By magicman
We’ve checked into the hotel, changed, switched the radio signal to 90.7FM and WWOZ are playing local sounds and more. It’s dusk. What’s this tune? We Shall Walk Through The City. Good idea.
So here’s Bourbon Street in the French Quarter, and the sounds of music can be heard coming from the bars ahead, all kinds. The truly great thing about New Orleans is that all of the music which made this place the most important musical hub city of the 20th century – jazz, blues, brass band, R’n’B, rock’n’roll, soul, hip hop, cajun, zydeco, and bounce is still played live on a nightly basis. It’s like a living breathing museum of music.
In the first bar we visit Bourbon Cowboy there’s a band with a sweet singer playing my favourite NOLA song - Tell It Like It Is. We go in and identify a young Aaron Neville, watch him warble then he goes for a break so we carry our drinks outside and walk down the street. It’s illegal to drink “outside” of an establishment’s footage in the USA – except on Bourbon Street.
The next bar, My Bar at 635, has a piano player – a tradition that stretches back probably 250 years or more, and back in the early days ‘professors’ of the piano would play in the whorehouses of Storyville – Tony Williams, Papa Celestin and Jelly Roll Morton among them. It was a sought-after gig. James Booker is solidly in this tradition being a junkie, gay and highly entertaining with his personal version of heroin song Junco Partner. Equally entertaining on the keys was Roy Byrd, Professor Longhair with his quintessential N.O. tune Tipitina first recorded in 1953 – this the 1972 version. Popular on this part of Bourbon Street are the two pianos back to back trading licks, I’d love to have seen Booker and Byrd playing together.
The incomparable pianist James Booker
Let’s take the next right and walk down St Peter Street, and right opposite Reverend Zombie’s House of Voodoo is Preservation Hall, anointed in 1961 to preserve the original jazz, and still playing to full houses every day, music such as Canal Street Blues – recorded in 1923 in Richmond, Indiana, (the first ever session that King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band did) starring Louis Armstrong and Joe Oliver on the cornets. It’s as close as we’ll ever get to the music of hugely influential cornettist Buddy Bolden who played around 1903-08 and never recorded a note, even on a cyclinder.
Back up at Krazy Korner the band are playing us a blues, it’s familiar and yes there is Slim Harpo on the harmonica wailing Baby Scratch My Back. We top up our drinks and wander down to the next bar where a cajun duet is playing Cleoma Breaux’s Raise Your Window High in an unusual 12/6 time. Cleoma recorded the first ever cajun tune Allons A Lafayette in 1928 and Southern Louisiana couldn’t get enough of that stuff It is still hugely popular today.
There are people busking all over the place, if we take a quick detour down to Jackson Square by The Cabildo and St Louis Cathedral where you can listen to some open-air jazz or brass band or pop or anything. The Jackson Square Allstars are made up of these musicians, people from Rebirth Brass Band, the Treme Collective, Dirty Dozen, they all play with each other and cross-fertilize all the time. Darktown Strutter’s Ball was written by Canadian Shelton Brooks in 1917 and became a standard overnight.
There are certain songs that all New Orleans/Louisiana musicians have to know, they grow up with them and keep them in their back pocket. At the Café Du Monde opposite the park where you can buy beignets – doughnuts of joy - is a busker doing Iko Iko but he’s doing a slightly odd version – in fact it is the original - written or collected by Sugar Boy Crawford in 1953 which he called Jock-a-Mo.
Do we go back to Bourbon Street or carry on down Decatur, heading east? Friendly noise from the next bar, in we go, the next drink and they’re playing the classic J’ai Eté Au Bal so we can have a quick danson together, be rude not to. The white band disappear into the ether and are exchanged by a more mixed group – Buckwheat Zydeco playing Ma Tit Fille (My little girl) – the band asks if anyone fancies helping out on the washboard – a metal ribbed bib played with spoons so I think I’ll have a go at that. I pass it on after one song. The spirit is warming up.
Buckwheat Zydeco
We’ve reached Frenchman’s Street in the Marigny the new centre of live music here.
Here at Blue Nile is Smiley Lewis a boogie-woogie jump blues pianist from that golden era of the late 40s early 50s. Big Mamou is 1953 and Fats Domino is in the audience watching his style and loving his songs : Fats took a lot of his material from Smiley – I Hear You Knocking, One Night, Blue Monday et al.
Across the street at The Spotted Cat some more joyous music – Allen Toussaint is on the keys and has written & produced all of this set so we settle in to enjoy Get Out My Life Woman, Fortune Teller and the remarkable Here Come The Girls by legend Ernie K. Doe which places the brass directly over the second line snare drum line.
