Michael Lington, Instrumental and Smooth jazz Artist

This week’s Featured Artist isa Smooth/contemporary jazz saxophonist, songwriter, producer and recording artist.  Meet –  Michael Lington

Born in Copenhagen, Denmark

Genre: Smooth/Contemporary Jazz, Pop

For­get what you think you know about Michael Ling­ton.  Now that he’s gone main­stream with his ca­reer and con­scious­ness shift­ing new album Soul Ap­peal, he’s full steam ahead like no one’s ever heard him be­fore, blaz­ing a fresh, in­no­v­a­tive road for him­self with a free­wheel­ing im­mer­sion into the heart of the 60’s and 70’s Mem­phis Soul vibe.  From his 1997 self-ti­tled break­through album through 2012’s star-stud­ded Pure, the charis­matic sax­o­phon­ist has wowed and sur­prisedhis fans be­fore.  But he’s never had more fun, played more loose, solo’d more in­tensely or im­pro­vised this ex­pan­sively.

All of the beloved sax­o­phon­ist’s seven pre­vi­ous ac­claimed al­bums, count­less hit radio sin­gles and hun­dreds of awe in­spir­ing live per­for­mances over the past 15 years are now sim­ply pre­lude to the fresh en­ergy and live in the stu­dio ex­cite­ment he cre­ated at Los An­ge­les’ leg­endary Sun­set Sound with vet­eran R&B/poppro­ducer Barry East­mond (Anita Baker, George Ben­son, Billy Ocean, Yolanda Adams), En­gi­neer Ray Bar­dani (Luther Van­dross, Be­y­once, David San­born) and a hand­picked group of his fa­vorite mu­si­cians. These in­clude a core pocket of Fred­die Wash­ing­ton (bass) and Teddy Camp­bell (drums), or­gan­ist Shedrick Mitchell, gui­tarists Paul Jack­son, Jr., Ray Parker, Jr., Phil Hamil­ton and per­cus­sion­ist Lenny Cas­tro. East­mond con­tributes to the retro sound with Fender Rhodes, Wurl­itzer and piano.

Soul Ap­peal fea­tures nine vi­brant, hip and con­tem­po­rary yet drenched-in-retro-cool orig­i­nals (all co-writ­ten with East­mond) and imag­i­na­tive re-work­ings of the King Cur­tis clas­sics “In The Pocket” and a blaz­ing, horn sec­tion in­fused “Mem­phis Soul Stew.” The lat­ter in­cludes a play­ful rap by Camp­bell that ap­prox­i­mates the way Cur­tis in­tro­duced each in­stru­ment into the mix on the orig­i­nal record­ing. Soul Ap­peal also in­cludes two fresh vocal bal­lads with renowned Grammy nom­i­nated vo­cal­ists that take every­one back to the days when Sam Cooke and Wil­son Pick­ett reigned: “Gonna Love You Tonight” (fea­tur­ing Kenny Lat­ti­more) and “Leave Me You” (co-writ­ten and sung by Ryan Shaw).

The East­mond/Ling­ton in­stru­men­tals on Soul Ap­peal begin with the jam­ming and funky, clas­sic Stax-fla­vored open­ing title track, whose swirl of vi­brant sax melody, brood­ing organ and siz­zling brass sets the stage for what Ling­ton proudly calls “a dif­fer­ent kind of ride.”  He calls the in­fec­tious and bluesy, easy rolling “Tak­ing Off” “the cen­ter­piece of what we were try­ing to achieve, the twang of the Mem­phis vibe,” while as its title promises, “Up­town Groove” finds Ling­ton soar­ing over organ and Rhodes in a brass fired land­scape James Brown could groove in.  The silky and ro­man­tic “Man­hat­tan Nights” blends Ling­ton’s torchy sax lead with a weepy lead gui­tar line and solo by Phil Hamil­ton that’s rem­i­nis­cent of the great Steve Crop­per’s work.  After an­other emo­tional and bluesy bal­lad, “Going Home,” Ling­ton and com­pany swing back up for the jaunty funk-shuf­fle “Dou­ble Down.”

