Long story in NYT Magazine.
July 19, 2010
New Orleans’s Gender-Bending Rap
By JONATHAN DEE
If “gay rapper” is an oxymoron where you come from, how to get your head around the notion of a gay rapper performing in a sports bar? What in most cities might seem plausible only as some sort of Sacha Baron Cohen-style provocation is just another weeknight in the cultural Galapagos that is New Orleans. Sometime after midnight on the sweltering Thursday before Memorial Day, the giant plasma-screen TVs at the Sports Vue bar (which “proudly airs all major Pay Per View events from the world of Boxing and Ultimate Fighting”) were all switched off, and the bar’s backroom turned into a low-lit, low-ceilinged dance club, where more than 300 people awaited a return engagement by Big Freedia, who by day runs an interior-decoration business and who is, to fans of the New Orleans variant of hip-hop music known as “bounce,” a superstar.
At 1 a.m., though, Freedia (pronounced “FREE-da”) was still a mile or so away, fulfilling a paid celebrity-hosting gig at Club Fabulous. The fabulousness of Club Fabulous, on this night at least, seemed a function mainly of its Mardi Gras-themed décor, conceived and executed by Freedia herself. Otherwise the crowd was sparse, largely straight and listless. Freedia looked weary as she leaned back against the bar with her dyed, diagonally cut bangs over one eye, holding a cordless microphone. (Freedia, who is about 6 foot 2 and very powerful-looking and dresses in a fashionable but recognizably masculine style, is genetically a man; but neither she nor anyone who knows her uses masculine pronouns to refer to her.) When “Rock Around the Clock,” one of her signature songs, came on the sound system, a few women walked over to Freedia and stood with their backs to her, but the atmosphere wasn’t quite electric enough for them to really start dancing, and the men just continued playing pool. After a while, Freedia’s D.J. and de facto manager, who goes by the name Rusty Lazer — a whippetlike 39-year-old white man with a salt-and-pepper beard — let Freedia know that it was time to move on to the next show.
The two of them had just returned from three nights at three different venues in New York, with a stop for another show in Philadelphia on their way home. These days Freedia performs five or six nights a week, often more than once a night — and increasingly, not just in New Orleans.
“Girl, I’m tired,” Lazer said as he drove them to the Sports Vue in his minivan, which was full of boxes of hand-screened Big Freedia T-shirts he sells at $10 a pop.
“Really?” Freedia said laconically. “I’m just starting to get my energy back.”
At the first sight of the commotion outside the Sports Vue, everyone’s energy level picked up. Lazer pulled the minivan into a long maze of cars parked haphazardly all up and down the grass median on Elysian Fields Avenue. Outside the metal detectors at the entrance, cops were pretending to listen to the grievances of two women who had just been thrown out of the bar. “Every night,” Lazer said fondly. While patrons were being patted down by bouncers inside the door, he and Freedia disappeared into the crowd; a few minutes later, the music stopped, and a loud, excited voice yelled into a mic a brief introduction — so brief the longest part of it was the polysyllabic participle between the words “Big” and “Freedia.”
And then something remarkable happened. The crowd — just about evenly divided between men and women — instantly segregated itself: the men were propelled as if by a centrifuge toward the room’s perimeters, and the dance floor, a platform raised just a step off the ground, was taken over entirely by women surrounding Freedia. The women did not dance with, or for, one another — they danced for Freedia, and they did so in the most sexualized way imaginable, usually with their backs to her, bent over sharply at the waist, and bouncing their hips up and down as fast as humanly possible, if not slightly faster. Others assumed more of a push-up position, with their hands on the floor, in a signature dance whose name is sometimes helpfully shortened to “p-popping.”
Freedia did “Rock Around the Clock,” which begins with a sample from the Bill Haley classic but departs pretty drastically from there, as well as her longtime club hit, “Azz Everywhere,” a title as perfectly high-concept in its way as “Snakes on a Plane.” Softspoken in person, Freedia has an onstage voice as deep and exhortatory as Chuck D’s. Her older songs sometimes had choruses that were actually sung (“I got that gin in my system/Somebody gonna be my victim”), but in her recent work, the beat is too fast to permit much more than short, repetitive chanting. Not that it mattered much in the context of the less-than-state-of-the-art sound system at the Sports Vue, where an occasional obscenity was pretty much as audible as any of the lyrics got.
A Big Freedia set generally lasts only four or five songs (which is why she can book two or three of them a night), but the energy brought to, and generated by, those songs is astounding. So, 20 cathartic minutes later, it was all over. Freedia left the stage, the men gravitated back toward the women and the sexual balance at the Sports Vue was restored. “Well,” Lazer said with a grin as he gave me a lift back to my hotel in his minivan, “I’ve lived in New Orleans a long time, and I know a lot of people, but you’ve just seen something that about 95 percent of my white friends will probably never see.”
Bounce itself has been around for about 20 years. Like most hip-hop varietals, it’s rap delivered over a sampled dance beat, but it has a few characteristics that give it a distinctively regional sound: it’s strictly party music, its beat is relentlessly fast and its rap quotient tends much less toward introspection or pure braggadocio than toward a call-and-response relationship with its audience, a dynamic borrowed in equal measure from Mardi Gras Indian chants and from the dawn of hip-hop itself. Many, if not most, bounce records announce their allegiance by sampling from one of just two sources: either Derek B.’s “Rock the Beat” or an infectious hook known as the “Triggaman,” from a 1986 Showboys record called “Drag Rap.” (That’s “drag” not as in cross-dressing but as in the theme to the old TV show “Dragnet.”) Just as the earliest New York rap records featured compulsory shout-outs to the boroughs, lots of bounce songs will demand (especially when performed live) audience acknowledgment of the city’s various neighborhoods and housing projects (“Shake it for the Fourth Ward/Work it for the Fifth Ward”), even those that have been razed. Otherwise the lyrics are mostly about sex and are so habitually obscene that they have helped keep bounce from spreading too far beyond its New Orleans borders. The success of bounce-tinged New Orleans artists like Lil Wayne and Juvenile notwithstanding, at least one New Orleans record-company executive speculates that major labels consider unadulterated bounce too hard to distribute, because it can’t be played on most radio stations or even sold in many venues.
The overwhelming majority of bounce artists are, of course, straight. But 12 years ago, a young drag queen who goes by the name Katey Red shocked the audience by taking the mic at an influential underground club near the Melpomene housing project where she grew up, and in that star-is-born moment, a subgenre of bounce took root. It is a sad understatement to say that homosexuality and hip-hop make for an unlikely fusion: hip-hop culture is one of the most unrepentantly homophobic cultures in America, surpassing even its own attitudes toward women in bigotry and smirking advocacy of violence. But New Orleans’s tolerance of unlikely fusions is legendary, and today Katey Red, along with a handful of other artists — Big Freedia (who grew up four blocks from Katey and started out as one of her background vocalists), Sissy Nobby, Chev off the Ave, Vockah Redu (who was captain of the dance team at Booker T. Washington High School) — are not just accepted mainstays of the bounce scene but its most prominent representatives outside New Orleans. Katey recently received a New Orleans consecration of sorts when she appeared as herself, unidentified, in an episode of the HBO series “Treme,” with her song “So Much Drama” playing in the background.
