Gerald albright funky biscuit1/23/2024 ![]() He was performing in Japan when he got the call that RCA Records was interested in signing him to a solo deal, based on his first album which he had recorded and financed himself. In the late ‘80s, Meadows stretched his usual pop/jazz boundaries as a member of a New York avant-garde band called the Aboriginal Music Society. Meadows hooked up with numerous artists and musicians and became a well known sideman in his own right, recording or performing over the years with Brook Benton, Eartha Kitt, Phyllis Hyman, Jean Carne, The Temptations, Michael Bolton, Angela Bofill, Will Downing and Native American flute player Douglas Spotted Eagle, among many others. James signed Meadows to a deal with his TappanZee label, and though Meadows’ first recording went unreleased, the experience put him on the road to his eventual success. His sweet sound caught the attention of fellow traveler, TV composer Jay Chattaway, who was so impressed that he hooked Meadows up with legendary keyboardist Bob James. Then one day, as the oft-told story goes, he was waiting for a train, pulled out his horn and began playing under the huge dome. He had been a sideman with Connors for three years with only vague notions of eventually going solo. ![]() Meadows first hit the airwaves in 1991 with For Lovers Only, but his career really began one day in the late ‘80s at New York’s Grand Central Station. I later produced his Passion album with him. “Not long after I finished school, (well-known jazz drummer) Norman Connors recorded my song ‘Invitation’ and then asked me to join his band. ![]() “I got a lot of sideman jobs in college, and I have always said I got a graduate degree playing clubs,” adds Meadows, who perfected his craft studying with Joe Henderson, Dave Liebman and Eddie Daniels. He later went to the SUNY Purchase School for the Arts, where he studied under Ron Herder. It was a tremendous rush, and lit the fire.”Īfter studying jazz with Anthony Truglia, Meadows attended Berklee College of Music, where he majored in arranging and composition. “It was exciting seeing positive newspaper articles about my playing in Italy, receiving all sorts of accolades and feeling the excitement of interaction with the crowd. “The first trip was with my high school band and the second was a graduation gift to me and a few other guys playing over there in a big band setting,” he says. Playing the sax was just a hobby until he saw the way audiences reacted to him and his student cohorts in Holland, Italy and Austria. He had dreamed of being either a veterinarian or zoologist, and assumed he would enroll in college as a pre-med major. ![]() Fortunately for the smooth jazz fans who have embraced his sweet and funky soprano sound over the last decade, Meadows decided to take a few very important trips to Europe during his junior and senior years. His passion for different types of music led him to appreciate numerous jazz musicians, including Stanley Turrentine, Sidney Bichet, Johnny Hodges, Duke Ellington and Coleman Hawkins, and he naturally gravitated to the soprano sax in his high school years. Born in West Virginia, saxophonist Marion Meadows – whose ethnic mix is Native American, African American and Caucasian – he grew up in Stamford, Connecticut, where he began playing clarinet and studying classical music at eight years old.
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