Saxophonist slates Joplin homecoming, decades in the making

Feb. 5—It was the summer of 1945, and Charles McPherson — touted as one of the world's finest jazz alto saxophonists — still vividly remembers the special music he heard as a 6-year-old during the annual Emancipation Park Days Celebration at Joplin's Ewert Park.

"I know it was warm ... and there were swings and sliding boards and teeter-totters ... and there was a band playing on the bandstand that afternoon, and I remember how I was taken in by the music and how the instruments spoke," said the world-renowned jazz musician, who was born in Joplin, and spent his early childhood living in a house on Langston Hughes-Broadway and attending Lincoln Elementary School.

"I heard this kind of Kansas City south-central swing — just the feel and the musical vibe of it," McPherson said. "I remember feeling excited as I watched and listened."

McPherson, for the first time ever, will be playing his award-winning music live in Joplin later this month. It's a moment, he said, that's long overdue.

"It will be interesting to come back to Joplin," he said. "I don't think I've ever worked there as a professional musician, but I've been through there, going from point A to point B in working some place else."

McPherson will perform a fundraising event, dubbed "The Journey Home," at 7 p.m. on Friday, Feb. 18, at Joplin Empire Market. Proceeds will benefit the creation of a Black history mural featuring McPherson, Langston Hughes and other prominent Black artists. The design will be unveiled that night.

"I'm bringing my family with me (to Joplin), including my daughter, dancer Camille McPherson, and we're going to perform (a duet) using a composition that I wrote, a part of a ballet suite — so we're going to perform that (live)." McPherson currently serves as resident composer for the San Diego Ballet.

At 7 p.m. on Saturday, Feb. 19, McPherson will present a second performance at Joplin's Central Christian Center. The event is free and open to the public. He will be performing some popular jazz pieces.

He said it's fair to say the seeds of love for music were planted while growing up in Joplin.

"The interest in the music was there, even at the age of 9 — very much so," he said. "I was very enamored with instruments, how they looked, the sound, especially the saxophone."

At the age of 9, his family moved north to Detroit, Michigan, where, he said, they just so happened to settle down near a popular jazz club right down the road, and one of his biggest musical influences — jazz pianist Barry Harris — lived just around the corner.

"Jazz music at that point would have been some kind of swing, maybe, and bebop was happening; I was too young and I didn't discover bebop until I was about 12 or 13 in Detroit. But I loved the blues. I really liked the sound of it."

It was his time in Detroit, and later in the Big Apple, where he began mastering the piano and the brassy saxophone that will forever be linked to his name.

In an article by Lionelle Hamanka she wrote: "McPherson's tone is big and fat; the tone colors are dark purples, maroons and mahogany. He plays with great intensity and combines joy and blues in one sound, a la Billie Holiday."

"I'm definitely honored by the tribute ... and to have my family there ... my children and grandchildren there to see that, it's a very nice thing," McPherson said.

McPherson's homecoming is a collaborative effort of many local groups, including The Minnie Hackney Community Service Center of Joplin, George Washington Carver National Monument and Joplin Emancipation Park Days Celebration committee.

"Joplin does not often get to see talent like this," said Nanda Nunnelly, president of the service center, "much less to know that talent came from Joplin. This is a chance of a lifetime.

"Mr. McPherson is not just Black history," she said. "He is American history."

Over the course of his career, McPherson has recorded 30-plus albums, performed concerts and festivals in venues such as the Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall, and worked with Harris, Charles Mingus, Art Farmer, Toshiko Akiyoshi and Wynton Marsalis, among others.

McPherson's music was featured in Clint Eastwood's 1988 movie "Bird," a biopic about the life of Charlie "Bird" Parker, to whom McPherson has often been compared.

Now 82, he grows nostalgic when thinking about Joplin, he said. He was known as "Hal" back then, and many boyhood memories come flooding back to him now.

He said he remembers the friends he had back then, "the little guys my age," that he played with growing up in Joplin.

Kevin McClintock is features editor for The Joplin Globe.