Some part of this subgenre’s popularity is surely due to the catchily discordant name by which it has become known: sissy bounce. The term is problematic, because the artists themselves do not care for it at all — not because they object to the word “sissy” but because they consider it disrespectful to bounce music. Even when their lyrics are at their frankest (“I’m a punk under pressure/When we finish, put my money on the dresser”), they rush to point out, correctly, that they’re just drawing from the life at hand in the same way virtually every rapper does. They have no desire to be typed within, or set apart from, bounce culture; and indeed, within New Orleans itself, they mostly are not — even as their bookings elsewhere in the country are founded increasingly on the novelty of their sexual identities.
The term “sissy bounce” is one for which a young New Orleans music writer named Alison Fensterstock takes very reluctant credit....
Check the original story for the rest, including images and video clips, which you can find HERE.
Showing posts with label New Orleans/Louisiana. Show all posts
Showing posts with label New Orleans/Louisiana. Show all posts
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
Thursday, April 08, 2010
What Will the 2010 Census Say about New Orleans?
NYT
April 7, 2010
Suspense Builds Over Census for New Orleans
By CAMPBELL ROBERTSON
NEW ORLEANS — Nobody really knows how many people live here.
Ever since this city was full of water and nearly empty of residents in September 2005, the true size of New Orleans has been a matter of wild uncertainty. Even today, population estimates can swing by the tens of thousands.
“There’s a range out there that might be as big as 50,000,” said Ken Hodges, chief demographer for Nielsen Claritas, a market research firm. “There is still a substantial amount of uncertainty.”
By early 2011, however, the city’s population will finally become an official number, if not a hard fact.
This year’s census will be revealing and important in every city, of course, according to the crude math that each citizen equals a certain amount of government money and political clout. But the stakes of the census here, as in other hurricane-battered cities and towns from Moss Point, Miss., to Galveston, Tex., are more profound.
The final numbers, no matter how much people here may challenge them — and challenges are almost a certainty — will go far in determining how New Orleans thinks about itself, whether it is continuing to mount a steady comeback or whether it has sputtered and stalled, how far it has fallen in the ranks of the country’s cities, and how quickly it is likely to rise again.
Determining how many people live here will not be an easy task, given the thousands who are still homeless or living with relatives as they await permanent housing, and the bureau is allowing some unconventional counting practices. The results should show who the city’s residents are, answering one of the most agonizing questions that has lingered after Katrina: What is the true size of the city’s black majority, once as large as two-thirds of the population?
...........
Read the full story (w/images) HERE.
April 7, 2010
Suspense Builds Over Census for New Orleans
By CAMPBELL ROBERTSON
NEW ORLEANS — Nobody really knows how many people live here.
Ever since this city was full of water and nearly empty of residents in September 2005, the true size of New Orleans has been a matter of wild uncertainty. Even today, population estimates can swing by the tens of thousands.
“There’s a range out there that might be as big as 50,000,” said Ken Hodges, chief demographer for Nielsen Claritas, a market research firm. “There is still a substantial amount of uncertainty.”
By early 2011, however, the city’s population will finally become an official number, if not a hard fact.
This year’s census will be revealing and important in every city, of course, according to the crude math that each citizen equals a certain amount of government money and political clout. But the stakes of the census here, as in other hurricane-battered cities and towns from Moss Point, Miss., to Galveston, Tex., are more profound.
The final numbers, no matter how much people here may challenge them — and challenges are almost a certainty — will go far in determining how New Orleans thinks about itself, whether it is continuing to mount a steady comeback or whether it has sputtered and stalled, how far it has fallen in the ranks of the country’s cities, and how quickly it is likely to rise again.
Determining how many people live here will not be an easy task, given the thousands who are still homeless or living with relatives as they await permanent housing, and the bureau is allowing some unconventional counting practices. The results should show who the city’s residents are, answering one of the most agonizing questions that has lingered after Katrina: What is the true size of the city’s black majority, once as large as two-thirds of the population?
...........
Read the full story (w/images) HERE.
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
NYT: Mardi Gras Indians Seek Copyright Protection for their Suits
NYT
March 23, 2010
Want to Use My Suit? Then Throw Me Something
By CAMPBELL ROBERTSON
NEW ORLEANS — Just after dusk on Friday night, Tyrone Yancy was strutting through one of the more uncertain parts of town in a $6,000 custom-made suit.
He was concerned about being robbed, but not by the neighborhood teenagers who trotted out in the street to join him. The real potential for theft, as Mr. Yancy sees it, came from the strangers darting around him and his well-appointed colleagues in a hectic orbit: photographers.
Mr. Yancy, 44, is a nursing assistant by profession. His calling, however, is as one of the Mardi Gras Indians — a member of the Yellow Pocahontas tribe, to be exact — the largely working-class black New Orleanians who create and wear ornate, enormous feathered costumes and come out three times a year to show them off.
He is also one of a number of Indians who have become fed up with seeing their photographs on calendars, posters and expensive prints, without getting anything in return.
Knowing that there are few legal protections for a person who is photographed in public — particularly one who stops and poses every few feet — some Mardi Gras Indians have begun filing for copyright protection for their suits, which account for thousands of dollars in glass beads, rhinestones, feathers and velvet, and hundreds of hours of late-night sewing.
Anyone could still take their pictures, but the Indians, many of whom live at the economic margins, would have some recourse if they saw the pictures being sold, or used in advertising. (News photographs, like the ones illustrating this article, are not at issue.)
[NOTE: The story did not have images; the above images are from other sources.]
“It’s not the old way of doing things, but the old way of doing things was conducive to exploitation,” said Ashlye M. Keaton, a lawyer who represents Indians in her private practice and also works with them through two pro bono legal programs, Sweet Home New Orleans legal services, and the Entertainment Law Legal Assistance Project.
The legal grounding of the strategy is debatable, the ability to enforce it even more so. But what may be most tricky of all is pushing the Indians themselves to start thinking about the legal and financial dimensions of something they have always done out of tradition.
Mardi Gras Indians have been around for more than a century — more than two, some say — and are generally thought to have originated as a way to pay homage to the American Indians who harbored runaway slaves and started families with them.
The Indians come out and parade in full dress on Mardi Gras; on St. Joseph’s Night, March 19; and on a Sunday close to St. Joseph’s — a tradition that arose out of the affinity between blacks and Sicilians in the city’s working-class precincts.
The 30 or so Indian tribes are representatives of their neighborhoods, and starting from home turf they venture out in their shimmering suits to meet other tribes on procession in the streets. Time was, these run-ins would often end with somebody in the hospital, or worse.
But over the past few decades, encouraged by the legendary Chief of Chiefs, Tootie Montana, the showdowns became primarily about the suits, and whose suit could out-prettify all the others.
