Kermit Ruffins: Shake and Bake
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Ruffins' barbecue, so big that it's attached to a hitch hooked onto the back of his pickup truck, is often parked outside of the gigs he plays all over the Crescent City, and is a sight to behold. It is the latest in a string of Ruffin family barbecues, and a brand new replacement for the one set inside the back of his pickup truck. In fact, Ruffins' cooking skills date back farther than his musical career, which began when he picked up a trumpet at the age of 14.With New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival in full swing, Ruffins is showcasing his culinary and musical skills all over this fine city. He's played Jazz Fest for at least the past 25 years, and this year he'll perform sets with both his own Barbecue Swingers band and as a guest with the Rebirth Brass Band, which he founded in 1982 with then high school classmate Philip Frazier. On Jazz Fest's first weekend alone, Ruffins played his longstanding weekly Thursday night gig at Vaughan's Lounge, and then a Friday night record release party for his latest album, Livin' a Treme Life (out April 28 on Basin Street Records), at the House of Blues. He played at halftime of the New Orleans Hornets' NBA playoff game Saturday afternoon before darting to the fairgrounds to join Rebirth as special guest for their set. At any one of those shows, one of the aforementioned barbecues might be parked right outside, serving up sausages, turkey necks, nutria or whatever the flavor of the day might be.
To hear the 44-year-old Ruffins tell it, cookery has been a family ritual since long before he was born. Growing up in the city's Lower Ninth Ward, the Ruffins family would wake up almost every Saturday at 4 a.m., head down to Hopedale, LA, and fish all morning long. They'd return with a heap of crabs and fish and head straight to the backyard to prepare a feast for later in the afternoon.
"I always had a lot of hands-on experience with the outdoor barbecue, and my grandmother would have me chopping up onions and all kinds of stuff after we got back from fishing," Ruffins says.
see also: Kermit Ruffins Releases New Album and Plays Jazz Fest
WWOZ gives New Orleans Jazz Fest to the worldWWOZ, a nonprofit, listener-supported radio station that specializes in music connected to the cultural heritage of New Orleans and the surrounding area, broadcasts a number of events throughout the year live. The annual Jazz Fest shows are among the events most eagerly awaited by listeners.
"We sacrifice our festival to bring it to the world," said Tom Morgan, a jazz historian and writer who has two shows on the station, "Jazz Roots," and "The New Orleans Music Show."
Like the other on-air people, Morgan is an expert on the music he plays. And like all the others, he is not paid.
"We have 100 volunteers who have shows," general manager David Freedman said. "And each one of them is a member of the New Orleans music community. They live with our music every day, they don't just play it on the air."
WWOZ went on the air in 1980. At the time, the station operated out of the upstairs beer storage room at a nightclub, Tipitina's, where the DJ would drop a microphone through the floor and send the live music below straight to the airwaves.
The station grew quickly, attracting fans around the world when it started streaming on the Internet.
Jazz Fest History- the Last Twenty Years by Jay MazzaEditor's Note: Last week, as a prelude to the kickoff of the 40th Anniversary of the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival presented by Shell, we looked, retrospectively, at the first 20 years of this New Orleans treasure. This week, we do a recap of the second 20.
The first day of the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival in 1990 was deluged with thunderstorms. The rain was coming down in droves during Tribe Nunzio's set. Holden Miller, the group's irrepressible lead singer, was awed by the dedication of the crowd. She yelled in admiration, "Y'all look groovy, all wet and all!
a set of pictures from New Orleans Jazz Fest 2009
Catch your breath, then relive New Orleans Jazz Fest 2009Jazz Fest attendance surpasses 400,000
If the recently concluded New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival presented by Shell felt a bit more crowded this year, that's because it was.
Total ticket sales for the seven days at the New Orleans Fair Grounds topped 400,000, organizers said.
the 2009 Ponderosa Stomp in New Orleans
Jazz Fest leftovers from the Allison Miner interview stage
Solid List of Jazzfest Photo LinksJazz Fest Nights: 'Instrument's A Comin' ed. note: I was there. It was awesome. Here's a couple of my amateur Galactic pics:
This party carried way into the wee hours of the morning with New Orleans musicians that were truly fired up and happy to be with each other performing for the people. Check out some of our finest homegrown:
Threadheads give up-and-coming musicians a boostLike a lot of out-of-towners who came to New Orleans in the years after the levees failed, Chris Joseph found that the singers John Boutte and Paul Sanchez spoke to the city's post-Katrina trauma better than almost any other artists.
Like his fellow visitors, Joseph felt frustrated that he couldn't buy a CD of the cathartic songs the duo was singing in the city's nightclubs -- numbers such as the infectious original "Good Neighbor" or the radical rearrangement of Paul Simon's "An American Tune" as part folk confessional and part gospel hymn.
Unlike the others, though, Joseph did something about it.
Joseph, a Santa Monica resident who prepares environmental impact statements for a living, was a member of the Threadheads, a group that already had proved that music fans could be proactive. The Threadheads met in the chat room on www.nojazzfest.com, but they evolved into an organization that put on shows at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival.
Dave Bartholomew - I'm Walkin' \ Going to the River
see also: The Men Behind The Bluesmen: Dave Bartholomew
If you notice the song titles and then the writing credits, these are Fats Domino songs we're talking about, but done up in a much different way. For those of you who aren't familiar with him, Dave Bartholomew is sung as the unsung hero of New Orleans R&B. The guy produced or played on half of all those big numbers you know, and yet (and I only use this as an example) my college history of rock & roll teacher said he never released his own material. Of course I was a little shit and corrected him, and I've actually linked him to my blog once so Prof. Charry, here's your proof, though "The Monkey" would be better, more popular proof. I think Dave's gotten a little more come-uppance in years past, but his stake in this city's history will likely never be properly recognized.
Vinyl Words vintage Jazzfest Photos: Here & Here
After 4 decades, Jazz Fest grows but honors rootsNBC Nightly News: Bringing music to NOLA's kidsMark Samuels: new orleans music icon Mark Samuels is sitting in an armchair in the corner of a coffeeshop in Mid-City New Orleans. He looks mild mannered from afar, but up close there is a subtle firmness that indicates he is not to be taken lightly. And, as a man who went from working in the tough energy business to the equally tough music business, this firmness has helped him well. Then again, he yawns and says that he is just back from his honeymoon, so it could be fatigue showing. In any event, over a cup of joe, Samuels begins telling the tale of how he started one of New Orleans' most successful record companies, Basin Street Records.
NEW SOUNDS OF JAZZ: JONATHAN BATISTERemember the name Jonathan Batiste - One of the most mature and talented young piano players on the scene today, to say the least.
New Orleans Captures a Fleeting Musical Moment 
The Wild Magnolias - With The New Orleans Project 1974
The Wild Magnolias - With The New Orleans Project 1974
Label: Polygram
Recording Date: 1973
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