On Tuesday Feb 17th from 11 am to 2 pm (central) there will be a special three hour show dedicated to the Mardi Gras Indians. Joining show host Tom Morgan, will be author, poet and former WWOZ show host, John Sinclair. The show will include rare late fifties recordings of the "Red, White and Blue," a taped interview with Big Chief Tootie Montana, Jelly Roll Morton's Library of Congress recordings with him talking about Indian culture at the beginning of the Twentieth Century. Stopping by will be Big Chief Juan of the Golden Comanches and David Montana of the Yellow Pochanotas. John Driver will also stop by to talk about the Mardi Gras Indian event his is producing for Mardi Gras afternoon in the Marigny.
Also included will be recordings made last year from the Mardi Gras Indian practice at Handa Wanda's and rare and new recordings from Tom and John's collection. This year we hope to have visits from Indian gangs during the show and much more. That's a very special Tuesday New Orleans Music Show on Feb. 17th. Tune in and learn more about the Mardi Gras Indians and their historical place in New Orleans Carnival.
NPR has named Dr. John's “You Might Be Surprised” (from his new CD The City That Care Forgot) as its “Song of the Day,” praising the doctor’s “grizzled, gumbo-soaked voice” (sigh — “gumbo-soaked”? Is that like “whiskey-soaked”?).
At age 72, Chicago’s “Mr. Rhythm” is showing no signs of slowing down. Popping up on the American soul scene in the mid-1950s, Andre Williams scored a number of small-time hits such as “Bacon Fat” and “Jail Bait” for Detroit’s Fortune Records. Through the 1960s and ‘70s he supplemented his career as a Chess Records recording artist by writing and producing material for Stevie Wonder, Ike and Tina, and Parliament/Funkadelic.
his time around, Mr. Rhythm teams up with the “alcoholic miscreants” of the Morning 40 Federation. Known here as the New Orleans Hellhounds, this rollicking ten-piece really is more beast than band. Over 33 minutes and nine cuts, Can You Deal With It? is a sleaze rock mud bath. Stylistically, you get the works. Whether it’s hot-rodded R&B, a woozy hangover ballad, or just some good old-fashioned front porch country, this album’s got just about everything you can cram under the garage rock umbrella.
These shows mark the group’s return to New Orleans for Halloween after a six-year absence. Widespread Panic performed in the Big Easy on or around Halloween each fall from 1997-2002.
Throughout his long career with rock-fusion band Woodenhead and guitar collective Twangorama, the electric guitar has served as Jimmy Robinson's main ax.
To hear selected tracks from this release, click HERE.
From the Treme Brass Band in full swing among the baggage carousels at Louis Armstrong Airport to small venues where performers sometimes outnumber spectators, the Big Easy is America’s easiest place to see music of every melodic shade. As a summer destination, it merits consideration: Satchmo SummerFest starts next week. But for me, NOLA sounds best during Jazz Fest.
So how was that experience different from going down to New Orleans?
I didn’t really start playing jazz in any way that makes any sense until I went to New Orleans. New Orleans was the beginning of my experience with jazz. But the school was pretty disorganized by what I had been through already. And there were all these opportunities to play, you can think of New Orleans as a kind of big school. And I really started to plat a lot, and it was a community of musicians that had a lot of the same interests, we were all kind of aspiring towards a similar thing. Nicholas Payton is just about a year older than me, he was down there trying to find his record deal. And he was really influential because his talent was so unbelievable, even back then. He influenced the whole scene down there in that era. And there was a lot of informal… that actually doesn’t exist there anymore either, it was an amazing time. There were all these informal gigs, we played for tips, a couple regular gigs that were every Tuesday and every Saturday. We played for tips, it was like a jazz session basically. All the musicians were really good.