Indian suits, which in the old days were occasionally burned at the end of a season, have become stunningly elaborate and stunningly expensive, costing upwards of $10,000. For many Indians, it is a matter of principle that they make a new suit from scratch each year.
The copyright idea has been floating around for a while — several of Mr. Montana’s suits were registered years ago — but Ms. Keaton began pursuing it more vigorously in 2006, when she was approached by John Ellison, a 52-year-old detailer in an auto body shop and a member of the Wild Tchoupitoulas.
Any photograph that focused on a suit protected by a copyright could arguably be considered a derivative work. The sale of such a picture (or its use in tourism ads, for example) would be on the merits of the suit rather than the photograph itself, and if the person selling it did not have permission, he could be sued.
But the idea is not so easy to put into practice.
.....
Read the full story HERE.
Sunday, January 24, 2010
Geaux Saints!
A big shout out for the Saints football team of New Orleans, my previous city. Four-and-a-half years after the Superdome was a refuge of misery, sheltering people from the flooding of Hurricane Katrina, tonight that same building hosted a tremendous Conference championship victory. I am so happy for New Orleans. Geaux Saints!
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
New Orleans Guitarist Snooks Eaglin (1936-2009)
OFFBEAT
I have been waiting for a good obit for Snooks. As always, Offbeat comes through:
Snooks Eaglin 1936-2009
By Jeff Hannusch
The generation that made the defining records in New Orleans’ rhythm and blues became a little smaller when Snooks Eaglin died February 18 from cardiac arrest. He was 73. Eaglin is remembered for his ability to mimic almost any song after a cursory listen and his unique guitar style. His fretting hand often completed chords with his thumb, or he used it to play bass runs that complimented his rhythm and lead playing. Instead of picks, he flailed at the guitar strings with his thumb and fingers. It often appeared that his fingers were bent backwards at a 90 degree angle.
“He can play a job with just a drummer and make it sound like a four-piece group,” said the late Earl King in 1987. “I’ve seen Snooks play for years, but I still shake my head every time he picks up the guitar.”
Fird Eaglin, Jr. was born January 21, 1936. He was rendered blind at the age of 19 months, after an emergency operation to remove a brain tumor. Being blind though didn’t keep Eaglin out of mischief as a child.
“That’s how I got the name Snooks,” said Eaglin, in 1987. “There was a radio program with a character named Baby Snooks. Baby Snooks was always getting into trouble. They started calling me Snooks, because I was always getting into something.”
Eaglin was five when his father brought home an inexpensive Harmony guitar. He learned to play and at age 11 won a talent contest at WNOE for his rendition of the, “Twelfth Street Rag.” At 15, he purchased his first electric guitar, a Twintone, and a small amplifier. He briefly attended the Louisiana School for the Blind in Scotlandville, but withdrew to play music professionally.
In the early 1950s, Eaglin hung out at Victor Augustine’s curio shop on Dryades Street, where many musicians rehearsed. Augustine, a part time songwriter with his own label, got Eaglin to record one of his songs, “Jesus Will Fix It.” Around this time, Eaglin was approached by Sugar Boy Crawford who was looking for a guitarist to replace Irving Bannister—who was drafted—in the Shaw-weez. This led to the historic 1953 Checker session where Eaglin provided the slashing rhythm guitar on the Carnival classic, “Jock-a-Mo.”
When Bannister returned and reclaimed his job, Eaglin joined the Flamingos, a group that patterned themselves after the popular Hawkettes. The band featured Allen Toussaint on piano.
“Snooks was phenomenal even then,” said Toussaint in 1987. “People in the audience would call out a popular song and Snooks would play them note-for-note. The rest of us just stumbled on behind.”
In 1958, folklorist Dr. Harry Oster and Richard Allen recorded 57 Eaglin performances that appeared on several labels. Allen and Oster had heard about Eaglin from his neighbors and recorded him playing traditional blues, pop songs, folk and rock ’n’ roll. The liner notes on the original albums portrayed Eaglin as a troubadour who busked for spare change in the French Quarter. That didn’t sit well with Eaglin.
“I never played in the streets once in my life,” said Eaglin. “I was making plenty money playing in nightclubs.”
Eaglin tried to persuade Oster to record the Flamingos, but he wasn’t interested, and the group disbanded when Shirley and Lee raided it for a tour. In 1960, Imperial’s Dave Bartholomew signed Eaglin and produced several uninspired singles under the name “Ford” Eaglin. “I thought those records could have come out better,” said Eaglin. “Dave had his way, and I had mine. But by him being the producer, he won most of the arguments.”
After Imperial folded, he cut one other single on the Fun label before moving to Donaldsonville, Louisiana in the mid-1960s to play clubs along Bayou Lafourche. In 1970, he moved to St. Rose and began playing regularly at the Playboy Club in the French Quarter. It was there that he encountered a young Quint Davis, who was in the early stages of organizing the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival. Davis paired Eaglin with the newly rediscovered Professor Longhair, a coupling which benefited both musicians and produced some mind-boggling recordings.
The following year, Eaglin made an LP for Sam Charters’ “Legacy of the Blues” series that appeared in Europe, and he recorded two legendary albums with the Wild Magnolias in 1974. But after that, it was more than a decade before he returned to the studio.
“The money wasn’t right,” said Eaglin, “I had several offers, but I want my money up front. I don’t like royalties.”
Eventually, Eaglin struck up a relationship with Hammond Scott, who won Eaglin’s trust. In 1986, they recorded Baby, You Can Get Your Gun for Scott’s Black Top label. Several more Eaglin/Black Top albums appeared, which exposed Eaglin to a wider audience. Tours of Europe and virtually every important American blues festival would follow.
In recent years, Eaglin’s appearances were confined to the Jazz Fest and the Mid-City Lanes’ Rock ’n’ Bowl, where he regularly packed the house. A well-attended visitation for Eaglin was held at the Howlin’ Wolf on February 27 which included musical tributes by Irma Thomas, Allen Toussaint and Deacon John. A traditional jazz funeral followed. Eaglin was laid to rest in Providence Park Cemetery in Jefferson Parish. His passing is the end of a chapter in New Orleans’ music history.
Published May 2009, OffBeat Louisiana Music & Culture Magazine, Volume 22, No. 5.
I have been waiting for a good obit for Snooks. As always, Offbeat comes through:
Snooks Eaglin 1936-2009
By Jeff Hannusch
The generation that made the defining records in New Orleans’ rhythm and blues became a little smaller when Snooks Eaglin died February 18 from cardiac arrest. He was 73. Eaglin is remembered for his ability to mimic almost any song after a cursory listen and his unique guitar style. His fretting hand often completed chords with his thumb, or he used it to play bass runs that complimented his rhythm and lead playing. Instead of picks, he flailed at the guitar strings with his thumb and fingers. It often appeared that his fingers were bent backwards at a 90 degree angle.
“He can play a job with just a drummer and make it sound like a four-piece group,” said the late Earl King in 1987. “I’ve seen Snooks play for years, but I still shake my head every time he picks up the guitar.”
