Nearly 50 years in the making: Caesar Frazier and Friends return to Savannah with jazz at District Live

The last time Caesar Frazier performed in Savannah was in 1974 when he was accompanying Marvin Gaye on keyboards as part of a mega concert tour. Now Frazier is finally returning to Savannah with his own stellar jazz quartet for a special live performance at District Live.

Frazier, a funky soul-jazz master of the iconic Hammond B3 organ, has had a long career playing in bands, in orchestras, and as a solo artist. Frazier released several albums in the '70s on the Eastbound/Westbound record label including his debut, Hail Caesar! (1972) and Caesar Frazier ‘75. His LP’s are considered rare collectors items, but reissue labels like Light in the Attic have fortunately been repressing these classic records again.

Frazier’s music has also lived on through heavy sampling by rappers like Common, Kanye West, Arrested Development, and Gang Starr.

“I was surprised because I recorded that stuff back in 1974,” said Frazier over the phone. “Then even in England, they started labeling a lot of that stuff Acid Jazz and was actually dancing to it. So, when it made a comeback and people were calling me saying so-and-so sampled your song, I was surprised because as far as I was concerned that was just a part of my history.”

Frazier had his big break in 1972 when he played for saxophonist Lou Donaldson’s funky band iteration. Donaldson was a great mentor and Frazier has remained close friends with the 96-year-old jazz great to this day.

“I talk to Lou everyday,” said Frazier. “I’ll be surprised if he doesn’t call me shortly. The impact he had on me, first off, was the fact that when I first started working with him he confirmed to me without saying a word that everything that I thought, to a great degree, about the life of a musician, with the absence of using alcohol, which I’ve never done, and the absence of using illicit drugs, which I’ve never done in my life, he confirmed to me, just by the way he was, that I could be a musician in that model, because that’s the way he lived.”

“He confirmed to me as well the family aspect of things. I think he respects me a whole lot because of how I’ve handled myself as a person. Of course, our relationship to this very day, he calls me his only friend who is still alive.”

Frazier also learned valuable lessons from his time touring with Marvin Gaye.

“When I played with Marvin in Louisville, Kentucky, for the first time in my life after working with a lot of vocalists prior to that, I couldn’t hear myself playing or hear him singing, mainly because of the audience screaming so loud,” recalled Frazier. “That was a heck of an experience.”

“I remember one time we were in Fort Worth, Texas, in a hotel room and we were talking about what it takes to be successful. Marvin said, 'If I had to line up 10 things to be successful, talent wouldn’t be number one.' That always stuck with me because I totally believe that.”

Frazier was so inspired by his time with Gaye that he recorded his own disco-laden vocal album, 1978’s Another Life, using the same orchestrator that arranged strings for the Marvin Gaye classic, “What’s Going On.”

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A career renaissance and a return to the Hammond B3 organ

In the last five years, Frazier has seen a bit of a career renaissance, having released five new albums in rapid succession, as well as several live albums including his latest, Live at Jazzcup, recorded in Copenhagen, Denmark.

“I’ve never been away from music in my whole life, it’s just that once the jazz organ era and the clubs from town to town started to diminish, I just took another path,” said Frazier. “I decided in 2017, that if I was going to get back to my true love, which was jazz organ, now was the time. Fortunately for me, I didn’t have to try to generate motivation. A lot of times you try to do things you have to dig deep to generate the motivation, but fortunately, I’m kind of a disciplined person, so when I got back to it, I got back to it with a real purpose.”

In recent years Frazier has returned to his jazz roots, performing more of the ballads and standards he loves, but with what he calls a “broad approach” to Hammond B3 organ, one that incorporates multiple styles of playing informed by his peers and influences.

“Everything evolves and so I decided I would try to approach the organ from a recoding standpoint in a retro way, going back to the days when some of my friends that influenced me like Jimmy Smith and Jack McDuff,” explained Frazier. “I would go back to trying to capture some of that regarding playing grooves, but not getting too complicated until you get away from an audience being able to digest what you’re doing.”

“When I say the ‘broad approach,’ what I’m referring to is the fact that I hear most organ players in the last 40 years, they play, in my mind, kind of one dimensional. They run-and-gun up and down the keyboard. When you go back in a retro way and look at Jimmy Smith, Shirley Scott, Jack McDuff, Richard ‘Groove’ Holmes, they all played in a more broad way. Their styles were a mixture of styles.”

Frazier’s current band includes jazz guitarist Jacques Lesure (who played o the albums Instinct and Closer to the Truth), saxophonist James Mahone, and drummer Vince Ector (Tenacity).

“Those guys have a history with me one way or another,” Frazier said of his bandmates. “Almost everything I do in the best scenario is based on relationships, and hopefully good relationships.”

Frazier has a slogan on his website, “Doing what I’ve loved all my life,” that sums up his feelings about his continued career.

“For me to be able to do this at this point and be as highly motivated about it as I was when I was five years old, it is doing what I’ve loved all my life, because I tell you, I’ve known little of my life without music and loving it more than I can tell you. I’m totally aware that when you’re an artist and you can make a living doing art life don’t get any better because you’re the freest people on Earth.”

If You Go >>

What: Caesar Frazier and Friends

When: 7:30 p.m., Sept. 20

Where: District Live, 400 W. River St.

Cost: $35

Info: plantriverside.com/district-live

This article originally appeared on Savannah Morning News: Soul jazz master Caesar Frazier returns to Savannah for set at District Live