Tom Morgan celebrates New Year’s Day 2008 on WWOZ-FM, New Orleans, with a brilliant panorama of New Orleans music by Louis Armstrong and piano professors Jelly Roll Morton, Tom McDermott, Clarence Williams, Armand Hug, Tuts Washington, Dave Paquette & David Torkanowsky, and Josh Paxton.
Eddie Zip was one of these guys who was around in the 60s when black R and B was rolling in New Orleans. Unlike a lot of the white population, he wasn’t scared to get to know and associate with black artists. Eddie’s main axe is the piano and, as I say sometimes, “man, that cat can JUMP!” He’s comes from the same influences as the best New Orleans piano guys in town: Professor Longhair, Dr. John, John Cleary, Joe Crown, Huey Smith, Allen Toussaint…
NPR continues its jazz series with a look at the legacy of New Orleans jazz music. (click on the link above)
Farai Chideya talks with three notable musicians from the Crescent City: Irvin Mayfield, a trumpeter, composer, and bandleader; Irma Thomas, who is known as the queen of New Orleans soul; and Greg Davis, a trumpeter and member of the Dirty Dozen Brass Band, one the most famous marching bands in New Orleans.
Hayward "Chuck" Carbo, lead vocalist of 1950s New Orleans rhythm & blues quintet the Spiders, died July 11 after a long illness. He was 82.
The Spiders featured Mr. Carbo and his brother Leonard "Chick" Carbo. "We knew them since we were kids," Aaron Neville said. "The Spiders were the premiere New Orleans group. I won't say a New Orleans singer -- Chuck was a great singer, period."
"Chuck was very close to my family," Mac "Dr. John" Rebennack said. "More than Johnny Adams, Aaron Neville and Earl King, that was my mother's favorite of the local guys. Everybody loved this guy because he had such a special thing. The Spiders opened a lot of doors for New Orleans rhythm & blues."
Troy Andrews, also known as Trombone Shorty, is only 22, but he’s had the experiences of an old pro. The trombonist and trumpeter grew up in the Treme section of New Orleans, where the music hangs thick in the air.
“Growing up in a musical family,” Troy Andrews says, “in a household that had thousands of instruments laying around — some broken, some that weren’t — they were like toys to me.” And vice versa. He remembers being 6 years old and playing a Big Wheel slung over his shoulder like a tuba.
On September 9, Grayson Capps will release his fourth album, Rott 'N' Roll, on Hyena Records. The long-player's title stems from a phrase used by fans to characterize the music of the southern troubadour. Prostitutes, alcoholics, vagrants and drifters often inhabit Grayson's songs, while his live performances are ignited by equal doses of raucous Southern soul, back-country stomp and roadhouse blues. For Grayson himself, Rott 'N' Roll has come to represent the state of mind needed to play uncompromising roots music as a means for survival in the Dirty South; the yin and yang between the debauchery of life on the road and the come down upon returning home.
You are from New Orleans; you were born there. American jazz was born there. How did Hurricane Katrina call you personally into action?
Out of sadness, and horror. I guess you feel that towards any person who got hit by a car, but in this case its your hometown, so its as if something happened to your family or your mother. So all of us felt we needed to help. I got publicity because I'm known, but so many New Orleanians, even now, are doing what they can and doing everything in their power. A lot of people call me, asking what they can do to help, intelligently, to rebuild the city. We are all still running around trying to figure that out.
New Orleans Musicians’ Clinic (NOMC), a one-of-a-kind clinic for musicians, was founded with the lofty goal of trying to “change the course of the careers of our young musicians in New Orleans, to keep them thriving into their 90s (yes, we have musicians still blowing their trumpets at 96)” says President/CEO, Bethany Bultman. The organization just celebrated its tenth birthday, and while elated at its success, hopes to become so redundant as they advocate for universal health care so that one day they will become unnecessary. We thought it only fitting to include the group in our New Orleans issue of DIY City Mag. Music is arguably one of the oldest DIY activities. And what is New Orleans without the sounds of its music? Fortunately NOMC was in place before the storm.