Fird Eaglin, Jr. was born January 21, 1936. He was rendered blind at the age of 19 months, after an emergency operation to remove a brain tumor. Being blind though didn’t keep Eaglin out of mischief as a child.
“That’s how I got the name Snooks,” said Eaglin, in 1987. “There was a radio program with a character named Baby Snooks. Baby Snooks was always getting into trouble. They started calling me Snooks, because I was always getting into something.”
Eaglin was five when his father brought home an inexpensive Harmony guitar. He learned to play and at age 11 won a talent contest at WNOE for his rendition of the, “Twelfth Street Rag.” At 15, he purchased his first electric guitar, a Twintone, and a small amplifier. He briefly attended the Louisiana School for the Blind in Scotlandville, but withdrew to play music professionally.
In the early 1950s, Eaglin hung out at Victor Augustine’s curio shop on Dryades Street, where many musicians rehearsed. Augustine, a part time songwriter with his own label, got Eaglin to record one of his songs, “Jesus Will Fix It.” Around this time, Eaglin was approached by Sugar Boy Crawford who was looking for a guitarist to replace Irving Bannister—who was drafted—in the Shaw-weez. This led to the historic 1953 Checker session where Eaglin provided the slashing rhythm guitar on the Carnival classic, “Jock-a-Mo.”
When Bannister returned and reclaimed his job, Eaglin joined the Flamingos, a group that patterned themselves after the popular Hawkettes. The band featured Allen Toussaint on piano.
“Snooks was phenomenal even then,” said Toussaint in 1987. “People in the audience would call out a popular song and Snooks would play them note-for-note. The rest of us just stumbled on behind.”
In 1958, folklorist Dr. Harry Oster and Richard Allen recorded 57 Eaglin performances that appeared on several labels. Allen and Oster had heard about Eaglin from his neighbors and recorded him playing traditional blues, pop songs, folk and rock ’n’ roll. The liner notes on the original albums portrayed Eaglin as a troubadour who busked for spare change in the French Quarter. That didn’t sit well with Eaglin.
“I never played in the streets once in my life,” said Eaglin. “I was making plenty money playing in nightclubs.”
Eaglin tried to persuade Oster to record the Flamingos, but he wasn’t interested, and the group disbanded when Shirley and Lee raided it for a tour. In 1960, Imperial’s Dave Bartholomew signed Eaglin and produced several uninspired singles under the name “Ford” Eaglin. “I thought those records could have come out better,” said Eaglin. “Dave had his way, and I had mine. But by him being the producer, he won most of the arguments.”
After Imperial folded, he cut one other single on the Fun label before moving to Donaldsonville, Louisiana in the mid-1960s to play clubs along Bayou Lafourche. In 1970, he moved to St. Rose and began playing regularly at the Playboy Club in the French Quarter. It was there that he encountered a young Quint Davis, who was in the early stages of organizing the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival. Davis paired Eaglin with the newly rediscovered Professor Longhair, a coupling which benefited both musicians and produced some mind-boggling recordings.
The following year, Eaglin made an LP for Sam Charters’ “Legacy of the Blues” series that appeared in Europe, and he recorded two legendary albums with the Wild Magnolias in 1974. But after that, it was more than a decade before he returned to the studio.
“The money wasn’t right,” said Eaglin, “I had several offers, but I want my money up front. I don’t like royalties.”
Eventually, Eaglin struck up a relationship with Hammond Scott, who won Eaglin’s trust. In 1986, they recorded Baby, You Can Get Your Gun for Scott’s Black Top label. Several more Eaglin/Black Top albums appeared, which exposed Eaglin to a wider audience. Tours of Europe and virtually every important American blues festival would follow.
In recent years, Eaglin’s appearances were confined to the Jazz Fest and the Mid-City Lanes’ Rock ’n’ Bowl, where he regularly packed the house. A well-attended visitation for Eaglin was held at the Howlin’ Wolf on February 27 which included musical tributes by Irma Thomas, Allen Toussaint and Deacon John. A traditional jazz funeral followed. Eaglin was laid to rest in Providence Park Cemetery in Jefferson Parish. His passing is the end of a chapter in New Orleans’ music history.
Published May 2009, OffBeat Louisiana Music & Culture Magazine, Volume 22, No. 5.
Sunday, May 24, 2009
Offbeat interview with James "Sugar Boy" Crawford
The indispensable New Orleans Magazine OFFBEAT interviews James "Sugar Boy" Crawford, most famous for the song "Jock-a-mo," later to be known as "Iko Iko." I believe this is from 2002.
READ THE ORIGINAL HERE IN OFFBEAT.
BackTalk with James “Sugar Boy” Crawford
By Jeff Hannusch
Whether you call it “Jock-A-Mo” or Chock-A-Mo” or “Iko-Iko,” it’s one of the greatest of all New Orleans Carnival songs. James “Sugar Boy” Crawford, who recorded the original version in 1953, rarely performs these days, preferring to bask in the glow of his incandescent grandson Davell. “The only place I sing is in church now,” Sugar Boy confesses.
“Jock-A-Mo,” one of a select handful of truly memorable Carnival songs, has had multiple personalities over the decades. Originally recorded in 1953 by James “Sugar Boy” Crawford, it was turned into an international hit over a decade later by a trio of New Orleans teenagers, the Dixie Cups, as “Iko Iko.” Since then, the song has been covered by Willie DeVille, Dr. John, the Neville Brothers, the Bell Stars [their version was in the Academy Award-winning movie Rain Man] and Cyndi Lauper, although none have approached the magnificence of Sugar Boy’s original.
An early shaper of New Orleans rhythm and blues, Sugar Boy was a master of the B-flat ballad, as demonstrated on “I Don’t Know What I’ll Do,” “Early Sunday Morning,” and “No One To Love Me.” Sugar Boy maintained a tremendous regional following for over a decade, and his popularity extended well beyond “Jock-A-Mo.”
Born October 12, 1934, he attained the “Sugar Boy” moniker because he was a sweet kid. He learned to play piano at a neighbor’s house, and at Booker T. Washington High School, played the trombone and formed a band. The group caught a break in 1952, when Doctor Daddy-O invited them to perform on his Saturday morning radio show. The group didn’t have a name until Daddy-O dubbed them, “The Chapaka Shawee” (Creole for “We Aren’t Raccoons”), the title of an instrumental the group played. The popularity from their radio appearance led to a regular work at the Shadowland and the Pentagon clubs, as well as an Aladdin Records contract. Under the guise of “The Sha-Wez,” the Aladdin record was a flop, but the group’s itinerary steadily grew. The following year, Chess Records president Leonard Chess was in town promoting some new releases when he heard Sugar Boy and the group rehearse at WMRY. In exchange for five dollars, Chess taped an audition demo and left town. A month later, disc jockey Ernie the Whip called the group and said he had a surprise for them. When the band gathered at WMRY, Ernie presented them with a 78 r.p.m. recording of “I Don’t Know What I’ll Do,” credited to “Sugar Boy and his Cane Cutters.” [Chess couldn’t use the name Sha-Wez as the group was still under contract to Aladdin.] Chess released the primitive audition and it did well locally. Sugar Boy then signed a contract and Chess directed him to the J&M Studio for more recordings. With guitarist Snooks Eaglin in support, Crawford waxed “Jock-A-Mo,” the song he will forever be known for.
