Etc. Blog

Music Video Monday: John Kilzer and Kirk Whalum

Today’s Music Video Monday has a message. 

Solly Phillips

“Until We’re All Free (Ain’t Nobody Free)” is a collaboration between Memphis folk rocker John Kilzer and saxophonist Kirk Whalum. Archer Records tapped director Laura Jean Hocking to bring its egalitarian message to life. “Ward Archer and I went through several ideas before settling on this one,” Hocking says. “When we got Amurica photography owner Jamie Harmon and director of photography Sarah Fleming on board, they helped flesh out the concept. Jamie’s kind of like the Wizard of Oz, promising these children things that are supposed to be their inalienable rights, but which are not available to a lot of Americans. I didn’t have much experience working with children before this, so I had a little trepidation going in. But I was so fortunate to get a great cast. They made my life easy. Our hero kid Solly Philips was a dream. He took direction better than a lot of grown ups do.” 

Music Video Monday: John Kilzer and Kirk Whalum

If you would like to see your music video featured on Music Video Monday, email cmccoy@memphisflyer.com