Back across the street at Snug Harbor is a special gathering to see Aaron Neville’s last live concert singing Stomping Ground with the Dirty Dozen Brass Band and saluting New Orleans before he retires, amazing stuff.
Now there’s some noise outside because a funeral is passing. The unfortunate subject is being buried – or rather entombed above ground of course – nearby and here’s a crowd outside watching Mahalia Jackson breaking down Just A Closer Walk With Thee, a performance so extraordinary that she wakes Louis Armstrong himself. When they return from the cemetery the band have broken into 21st century second line tune Why Your Feet Hurt – the answer of course is that you ain’t got no footwork. We’ll have to get more drunk I suspect.
New Orleans: Bourbon Street blasts in the French Quarter
The remainder of the night is a blur – fragments of conversation and jokes, waifs and strays, Bamboulas, the House of Blues Voodoo Garden, but isn’t that Irma Thomas, Queen of New Orleans soul? With Dr John on the piano, singing Be You. A tear forms in either eye. The bar across the street is full of people without their shoes on, Barefootin’. In the next bar is an indie band – you have to be strong to step out of the musical tradition in this city so all respect is due to Better Than Ezra playing Under You. Further down is a sound which seems to combine all the sounds we’ve heard so far – Something Is Wrong With This Picture. Maybe it’s the drink.
There’s just time for a nightcap at Mahogany Hall back in the Quarter where a splendid five piece band serenade us to bed with creole clarinetist Sidney Bechet’s Petite Fleur, recorded in Paris in 1952 but unmistakably from his home parish of New Orleans, and local lass Lillian Boutte with the perfect Am I Blue.
It’s been a great night but we’ve barely scratched the surface. Same time tomorrow ?
The All-Night In New Orleans and Onwards A-List Playlist:
Kid Sheik, John Handy & friends – We Shall Walk Through The Streets of The City
Aaron Neville – Tell It Like It Is
James Booker - Junco Partner
Professor Longhair – Tipitina
King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band – Canal Street Blues
Slim Harpo – Baby Scratch My Back
Cleoma Breaux - Raise Your Window High
Jackson Square Allstars - Darktown Strutters’ Ball
Sugar Boy Crawford - Jock-A-Mo
Iry LeJeune - J’Ai Été Au Bal
Buckwheat Zydeco - Ma Tit Fille
Smiley Lewis - Big Mamou
Lee Dorsey – Get Out My Life Woman
Benny Spellman – Fortune Teller
Ernie K. Doe - Here Come The Girls
Aaron Neville & The Dirty Dozen Brass Band – Stomping Ground
Mahalia Jackson – Just A Closer Walk With Thee
Rebirth Brass Band – Why Your Feet Hurt
Irma Thomas – Be You
Robert Parker – Barefootin’
Better Than Ezra – Under You
Galactic – Something’s Wrong With This Picture
Sidney Bechet – Petite Fleur
Lillian Boutte – Am I Blue
(No B-List !)
The G-List Bonus Playlist:
Andrew Duhon – Slow Down
Zachary Richard – Bon Temps Rouler
Jessie Hill – Ooh Poo Pah Do
Fats Domino – My Blue Heaven
Big Freedia – N.O. Bounce
Kermit Ruffins – When I Die, You Better Second Line
I heard Andrew Duhon on wwoz FM and immediately recognised quality. This year’s LP is called Emerald Blue.
Zachary Richard is a throwback for me and mrs magic honeymooning in NO thirty years ago.
Jessie Hill is one of those one-off singles which achieves instant classic status,
Fats Domino’s cover of My Blue Heaven is very very close to my heart, and had it been nominated I would not have been able to resist it’s evident charms as I did with the other Fats tunes – and I love him a lot, you see I didn’t list some very big NO names – Armstrong, Dr John, Fats, Allen Toussaint. Left room for some other folk.
Big Freedia is the larger than life Queen of Bounce, NOLA’s hip hop groove from about 20 years ago still going strong.
Kermit Ruffins plays a show every Friday at Blue Nile at 11pm where he channels the spirit of Louis Armstrong in his trumpet, trying out those classic licks and breathing new life into them. The film is from the TV show Treme.
Bouncing: Big Freedia
These playlists were inspired by readers' song nominations from last week's topic: Bayou tapestry: songs from New Orleans and south Louisiana. The next topic will launch on Thursday at 1pm UK time.
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