Sugar Boy had one other release on Checker—“I Bowed On My Knees”—before moving to Baton Rouge, where he and the Cane Cutters were installed as the house band at the Carousel Club. Sugar Boy returned to New Orleans in 1956, and signed with Imperial Records where he waxed several memorable releases including “Morning Star,” “You Gave Me Love,” and the brilliant “She’s Gotta Wobble (When She Walks).” After his Imperial tenure, Sugar Boy had singles on Montel and Ace before his career, and nearly his life, came to an abrupt halt.
Sugar Boy and his band were on their way to a job in North Louisiana in 1963, when state troopers pulled him over for the then-crime of being a black man in a flashy brand-new automobile. One of Louisiana’s “finest” took exception to Sugar Boy’s attitude and proceeded to pistol-whip him on the side of the road. Sugar Boy spent three weeks in the hospital and was incapacitated for two years. He attempted a comeback, but after 1969, he confined his singing to church. He then went to trade school and learned to become a building engineer. For several years, Sugar Boy maintained the Masonic building on St. Charles Avenue (where OffBeat’s previous office was located). Luckily for Sugar Boy, over the years the royalties generated from “Jock-A-Mo” continued to accumulate, as the song was covered by more and more artists. Today, Sugar Boy owns his own company—C&C Locksmiths—where he spends his time practicing his trade and following the career of his talented grandson, Davell. OffBeat recently chatted with Sugar Boy Crawford after he duplicated a few keys for us.
Why were so many of your early records in the key of B-flat?
That wasn’t a comfortable key for me to sing in, but it was a heavy key for ballads. Back then we were a bunch of kids and just learning to play. We weren’t very advanced musically, so we could only play certain arrangements in certain keys like B-flat. Later on, I recorded in E, G and E-flat—those were easier keys to sing in.
Who did you listen to back then?
I used to love Roscoe Gordon’s “Saddled the Cow and Milked the Horse.” That was my favorite record.
Where in New Orleans did you grow up?
I lived at 1309 La Salle Street. We called the neighborhood “The Bucket of Blood,” because there were a lot of barrooms around there. It seemed like every Saturday night there was a cutting or shooting there. It was also a neighborhood where there were a lot of Indian tribes.
Where was The Battlefield?
That was an area bordered by Claiborne, Galvez, Tulane and Perdido Streets. That’s where the Indians met on Mardi Gras day. I wasn’t too keen on going down there, because when they met, there would be a lot of cutting and shooting going on.
Did you ever mask as an Indian?
Oh no, I never did go out for that kind of thing. You might not believe it because of “Jock-A-Mo,” but I was afraid of the Indians.
How did you construct “Jock-A-Mo?”
It came from two Indian chants that I put music to. “Iko Iko” was like a victory chant that the Indians would shout. “Jock-A-Mo” was a chant that was called when the Indians went into battle. I just put them together and made a song out of them. Really it was just like “Lawdy Miss Clawdy.” That was a phrase everybody in New Orleans used. Lloyd Price just added music to it and it became a hit. I was just trying to write a catchy song. Leonard Chess [president of Chess & Checker Records, then Sugar Boy’s label] contacted me and arranged for me to go to Cosimo’s [J & M Studio] and record it. That was in [November] 1953.
Listeners wonder what “Jock-A-Mo” means. Some music scholars say it translates in Mardi Gras Indian lingo as “Kiss my ass,” and I’ve read where some think Jock-A-Mo was a court jester. What does it mean?
I really don’t know (laughs). It wasn’t my idea to call the song “Jock-A-Mo”—Leonard Chess did that. If you listen to the song, I’m singing C-H-O-C-K, as in Chockamo. Not J-O-C-K, as in Jock-A-Mo. When Leonard listened to the session in Chicago, he thought I said “Jock-A-Mo.” When I saw the record for the first time I said, “That’s not the title, it’s ‘Chock-A-Mo’.”
How did Snooks wind up playing on it?
I think it was as a favor to [disc jockey] Dr. Daddy-O. Daddy-O knew a lot musicians and he knew Leonard Chess. Snooks never was in my band. The day I recorded “Jock-A-Mo,” there were about four or five other guys recording too including Snooks and Slim Sanders [their sides weren’t issued until 1976]. We didn’t have much time to record, but we got “Jock-A-Mo” on the third take.
How did the record do when it was released?
It did pretty good around Mardi Gras [in 1954] but after that, people forgot about it. I did go to New York though because I remember when I got on stage there they had to stop serving alcohol because I was underage. Nobody paid attention to the song though for over ten years.
Were there any other popular Carnival songs before “Jock-A-Mo?”
Professor Longhair’s “Go To the Mardi Gras,” but it wasn’t the version you hear now [the 1959 Ron recording]. He’d recorded it [on Atlantic and Star Talent] long before I started playing music. After “Jock-A-Mo” came “Mardi Gras Mambo,” “Carnival Time,” “Big Chief” and “Second Line,” so I guess I had one of the first Carnival records.
Did “Jock-A-Mo” get you more bookings?
At the time my band was already working every night of the week so we couldn’t handle any more work.
Along with Fats Domino, weren’t you one of the first New Orleans R&B artists to develop a white audience.
At one point, 99 percent of our work was at white clubs. That started from playing for the fraternities at LSU. Somebody from the Carousel Club heard us and wanted to hire us. That was a white club across the river from Baton Rouge. We stayed there two years. The Carousel attracted a sophisticated crowd. At the beginning of the night we played “I’ll Walk Alone,” “Unchained Melody” and “Danny Boy,” but once the crowd got a little rowdy as the night went on, we could loosen up and play the harder stuff.
After the Carousel you came back to New Orleans and recorded for Imperial?
Dave Bartholomew heard us and said he’d record me once my Chess contract was up. The only thing was that Imperial was a company that only released your records in the area where you lived to see how they’d do. If they didn’t do very well, they wouldn’t release your records nationally. My [Imperial] records stayed local, so I only did a few for them.
Then you did “Danny Boy” for Montel?
Sam Montalbano [Montel’s owner] heard me do the song at the Carousel and asked me to record it. He recorded the background music in Baton Rouge—he had some guys from LSU play on it [likely John Fred & the Playboys]. He sent the tape to Cosimo’s and I overdubbed the vocals. Then I went with Johnny Vincent [Ace Records]. Mac Rebennack had something to do with that. He wrote “Have A Little Mercy” which I did.
Who were the Sugar Lumps?
They were Linda and Dianne DeGrue, Irene Johnson, and Mary Kelly. They were singing with Wardell Quezergue as the Little Raelettes when I hired them [in 1960]. The first place we worked was the Safari on Chef Highway. When we got on the bandstand, “Batman” [saxophonist LeRoy Rankin] announced us as “Sugar Boy & the Sugar Lumps.” They made a record for Don Robey [Peacock] while I was in the hospital.
