Jackie McLean--Alto Saxman With a Mission to Teach

Jackie McLean, the alto saxophonist with an edgy, provocative sound and a keen ear for picking the right notes, has changed.

“I’m not Jackie Mclean of the ‘60s, I’m Jackie McLean of the ‘80s,” he said recently.

These days, besides playing his horn, the 56-year-old jazzman also heads the African American Music Department at the University of Hartford (Conn.) and he’s the founder of the Artists’ Collective, an arts program for Hartford’s inner-city youth. “That makes three big things on my resume of life.

“Bird, Pres, Hawk, they died great saxophone players. When I die, I want people to remember my other accomplishments.”

McLean--who has worked with Art Blakey, Charles Mingus and Miles Davis and has made more than 20 Blue Note and Prestige label LPs, some regarded as classics--has been at Hartford since 1970, where he teaches both a saxophone workshop and a class he calls the “Study of African American Music in America and in the World.”

Since most of his students are mainstream adherents, what advice does McLean--who plays at the Catalina Bar & Grill tonight through Sunday--have for these youngsters wanting to make a career in straight-ahead jazz? “I prepare my kids for a hard life,” he said. “And though there are a lot of jobs being absorbed by electronic performers, there’s always going to be an acoustic jazz audience. This is a beautiful music full of feeling and sound that is too important to die.”

At the Artists’ Collective, started in 1972, McLean teaches “little kids, 3-4 years old,” some of the fundamentals of music, like how to count. “We have to do a lot of work if we want to give some children a better life, and I just feel that I have to do my part,” he said. “I don’t know why I’m pushed to this thing.”

Despite his extramusical activities, McLean--whose most recent LP is “It’s About Time” (Blue Note), co-led with pianist McCoy Tyner--feels he still gets enough time in on his horn. “I keep my chops up, and I’m playing better than ever,” he said.

He works--mostly on the East Coast and in Europe and Japan--with his own quartet and with all-star assemblages, as he will this summer with Cedar Walton’s trio in Umbria, Italy, and with Donald Byrd and Sadao Watanabe at the Mt. Fuji Festival in Japan. He said he prefers working with his band because, instead of playing standards, jam-session style, “We’re playing fresh stuff written by young guys in the band, and myself, though I throw in the things people want to hear, like (McLean originals) “Little Melonae” and “Minor March.” It’s fun. I’m loving it.”

McLean doesn’t play just one style. “I play everything,” he said. “I go away from the melodic side and stretch out and holler and scream on my horn, I get funky and play the blues, and I get involved in some chord changes, play some intricate things. There are a lot of places to go. It doesn’t have to be one kind or another.”

McLean’s feels his most distinctive quality is his tone. “It’s like an alto but it’s really a tenor coming from the inside of me,” he explained. “I’ve never really liked the sound of the alto except for Bird and (Sonny) Stitt. In fact, if I hadn’t heard Bird, I would have switched to tenor because I was in love with Dexter (Gordon), Ben Webster, Lester Young and the others.”

After all the years of performing, McLean still loves the thrill of playing for an appreciative audience. “If the people enjoy it, and I leave the stage feeling good about it, that’s the greatest reward, man,” he said. “There’s no money that can make up for that.”

Like the Dexter Gordon character in “ ‘Round Midnight,” music is always in McLean’s head. “I’m always thinking about it, I dream about it,” he said. “I’ve loved it since I was a child. I was raised on Billie Holiday, Charlie Barnet, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, of course. My mother used to listen to gospel and I’d cry when I heard spirituals, and when she’d ask me why, I’d say ‘The music.’ ”

McLean spent his adolescence and young adulthood in Harlem, in the company of many of the greats of modern jazz. “Those were some of the most fruitful and beautiful days of my life,” he said. “I used to walk down St. Nicholas Ave. and come into the square at 148th St. and there would be Miles, Bud (Powell), Sonny Rollins, Arthur Taylor, Kenny Drew, all the guys sitting on a park bench enjoying a spring evening. It was something just to be able to be on the periphery of all that greatness.”

Though he’s received plenty of peer recognition, substantial material reward has managed to evade McLean, and for quite a while, he was bitter about that. “But my wife helped me to turn that into something more positive,” he said.

“I’m comfortable right now. I don’t seem to be in quest of material things, and there’s nothing I can do about the past. I just want happiness and health, to live in peace and to have children have an opportunity to grow up in a healthy world.”