- Date: Fri 2/20
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- Notes: 8 PM Show / $37.50 advance / $42.50 day of show
- Dr. John
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- When a BBC interviewer recently asked Dr. John, “What is the secret to musical longevity?” the legendary New Orleans artist had a ready answer. “Living,” he replied. Through more than half a century of music making, Mac Rebennack Jr. has been doing just that as he’s rolled with the highs and lows that come with being a working musician, and these days he finds himself in an extended stretch of being in the right place at the right time. Now 65, this American icon, whom fellow legend Jerry Wexler once described as “the blackest white man I know,” continues to take all that life has to offer, crisscrossing the country and spanning the globe with his band of virtuosic veterans, the Lower 911, and recording whenever the spirit moves him, which is frequently. More than ever, it seems, Dr. John’s head is brimming with ideas. The latest one, which comes to glorious fruition on the Blue Note album Mercernary, came from his daughter Tina, who pointed out that “Personality,” a 1946 hit for Johnny Mercer, would be a perfect fit for her dad’s down-home style. In fact, Tina suggested, why not do a whole album of songs written or popularized this giant of American popular music? That got Mac thinking. Mercer was a fellow Southerner and workaholic—the Savannah-born artist wrote the words, music or both to a good 1,500 songs, a remarkable number of them classics, as well as spending decades as a performer. He could relate. “Personality” was one Mercer-associated standard the great man didn’t write himself, although the wry Jimmy Van Heusen lyric was a perfect fit for Mercer’s knowing vocal style. “I just loved the way Johnny sold that song,” Mac says. “It was so much out of the old burlesque thing, and you could tell he knew that stuff, and he always appeared to me to have that Southern something about him. He just hit the lines in songs that was like the real McGillicuddy. He was a great singer, a great A&R man, a producer, and he even started Capitol Records. So we started looking at some Mercer stuff.”
After running the idea past Blue Note and getting an enthusiastic response, Dr. John got down to business, poring over Mercer’s massive songbook. “I wanted to pull as many of the ones that people weren’t as familiar with, but it was impossible,” he says. “One thing about Johnny Mercer’s stuff is that even the songs that aren’t that well known are well known from something.” Rebennack had a handful of songs in mind from the start, including “Blues in the Night,” “Lazy Bones,” “That Old Black Magic,” “Save the Bones for Henry Jones” and “Tangerine,” and he looked forward to seeing what would go down when Mercer’s perpetually hip material made contact with his own brand of N’Awlins funk—or fonk, as he calls it. As usual, he demo’d up the tunes he’d chosen for his band. “They get what I’m thinking about from that, and then they play it for real,” he says.
Sure enough, a chemical reaction immediately occurred in the studio whenever the players—guitarist John Fohl, bassist David Barard and drummer Herman Ernest III— locked in on their leader’s line through a given song, sometimes completing the thought, at other times refracting it in provocative ways. Pretty much every track on Mercernary is a first or second take, and in some cases, “We hit it and quit it, and we were on the next song,” says Mac. “My band, when they lay this stuff down, it’s kickin’. They ain’t flapping in the wind.” Most of the horn parts, from the likes of trumpeter Charlie Miller, tenor sax man Herbert Hardisty and other renowned Crescent City veterans, were cut in subsequent overdub sessions. Meanwhile, Dr. John was reading Mercer’s autobiography, giving him further insights as well as deepening the sense of kinship he felt with the artist. “Dream,” for example, “is a song that Johnny Mercer wrote the words and the music to that is not like Johnny Mercer’s music,” Rebennack points out. “I like it because it doesn’t really fit. That’s why I think of him as a mercenary—he was a hustler; he knew how to survive out there. He always wanted to write Broadway shows, but because he wasn’t from New York, they wouldn’t let him get in the clique. So the next best thing he could make a hustle out of doing was to go to Hollywood and write songs for movies; he had some success doing that. But it was always kind of sliding on a Tin Pan Alley guy’s coattails, whether it was Harold Arlen or, later, Henry Mancini. I love going from ‘I’m an Old Cow Hand’ into ‘Dream’ on the record, because that’s what a real hustler of a songwriter can do—he can dream up some stuff and write a song quick. I do this—and appreciate Johnny Mercer for being able to do that.”
What Rebennack didn’t want to do was anything obvious. On “Dream,” he was determined that it not “sound like your regulation VFW hall geriatric-squad dance,” while he wanted to take the ubiquitous “Moon River” “to the Johnny Mercer area,” he says. “Henry Mancini wrote the hell out of the changes on that, and I used to love the Jerry Butler version, and I was just trying to keep it way away from all of that.” Mac says he had no intention of covering “Moon River” until he discovered that an eight-bar intro he’d composed for another song fit beautifully into the middle of the Mancini-Mercer standard, so he went for it. “That just shows you how the accidentalness of this record transpired,” he points out. “We just cut the thing, and it feels real organic.”
