Joe Alterman will pay it back to jazz legend Les McCann at Eddie’s Attic show

“Big Mo” — now confined to a health care facility, unable to play and more than 50 years Alterman’s elder — and “little joe” have barely gone a day without talking since they met. That was in 2011, at the Blue Note club in Greenwich Village. Alterman was doing a sound check, preparing to open a concert for McCann. In came the soul-jazz legend, who rolled up to Alterman in his wheelchair and told him, “Play me some blues, boy.”

Alterman’s fascination with McCann’s kind of music began long before their meeting — as a child growing up in Atlanta taking piano lessons that, like so many of us with intentional parents, he didn’t want to take.

He had heard Doc Watson’s “Freight Train Boogie” and much preferred the bluegrass to classical piano — not to mention that he was getting into trouble with his piano teacher for changing the notes on the classical scores as he worked through them. He was so taken by Watson’s boogie-woogie licks that he talked his dad into letting him add guitar lessons to his piano schedule. And when his guitar teacher told him those licks were written for piano, he was back at the keyboard.

Alterman’s dad realized his son’s potential for jazz and started bringing home Bill Evans and Dave Brubeck albums. But Alterman preferred the traditional, old-school playing of Oscar Peterson and Ramsey Lewis.

Credit: Fran Kaufman

Credit: Fran Kaufman

Then came a confirming event. “At 13, I went to one of my classical music recitals, sat down and played my boogie-woogies,” he said. “I got a standing ovation, and I was thrown out of school.”

At 17, Alterman moved to New York to study piano at New York University. “I wanted to go to a school that wasn’t only music,” he said. “It was a nice blend of music and college.”

And it was New York City, an epicenter of music and culture. “I was fascinated by the Village,” Alterman said. “Then I decided to play some gigs and started getting gigs around New York, and, before long, it became what I was doing.”

Alterman returned to Atlanta in 2016, despite some misgivings.

“I started to realize things I liked to do were not in New York, and I was missing out on family things,” he said. “I was very lucky at that point that I was constantly playing places and had met a lot of music celebrities. I talked to Ramsey Lewis and told him I was debating moving home but was nervous about what that would mean to my career. He told me, ‘Go where you’re happy, and that will reflect in your music.’”

It was early in college when Alterman had his McCann epiphany. “I was getting a lot of pressure to play modern,” he said. “They wanted me to get away from Red Garland and into Herbie Hancock. But I liked the old school.”

He heard an early McCann tune called “Fish This Week But Next Week Chitlins” and realized McCann was doing all the things Alterman was being told not to do.

“I didn’t know anything could be dirtier than Oscar Peterson,” Alterman said. “Maybe something about Les growing up in Kentucky. I loved everything about his music.”

Credit: Courtesy of Tiger Turn

Credit: Courtesy of Tiger Turn

McCann is best known for his “Compared to What” with saxophonist Eddie Harris. “But there’s so much more to him that people don’t know about, and one is how great a composer he was,” Alterman said. “When we’d get together on Facetime these last eight years, I’d surprise him and play one of his songs. Over those years, I learned a lot of his music. I’ve been thinking about the album since 2020. I finally narrowed down the songs and recorded it one night last November.”

“Joe Alterman Plays Les McCann: Big Mo & little joe” ranges from a characteristic driving, gospel-like “Gone On and Get That Church” from the 1960s “Les McCann Ltd. in San Francisco” to a tender, sultry “Dorene Don’t Cry” to a freedom dance “Ruby Jubilation” that dates from McCann’s 1977′s “Music Lets Me Be.” The album concludes with “Don’t Forget To Love Yourself,” which the two pianists composed together and was originally recorded for Alterman’s 2020 release “The Upside of Down.”

The new album is already garnering rave reviews in the jazz world.

“Alterman is a technically efficient player who utilizes an array of pianistic skills, from brilliant glissando runs, gospel-inspired get-downs, barrelhouse style honky-tonk, and shimmering tremolos to earthy blues,” jazz journalist Ralph Miriello wrote in a review. “He abides by advice given to him by master pianist Ahmad Jamal, who told him, ‘Technique without soul is meaningless.’ Alterman oozes with soul, and his genuine joy when playing makes listening to him infectiously uplifting.”

For Alterman, McCann has gone from hero to mentor to friend.

“He was like a savior to me because of the pressure I was under to sound different than me,” Alterman said. “For three or four years, all I listened to was Les. Then meeting him at the Blue Note, I remember being so nervous. He told me to play the blues, and, when I finished, he just said, ‘Amen.’”

CONCERT PREVIEW

Joe Alterman

7 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 10. $20. Eddie’s Attic, 515-B North McDonough St., Decatur. 404-377-4976, eddiesattic.com.

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Mike Shaw is a jazz pianist who has performed for decades in New Orleans and Atlanta. He is the author of the novel “The Musician” and the founder of Shade Communications, a marketing company.

Credit: ArtsATL

Credit: ArtsATL

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