Considering the circumstances of your injury I’ve always been amazed that you’ve never shown any bitterness about what happened.
I’ll tell you what, you’re going to be at a disadvantage if you spend your life dwelling on something like that. I’ve just tried to forget it and write it off as one of the mysteries of life.
You did make a brief comeback though.
Yeah, but I never felt like I had recuperated to the point where I was before I was injured, so I looked for other things to do with my life.
Do you still get requests to perform?
I do but that’s pretty much out of the question. The only place I sing is in church now.
I have seen you perform with Davell at the Jazz Festival though and you were great.
Well Davell talked me into that. I did it because he’s my grandson.
Are you close to Davell and give him advice?
Oh we talk all the time. But I can’t give him any advice other than “Stay out of trouble.” I never played as well as he can, so what can’t I tell him about music? He could play better than I ever could at the age of 12.
Were you surprised when you heard the Dixie Cups cover “Jock-A-Mo” [as “Iko Iko”]?
Not so much that they covered it, but I was by how well it did. It went all over the world and was Number One in a lot of places [“Iko Iko” reached Number 20 on the Billboard pop chart in 1965]. At the time, Joe Jones [the Dixie Cups’ producer] said he was going to cover one of my songs and I’d get royalties, but that never happened.
You get writer’s royalties though don’t you?
Eventually—after many years and court battles. Chess [who placed “Jock-A-Mo” with BMI] sold his publishing to the Goodman brothers. The Goodmans sued for publishing royalties and they’re responsible for me finally getting my just dues. But truthfully, I don’t even know if I really am getting my just dues. I just figure 50 percent of something is better than 100 of nothing.
Do you run into many people from your days as an entertainer?
All the time. The other day I was going to the drug store and ran into Aaron Neville. He was taking his dog to the vet and we talked a long time.
When you’re doing a service call, do people ever associate you with your music?
Sometimes. The other day I was changing a lock at a lady’s house and she found out who I was. She wanted me to sing while I was trying to work. That made me laugh.
READ THE ORIGINAL HERE IN OFFBEAT.
BackTalk with James “Sugar Boy” Crawford
By Jeff Hannusch
Whether you call it “Jock-A-Mo” or Chock-A-Mo” or “Iko-Iko,” it’s one of the greatest of all New Orleans Carnival songs. James “Sugar Boy” Crawford, who recorded the original version in 1953, rarely performs these days, preferring to bask in the glow of his incandescent grandson Davell. “The only place I sing is in church now,” Sugar Boy confesses.
“Jock-A-Mo,” one of a select handful of truly memorable Carnival songs, has had multiple personalities over the decades. Originally recorded in 1953 by James “Sugar Boy” Crawford, it was turned into an international hit over a decade later by a trio of New Orleans teenagers, the Dixie Cups, as “Iko Iko.” Since then, the song has been covered by Willie DeVille, Dr. John, the Neville Brothers, the Bell Stars [their version was in the Academy Award-winning movie Rain Man] and Cyndi Lauper, although none have approached the magnificence of Sugar Boy’s original.
An early shaper of New Orleans rhythm and blues, Sugar Boy was a master of the B-flat ballad, as demonstrated on “I Don’t Know What I’ll Do,” “Early Sunday Morning,” and “No One To Love Me.” Sugar Boy maintained a tremendous regional following for over a decade, and his popularity extended well beyond “Jock-A-Mo.”
Born October 12, 1934, he attained the “Sugar Boy” moniker because he was a sweet kid. He learned to play piano at a neighbor’s house, and at Booker T. Washington High School, played the trombone and formed a band. The group caught a break in 1952, when Doctor Daddy-O invited them to perform on his Saturday morning radio show. The group didn’t have a name until Daddy-O dubbed them, “The Chapaka Shawee” (Creole for “We Aren’t Raccoons”), the title of an instrumental the group played. The popularity from their radio appearance led to a regular work at the Shadowland and the Pentagon clubs, as well as an Aladdin Records contract. Under the guise of “The Sha-Wez,” the Aladdin record was a flop, but the group’s itinerary steadily grew. The following year, Chess Records president Leonard Chess was in town promoting some new releases when he heard Sugar Boy and the group rehearse at WMRY. In exchange for five dollars, Chess taped an audition demo and left town. A month later, disc jockey Ernie the Whip called the group and said he had a surprise for them. When the band gathered at WMRY, Ernie presented them with a 78 r.p.m. recording of “I Don’t Know What I’ll Do,” credited to “Sugar Boy and his Cane Cutters.” [Chess couldn’t use the name Sha-Wez as the group was still under contract to Aladdin.] Chess released the primitive audition and it did well locally. Sugar Boy then signed a contract and Chess directed him to the J&M Studio for more recordings. With guitarist Snooks Eaglin in support, Crawford waxed “Jock-A-Mo,” the song he will forever be known for.
Sugar Boy had one other release on Checker—“I Bowed On My Knees”—before moving to Baton Rouge, where he and the Cane Cutters were installed as the house band at the Carousel Club. Sugar Boy returned to New Orleans in 1956, and signed with Imperial Records where he waxed several memorable releases including “Morning Star,” “You Gave Me Love,” and the brilliant “She’s Gotta Wobble (When She Walks).” After his Imperial tenure, Sugar Boy had singles on Montel and Ace before his career, and nearly his life, came to an abrupt halt.
Sugar Boy and his band were on their way to a job in North Louisiana in 1963, when state troopers pulled him over for the then-crime of being a black man in a flashy brand-new automobile. One of Louisiana’s “finest” took exception to Sugar Boy’s attitude and proceeded to pistol-whip him on the side of the road. Sugar Boy spent three weeks in the hospital and was incapacitated for two years. He attempted a comeback, but after 1969, he confined his singing to church. He then went to trade school and learned to become a building engineer. For several years, Sugar Boy maintained the Masonic building on St. Charles Avenue (where OffBeat’s previous office was located). Luckily for Sugar Boy, over the years the royalties generated from “Jock-A-Mo” continued to accumulate, as the song was covered by more and more artists. Today, Sugar Boy owns his own company—C&C Locksmiths—where he spends his time practicing his trade and following the career of his talented grandson, Davell. OffBeat recently chatted with Sugar Boy Crawford after he duplicated a few keys for us.
Why were so many of your early records in the key of B-flat?
That wasn’t a comfortable key for me to sing in, but it was a heavy key for ballads. Back then we were a bunch of kids and just learning to play. We weren’t very advanced musically, so we could only play certain arrangements in certain keys like B-flat. Later on, I recorded in E, G and E-flat—those were easier keys to sing in.
Who did you listen to back then?
I used to love Roscoe Gordon’s “Saddled the Cow and Milked the Horse.” That was my favorite record.
Where in New Orleans did you grow up?
I lived at 1309 La Salle Street. We called the neighborhood “The Bucket of Blood,” because there were a lot of barrooms around there. It seemed like every Saturday night there was a cutting or shooting there. It was also a neighborhood where there were a lot of Indian tribes.