One of the biggest challenges Dr. John faced was coming up with an original that would both sum up the album’s personality and sit comfortably among his interpretations of Mercer’s songs. “My tribute to Johnny Mercer,” he says, “is ‘I Ain’t No Johnny Mercer,’ which I ain’t. But I took a lot of words from a lot of his songs that I would have never thought to use. I never in my life would’ve thought to use a word like ‘apoplexy’ in a song. I took some lines from ‘Pardon My Southern Accent’ and messed that up, too. Even took my favorite word he used in ‘Moon River’—‘my huckleberry friend.” But what I tried to do was take some Johnny Mercerisms, and just do them the way I would do them to make a little riff at Johnny, with him and about myself. I figured if I’m coppin’ on Johnny Mercer, I might as well cop on myself while I’m doing it. I may not be as good of a mercenary as Johnny Mercer was, but, whatever way you wanna break it down, I’m a mercenary in my own right.”
Mercernary was recorded at New Orleans’ Piety Street Studio in the spring of 2005, a few months before Hurricane Katrina hit. The facility, located in the Bywater (once referred to by locals as the Upper Ninth Ward), escaped serious damage, and it’s back in business now. Despite these and other pockets of activity, says Rebennack, “Every time I go back, I get weirded out by how little or nothing is going on. Sippiana Hericane [an EP he recorded and released last fall in response to the devastation of Katrina] was a labor of shock. This record was a regulation recording, and I hope it’ll do something in some way to help New Orleans .” Sippiana Hericane was released on Blue Note Records November 2005, with all proceeds from CD sales divided equally between three charities—New Orleans Musicians Clinic, the Jazz Foundation of America and the Voice of the Wetlands.
Ultimately, then, Mercernary honors not only the great American songwriter/performer whose music provides its content but also the great American city in which it was created. Every note played by Dr. John and his fellow musicians is the sound of living New Orleans. May they keep on keepin’ on.
- The Neville Brothers
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- The differences between the four Neville Brothers are as dramatic as the similarities that unite them. The source of the similarities is passionate funk, a feeling for blues-soaked deep pocket grooves that is the basis of their greatness and exalted place in our cultural history.
Art is the oldest. They call him Poppa Funk for a reason. He formed the first band. As both inspired singer and blistering keyboardist, his role models were Fats Domino and Bill Doggett. Art is the Founding Father. He still lives in the same Thirteenth Ward block of Valence Street where he and his siblings were raised in New Orleans.
Charles is a year younger than Art. His religions are bebop and Buddhism. His instrument is the saxophone. At fifteen, he was the first brother to leave home and hit the road, playing with everyone from the Rabbit Foot Minstrels to B.B.King. They called him "The Boy Wonder of Sax." He went to Memphis and returned home with a new stew of blues.
Aaron is a believer, a devout Catholic who worships at the shrine of St. Jude, patron of lost causes. Aaron's vocal aesthetic is downright angelic, an extraordinarily sweet mixture of Gene Autry yodeling and Golden Age gospel crooning. Along with Sam Cooke and Marvin Gaye, he is classified as one of the seminal soul singers.
Cyril is the baby, a generation younger than his big brothers. His attitude is radical - a rougher, tougher blend of balls-out R&B, uncut bayou funk and militant social consciousness. As a writer, percussionist and powerhouse singer, he has made his mark as the most fiery brother and impassioned keeper of the Neville flame.
The story starts in the Fifties. "In 1954, Art was seventeen and I was six," says Cyril. "That's when Art formed the Hawketts. I think of that line from "Shake, Rattle and Roll" - 'I'm like a one-eyed cat peeping in a sea food store.' That was me, hiding behind the couch, listening to art rehearsing the Hasketts. Man, that was the most exciting thing I'd ever heard in my life."
"The real excitement came when we cut a song called 'Mardi Gras Mambo,'" adds art. "The original version was country style. We funked it up and, just like that, it hit big. Fifty years later they're still playing it. Never got paid. But who cared? We had us a record."
Art broke out of the Hawketts, segueing into a brief solo career at Specialty Records which, like all Neville history, was the product of chance. "By chance," he remembers, "Harold Battiste played me a county song called 'Cha Dooky-Do." He asked me to give it a different beat. I did. Then I forgot about it until I was in boot camp and someone said they were playing it night and day in Chicago."
Back in New Orleans in 1960, writer/pianist/producer Allen Touissant brought Aaron to Minit Records. "Over You," written by Touissant, was a local hit. "The label said it never left Louisiana." says Aaron, "but years later when I met the Rolling Stones they said they heard it all over England."
In 1962, Toussaint wrote another song for another Neville - "All These Things, recorded by Art. "While the future was eign played on the radio, "Art remembers, "I was running an elevator at Gaucho's department store on Canal Street."
