Cool guys, hot jazz

Sax appeal.

Three young jazz musicians  — Keith McKelley, Matt Corey and Tony Watson Jr. — have it in spades.

 Go see any one of them perform at the Blue Olive or 7 Martini Lounge some night and witness an exciting mix of musical ability, inspiration and energy.

“Me, Matt and Tony Jr. all came up together, through the same system,” says Keith McKelley about his peers.

Each one started playing saxophone in the fifth grade, studied under jazz doctor Tony Watson Sr. at Crenshaw Junior High, and graduated from McKinley High School, playing jazz all the while.

Each one is forging a promising musical career, with a wide range of gigs, diverse musical styles and upcoming solo albums.

Each one is thoughtful and polite offstage — and a blazing talent onstage.

Matt Corey


“It’s weird for me. I’m a pretty quiet, low-key person, but when I get up on stage I can let this other part of myself out,” Matt Corey says. “People tell me I’m a pretty intense player.”

    Indeed. Corey is on fire when he is gigging with Skinny, a danceable funk-rock combo that tours nationally, or playing with his own Diamond Patio All-Stars, whose shows veer from jazz to hip-hop. His stinging solos are exciting to behold.

“It’s pretty much the most fun you can possibly have,” he says about playing live.

    Corey began playing sax in the fifth grade. “I really didn’t realize what I was getting into when I started,” he recalls. “It didn’t really catch fire for me until junior high. It was Tony’s dad (Tony Watson Sr.) that really got me going. He had such a strong program at Crenshaw. I remember walking in and hearing that jazz band and thinking, ‘That’s the ultimate!’ ”

    While attending McKinley High School, Corey played sax alongside Keith McKelley in the band at Trinity Gospel Temple, and “started playing all these places in Canton and Massillon that would need a sax player for the night.”

    He earned a bachelor’s degree in music from Youngstown State University, where he studied music education and jazz performance. Then he landed the role of lead sax player in a show called “Cyberjam” that played in London, at Disney World and on tour. “It was like ‘Stomp’ with horns,” he says.

    Corey has finished recording his first CD, which is planned for a spring release. It includes both original songs and Corey’s versions of songs by Lil’ Wayne and Justin Timberlake.

    Catch Corey in concert with Skinny on March 6 at the Barley House in downtown Akron.

Keith McKelley

Keith McKelley not only lives music, he dreams it.

    Sometimes, he’ll wake up with a fresh, fleeting melody playing in his head. “The thing is, I have to go straight to my keyboard and start laying it down or I’ll forget it,” he says.

    These days, McKelley is focusing on laying down tracks for the solo album he plans to release this spring. One of the album’s funkier tracks features celebrated jazzman Joe McBride on organ.

    Based in Cleveland the past three years, McKelley grew up in Canton. He chose saxophone while a fifth-grader at Mason Elementary School, inspired by his mother’s love of smooth jazz players like David Sanborn and Kenny G.

    At Mason and later Crenshaw Junior High, “Tony Watson (Sr.) was my teacher and he got me really motivated to keep going and keep learning. He’s my first really huge influence. Tony Jr. and I started playing dates at Chili’s on 12th Street with his dad when I was 17. We had a regular gig there for a couple of years. I actually started sitting in and playing gigs at clubs here and there when I was 15.”

    A busy and focused musician who sometimes plays two or three shows in one night, McKelley says, “I never went to college after high school, but my education has been from playing in different settings with lots of different people. I’m constantly still learning.”

    At downtown Canton’s Blue Olive Jazz Club, where he will perform Feb. 13, McKelley rivets the crowd with awesome improvisation that veers from jazz to funk, R&B to hip-hop, and slows down for sultry balladry. He fronts his own combo, the Keith McKelley Project.

    “I’m a guy of extremes,” he says. “People think I come off as really quiet and introverted. People who know me real well know I’m anything but quiet. That comes out more on stage.”

Tony Watson Jr.


In 2008, Tony Watson Jr. played tenor sax on popular smooth-jazz CDs by Walter Beasley, Najee and Pieces of a Dream.

“I’m tired of playing on everyone else’s albums — even though I’m grateful,” he says. “Hopefully, 2009 is the year I get my own solo record deal. My name is out there and I need to step out on my own.”

The son of Tony Watson Sr., the music director at Crenshaw Middle School in Canton, and a prominent local jazz drummer, Tony Jr. is quick to credit his father’s influence on his rising career.

“My dad got me listening to all this great music, like the Yellowjackets and Miles Davis and John Coltrane, when I was a young boy. He kept me focused,” Watson says.

During high school, he and Keith McKelley played sax alongside Tony Sr. in a local jazz combo called the Hall of Fame All-Stars. “On the bandstand, even when we were young, my dad always treated us like adults and always asked us for our opinions. He told Keith and I that we had to be versatile and play more than one style of music, which was great advice.”

These days, Tony Jr. and Tony Sr. share the stage in a popular local combo called Bloodline. Tony Jr. also tours with the likes of Pieces of a Dream, Bob James and Joe McBride, does studio work and serves as worship leader at Church of the Savior in downtown Canton. (He has two musical brothers — Michael, who plays trombone in the U.S. Marines band, and Brian, a drummer.)

“I pride myself on not being a one-style player,” Watson says. “You can hear all styles in what I do. Put me in a country band and I’ll sound like I belong there.”