Where was The Battlefield?
That was an area bordered by Claiborne, Galvez, Tulane and Perdido Streets. That’s where the Indians met on Mardi Gras day. I wasn’t too keen on going down there, because when they met, there would be a lot of cutting and shooting going on.
Did you ever mask as an Indian?
Oh no, I never did go out for that kind of thing. You might not believe it because of “Jock-A-Mo,” but I was afraid of the Indians.
How did you construct “Jock-A-Mo?”
It came from two Indian chants that I put music to. “Iko Iko” was like a victory chant that the Indians would shout. “Jock-A-Mo” was a chant that was called when the Indians went into battle. I just put them together and made a song out of them. Really it was just like “Lawdy Miss Clawdy.” That was a phrase everybody in New Orleans used. Lloyd Price just added music to it and it became a hit. I was just trying to write a catchy song. Leonard Chess [president of Chess & Checker Records, then Sugar Boy’s label] contacted me and arranged for me to go to Cosimo’s [J & M Studio] and record it. That was in [November] 1953.
Listeners wonder what “Jock-A-Mo” means. Some music scholars say it translates in Mardi Gras Indian lingo as “Kiss my ass,” and I’ve read where some think Jock-A-Mo was a court jester. What does it mean?
I really don’t know (laughs). It wasn’t my idea to call the song “Jock-A-Mo”—Leonard Chess did that. If you listen to the song, I’m singing C-H-O-C-K, as in Chockamo. Not J-O-C-K, as in Jock-A-Mo. When Leonard listened to the session in Chicago, he thought I said “Jock-A-Mo.” When I saw the record for the first time I said, “That’s not the title, it’s ‘Chock-A-Mo’.”
How did Snooks wind up playing on it?
I think it was as a favor to [disc jockey] Dr. Daddy-O. Daddy-O knew a lot musicians and he knew Leonard Chess. Snooks never was in my band. The day I recorded “Jock-A-Mo,” there were about four or five other guys recording too including Snooks and Slim Sanders [their sides weren’t issued until 1976]. We didn’t have much time to record, but we got “Jock-A-Mo” on the third take.
How did the record do when it was released?
It did pretty good around Mardi Gras [in 1954] but after that, people forgot about it. I did go to New York though because I remember when I got on stage there they had to stop serving alcohol because I was underage. Nobody paid attention to the song though for over ten years.
Were there any other popular Carnival songs before “Jock-A-Mo?”
Professor Longhair’s “Go To the Mardi Gras,” but it wasn’t the version you hear now [the 1959 Ron recording]. He’d recorded it [on Atlantic and Star Talent] long before I started playing music. After “Jock-A-Mo” came “Mardi Gras Mambo,” “Carnival Time,” “Big Chief” and “Second Line,” so I guess I had one of the first Carnival records.
Did “Jock-A-Mo” get you more bookings?
At the time my band was already working every night of the week so we couldn’t handle any more work.
Along with Fats Domino, weren’t you one of the first New Orleans R&B artists to develop a white audience.
At one point, 99 percent of our work was at white clubs. That started from playing for the fraternities at LSU. Somebody from the Carousel Club heard us and wanted to hire us. That was a white club across the river from Baton Rouge. We stayed there two years. The Carousel attracted a sophisticated crowd. At the beginning of the night we played “I’ll Walk Alone,” “Unchained Melody” and “Danny Boy,” but once the crowd got a little rowdy as the night went on, we could loosen up and play the harder stuff.
After the Carousel you came back to New Orleans and recorded for Imperial?
Dave Bartholomew heard us and said he’d record me once my Chess contract was up. The only thing was that Imperial was a company that only released your records in the area where you lived to see how they’d do. If they didn’t do very well, they wouldn’t release your records nationally. My [Imperial] records stayed local, so I only did a few for them.
Then you did “Danny Boy” for Montel?
Sam Montalbano [Montel’s owner] heard me do the song at the Carousel and asked me to record it. He recorded the background music in Baton Rouge—he had some guys from LSU play on it [likely John Fred & the Playboys]. He sent the tape to Cosimo’s and I overdubbed the vocals. Then I went with Johnny Vincent [Ace Records]. Mac Rebennack had something to do with that. He wrote “Have A Little Mercy” which I did.
Who were the Sugar Lumps?
They were Linda and Dianne DeGrue, Irene Johnson, and Mary Kelly. They were singing with Wardell Quezergue as the Little Raelettes when I hired them [in 1960]. The first place we worked was the Safari on Chef Highway. When we got on the bandstand, “Batman” [saxophonist LeRoy Rankin] announced us as “Sugar Boy & the Sugar Lumps.” They made a record for Don Robey [Peacock] while I was in the hospital.
Considering the circumstances of your injury I’ve always been amazed that you’ve never shown any bitterness about what happened.
I’ll tell you what, you’re going to be at a disadvantage if you spend your life dwelling on something like that. I’ve just tried to forget it and write it off as one of the mysteries of life.
You did make a brief comeback though.
Yeah, but I never felt like I had recuperated to the point where I was before I was injured, so I looked for other things to do with my life.
Do you still get requests to perform?
I do but that’s pretty much out of the question. The only place I sing is in church now.
I have seen you perform with Davell at the Jazz Festival though and you were great.
Well Davell talked me into that. I did it because he’s my grandson.
Are you close to Davell and give him advice?
Oh we talk all the time. But I can’t give him any advice other than “Stay out of trouble.” I never played as well as he can, so what can’t I tell him about music? He could play better than I ever could at the age of 12.
Were you surprised when you heard the Dixie Cups cover “Jock-A-Mo” [as “Iko Iko”]?
Not so much that they covered it, but I was by how well it did. It went all over the world and was Number One in a lot of places [“Iko Iko” reached Number 20 on the Billboard pop chart in 1965]. At the time, Joe Jones [the Dixie Cups’ producer] said he was going to cover one of my songs and I’d get royalties, but that never happened.
You get writer’s royalties though don’t you?
Eventually—after many years and court battles. Chess [who placed “Jock-A-Mo” with BMI] sold his publishing to the Goodman brothers. The Goodmans sued for publishing royalties and they’re responsible for me finally getting my just dues. But truthfully, I don’t even know if I really am getting my just dues. I just figure 50 percent of something is better than 100 of nothing.
Do you run into many people from your days as an entertainer?
All the time. The other day I was going to the drug store and ran into Aaron Neville. He was taking his dog to the vet and we talked a long time.
When you’re doing a service call, do people ever associate you with your music?
Sometimes. The other day I was changing a lock at a lady’s house and she found out who I was. She wanted me to sing while I was trying to work. That made me laugh.
Friday, January 23, 2009
NOLA: Zulu Krewe to present Barack Obama with specially-commissioned coconut
New Orleans Times-Picayune
Zulu to present Barack Obama with specially-commissioned coconut
Susan Poag / The Times-Picayune
The Zulu Social Aid & Pleasure Club hopes to deliver this specially-commissioned coconut to President-elect Barack Obama in honor of his inauguration.