The Sixties were strange for everyone, especially the Nevilles. In many cases the brothers fought the law and the law won. They moved in and out of hard habits. But in 1966, fortune smiled on Aaron. Or at least half-smiled. "I was digging ditches when this cat told me about this new label, Par-lo," he explains. "I went over to Cosimo's studio, that had more history than Sun Records in Memphis, and cut "Tell It Like It Is." It took off like a rocket. Number-one smash coast to coast. But the label was falling apart, which meant no money for me. The only way to cash in was to tour. Art became my manager and played piano behind me. This was our first time in the national spotlight on the same bill as Otis Redding, the Drifters and the Manhattans. I was pumped but too crazy to handle it all. My mind was a traffic jam."
Overwhelmed by success, Aaron hid out in Florida while, back in the Big Easy, Art formed Art Neville and the Neville Sounds, which, for the first time, put Cyril out front - singing and dancing in the superstar style of James Brown. Aaron joined the Sounds, only to drop out, along with Cyril, to form the Soul Machine. Meanwhile, reconfigured Sounds became the Meters - Art, drummer Joseph Zigaboo Modeliste, bassist George Porter, Jr. and guitarist Leo Nocentelli.
The Meters live on as funk legends. "I modeled the band after Booker T. and the MG's," says Art, "but added some swamp fever of my own." For the next eight years they would record a series of classics - "Cissy Strut," "Look-Ka Py Py," "They All Ask'd For You" - which have achieved immortality. At one point, Cyril became the fifth Meter. But by the mid-Seventies, the four Neville brothers had not still recorded as a unit.
It took the death of their beloved mother Amelia to change that. "Before she passed," says Art, "she told me, "keep them boys together.'" Through the unifying power of their mother's brother, Uncle George Landry, who headed a Mardi Gras Indian Tribe as Chief Joy, the inevitable finally happened. Aaron puts it simply: "When Jolly called us together, it was like a call from God." The result was the miraculous the The Wild Tchoupitoulas, the landmark project from 1976. That first taste of togetherness led to The Neville Brothers a year later, their debut album on Capitol. From then till now - for twenty-eight productive years - the group has stayed together recording, touring and securing their reputation as first-rank showmen and shamans.
"After our Capitol record," says Aaron, "we went without a deal for a couple of years. Producer Joel Dorn shopped us to a bunch of labels but everyone passed. It wasn't until Bette Midler heard us at Tipitina's in New Orleans and sang our praises that Jerry Moss of A&M paid attention. He let Dord produce our first A&M album, Fiyo On the Bayou, in 1981."
"Fiyo was a heavily Meters-influenced project," adds Art, "with a different twist, Dorn added some New York session musicians to our mix. I also like how he got Cissy Houston and her young daughter Whiter to do background while I sang lead on "Sitting In Limbo.'"
"Fiyo didn't really sell," says Charles, "which meant we went years with out a deal. Finally, in 1989, A&M decided to take another chance on us. That was Yellow Moon produced by Daniel Lanois."
"Lanois was the baddest outside producer the Nevilles have ever known, states Cyril. "He came to New Orleans and turned a house on St. Charles into a studio. Art brought in a stuffed bobcat, some big ol' rubber snakes and thickets of moss to hand from the ceiling. Lanois had the voodoo vibe going strong; he had psychics dropping by; he let us hang loose; he encouraged using all sorts of sounds - crickets, the whistling wind, you name it - to catch our family flavor. Of the twelve tunes on Yellow Moon, we wrote seven."
"Of the records we made in the Nineties," says Art, "I like Family Groove best. I sang a song called "On The Other Side Of Paradise" that had an island lilt. 'I get away from city life,' it said, 'leave behind trouble and strife...sweet Lorraine, she's my best friend, she's my wife.' That's pure autobiography. The brothers are best when we're writing out of our lives."
"The older we've gotten," says Charles, "the more adamant we are about forging our own production and focusing on songs that express our innermost beliefs.Their most recent record, Walkin' In the Shadow Of Life, makes that case. "Rivers Of Babylon" and "Walkin' In the Shadow Of Life" are proof positive that in the fourth decade of their creative life the brothers are stronger than ever.
The Nevilles continue to provoke, entertain and excite audiences around the globe. Their similarity/diversity dynamic continues on its paradoxical path. They play together; they play apart. Each of the four brothers pursue projects of their own. Aaron has forged a highly successful solo career. Art tours with an offshoot group he calls the Funky Meter. For years Cyril has led the Uptown All stars. Charles has recorded a series of critically acclaimed jazz records. Yet the heart of the matter is family. Family brings them together. Family keeps them together. Family is everything. Without Family, there is a gaping void. With family, there is the miracle of Neville music, four brothers, bonded by blood, creating some of the funkiest sounds this world has ever heard.
New Orleans Klezmer All-Stars
The New Orleans Klezmer All-Stars (NOKAS) have carried on with their own interpretation of the klezmer tradition since 1991. New Orleans, where arcane cultural borrowing is normal, seems to be a natural home for a music that has always blended diverse styles. Yet, "when we first started playing this music, people had no idea what it was (many still don't)," explains Arthur Kastler, the band's original bass player, "They would stand there with their jaws open.... But right away, they danced."
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