Soul Ap­peal wraps in a gor­geous stripped down, heart on the sleeve place, with the beau­ti­ful East­mond-Ling­ton pi­ano-sax duet “Fol­low Your Heart.”  This was recorded al­most as a bonus track after the ses­sions wrapped and every­one else had gone home.
Many in­stru­men­tal con­tem­po­rary jazz artists tout their lat­est record­ing as “dif­fer­ent” or “some­thing unique” when it’s more or less a vari­a­tion on their trade­mark thing.  In the case of Soul Ap­peal, Ling­ton will let two leg­endary mu­si­cal voices ver­ify the re­al­ity that these ses­sions don’t just rat­tle that cage but joy­fully tran­scend it. Lenny Cas­tro, whose thou­sands of record­ing cred­its in­clude San­born, The Jack­sons, Eric Clap­ton, George Ben­son and Elton John, thanked the sax­man after the ses­sions with the words, “My soul is so mu­si­cally sat­is­fied.”

The other leg­end pay­ing Ling­ton the ul­ti­mate com­pli­ment was Steve Perry of Jour­ney, a friend of East­mond who came to the stu­dio to check out the first ses­sion and kept re­turn­ing be­cause he was so in­spired by the record­ing as it un­folded. He be­came friends with Ling­ton and re­galed the mu­si­cians on their lunch breaks, singing Sam Cooke tunes.  At one point Perry told the sax­o­phon­ist, “Thanks for let­ting me hang out; you helped me get back my emo­tional com­pass.”  That’s the per­fect term to de­scribe the way Ling­ton’s mu­si­cal life was changed as a teenager, when his in­ter­est in the soul-in­flu­enced con­tem­po­rary jazz by David San­born and Grover Wash­ing­ton, Jr. led him down a de­light­ful rab­bit hole of dis­cov­ery into the heart of Amer­i­can soul music.  He loved it all, from Jr. Walker and King Cur­tis to Sam Cooke and Wil­son Pick­ett.  Up till that time, he was a straight arrow clas­si­cal clar­inet player play­ing in the Tivoli Boys Guard, a minia­ture queens guard and march­ing band com­prised of kids 8-16.

“This was the music that made me want to play the sax, all of that Amer­i­can R&B and in­stru­men­tal funk be­com­ing part of my soul in my mid-teens,” he says.  “I’m not try­ing to dis­count any of my other records be­cause I like them all, but my ap­proach here was fresh and very dif­fer­ent than any­thing I had done be­fore.  When you enter a space like this, where you’re by de­sign track­ing with a live band for the first time in­stead of build­ing tracks layer by layer, you don’t know what’s going to hap­pen.  What made this so mag­i­cal was that I was there in the trenches with the band for the en­tire process, work­ing out arrange­ments and parts as we went along. I wanted to just com­pletely let go and let it flow all the way – which opened me up and lib­er­ated me as a player.  The re­sult might not be per­fect in the con­ven­tional sense, but it’s not sup­posed to be. This record is all about feel and vibe.”

Ling­ton, who be­came a U.S. cit­i­zen in 2008, has per­formed nu­mer­ous times for the Dan­ish royal fam­ily, in­clud­ing the wed­ding re­cep­tion of Crown Prince Fred­erik, the coun­try’s fu­ture king.  In ad­di­tion, the sax­o­phon­ist has done ex­tended stints as a spe­cial guest with many other mu­si­cal su­per­stars, in­clud­ing Barry Manilow, Bobby Cald­well, Randy Craw­ford and Michael Bolton.  On Bolton’s tour, he played more than 300 shows in over 50 coun­tries.  One of its many high­lights was per­form­ing in Lon­don’s famed Royal Al­bert Hall and also per­form­ing and meet­ing for­mer Pres­i­dent Bill Clin­ton at a spe­cial show at the Kuwait em­bassy.  Ling­ton also man­ages his own cigar com­pany, Michael Ling­ton Cig­ars (www.​michaellingtoncigars.​com), and he re­cently launched Ling­ton Wines (www.​lingtonwine.​com), his own bou­tique line of red and white wines out of Paso Rob­les on Cal­i­for­nia’s Cen­tral Coast. www.​michaellington.​com

Na­tional Press Rep­re­sen­ta­tive:
Tom Estey Pub­lic­ity & Pro­mo­tion

Biographical information courtesy of Michael Lington.  For more readings click on the link below.

http://michaellington.com/biography/