When Charles Hamilton Jr. embarks by train this morning, on his way to witness the inauguration of the nation's first African-American president, he will be bearing a precious and very personal gift.
Packed among his softest articles of clothing is a Zulu coconut, hand-painted with exquisite care and packaged inside a Faberge egg box, which Hamilton hopes to deliver to President-elect Barack Obama during his trip to Washington, D.C.
Hamilton, who is Zulu's president, saw the coconut for the first time Thursday at the studio of Keith Eccles, the Gretna artist who was commissioned to paint it. When Hamilton saw the finished product, his eyes widened with excitement.
"This is awesome, ' he said. "It combines New Orleans and D.C. Red, white and blue, and black and gold."
While many inaugural visitors will likely bring gifts for the new president, Hamilton is confident that this special offering will make it into Obama's hands.
Upon arriving in Washington, he plans to contact Desiree Glapion Rogers, the New Orleans native and former Zulu queen who was named the White House social secretary. Rogers' father, the late New Orleans City Councilman Roy E. Glapion Jr., served as Zulu president for years and her brother is a current member, Hamilton said.
Hamilton figured that a Zulu coconut would be a suitable gift, as they are widely regarded by Carnival parade-goers as the most coveted throw. He also thought it was appropriate, given that Obama's inauguration coincides with the 100th anniversary of Zulu's founding.
"I wanted to bring a piece of New Orleans history and Zulu history, " he said.
For Eccles, an art teacher at Higgins High School in Marrero, the experience was his first use of a coconut as a medium. But the unusual nature of the project hardly fazed him.
"For me to have the opportunity to do something this historically significant -- I'm just honored, " he said.
To prepare the presidential coconut, Zulu member Don E. Washington cut a hole at the base, drained the liquid, scraped out the meat with a drill bit and sealed the hole with wood putty. He then used a wire brush and a belt to sand away the roughness.
When Eccles got his hands on the smooth coconut, he started sketching out his ideas in pencil, directly on it.
"Just like you put a puzzle together, you start to see how the images fit, " he said.
The finished product features a mural-like design, including the face of a Zulu member on one side and a flag rippling over the White House, flanked by Zulu spears, on the other.
Eccles painted a second coconut, which will be included as part of the Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Club's exhibit currently on display at the Louisiana State Museum in the French Quarter.
Coconuts appeared at Zulu parades as early as 1910, and they were pitched off the floats in their natural, hairy states, according to Zulu historians. It wasn't until later that members began scraping, painting and decorating them.
All told, Eccles spent about 27 hours on the coconuts, staying up through the night to finish them in time. He is thrilled to be a part of history, and hopes his art will impart an important message to Obama and the rest of Washington.
"Don't forget about the recovery here. Things are better, but we're not fixed yet, " Eccles said. "Hopefully, when he sees it, he'll be reminded of the people here."
Saturday, January 10, 2009
Terence Blanchard interview and composition
All About Jazz
Terence Blanchard: Requiem for Katrina
By Lloyd Peterson
During a brief period of four years, two events took place that could define how world history will view America during the early part of the 21st century. The first was 9/11 and the other, Hurricane Katrina. But perhaps most surprising from a global point of view, was how powerless America appeared to be in helping its own citizens who were left destitute during the aftermath of Katrina.
How could the United States, the nation who has been there to support others globally in a time of need, appear so uncaring and insensitive towards its very own people? The question, “What has happened to America?” rang out throughout the world during those dark hours and continues to echo as a new president and administration come into office.
Perhaps one of the most empathetic and compassionate memoirs in reverence to the people of New Orleans came from the brilliant composer and trumpeter, Terence Blanchard. His recording, A Tale of God's Will (A Requiem for Katrina) (Blue Note, 2007), speaks loudly, though without words, reflecting the pain and frustration of people that were forgotten during their greatest time of need.
All About Jazz spoke to Blanchard took place in two parts on Nov. 30 and Dec. 7 of 2007. Though it has now been a little over a year since the interview took place, the importance and weight of these words still resonate more today than ever before.
All About Jazz: Is the pain and passion in the recording, “A Tale of God's Will” (Requiem for Katrina) for the people of New Orleans?
Terrence Blanchard: It's a passion for the people of New Orleans and it's a cry of frustration for all our hopes and dreams. It's a sense that we have had enough and we are not going to take it anymore. What else can happen? We have been embarrassed as a nation and I could go on and on and on.
AAJ: There also seems to be a telling peacefulness with a suggested common understanding that we do understand, that we still have each other, in a certain gospel sense.
TB: Well, that's exactly it, that's exactly it. Because at the end of the day, when people ask me why it's called A Tale of God's Will, I say look: when we all came back to New Orleans for the first time and saw the level of devastation, our hearts were broken. We all asked ourselves how this could have happened. Why did this have to happen and who is responsible? You end up going through the whole scenario and you don't get answers to most of the questions. And the only thing you can rest with is your faith and a sense of family because here is the deal about Katrina: Katrina didn't give a shit about how much money you made or who you were. We were all put into the same boat in a matter of hours, all of us.
There was an amazing moment during the Higher Ground benefit that took place at the Lincoln Center (Jazz at Lincoln Center's Higher ground Hurricane Relief benefit, Sept. 17, 2007, an all-star jazz event). There were all these musicians from New Orleans who were performing, but very few heard any of the night's performances. And that's because we were all backstage wondering how we and our families were doing. Where are you living now? Are you going back? And that was the mantra that was heard and we only went to the stage when it was time for us to play. So the sense of community in what you are talking about had already begun.
Read the full interview HERE.
Terence Blanchard: Requiem for Katrina
By Lloyd Peterson
During a brief period of four years, two events took place that could define how world history will view America during the early part of the 21st century. The first was 9/11 and the other, Hurricane Katrina. But perhaps most surprising from a global point of view, was how powerless America appeared to be in helping its own citizens who were left destitute during the aftermath of Katrina.
How could the United States, the nation who has been there to support others globally in a time of need, appear so uncaring and insensitive towards its very own people? The question, “What has happened to America?” rang out throughout the world during those dark hours and continues to echo as a new president and administration come into office.
Perhaps one of the most empathetic and compassionate memoirs in reverence to the people of New Orleans came from the brilliant composer and trumpeter, Terence Blanchard. His recording, A Tale of God's Will (A Requiem for Katrina) (Blue Note, 2007), speaks loudly, though without words, reflecting the pain and frustration of people that were forgotten during their greatest time of need.
All About Jazz spoke to Blanchard took place in two parts on Nov. 30 and Dec. 7 of 2007. Though it has now been a little over a year since the interview took place, the importance and weight of these words still resonate more today than ever before.
All About Jazz: Is the pain and passion in the recording, “A Tale of God's Will” (Requiem for Katrina) for the people of New Orleans?
Terrence Blanchard: It's a passion for the people of New Orleans and it's a cry of frustration for all our hopes and dreams. It's a sense that we have had enough and we are not going to take it anymore. What else can happen? We have been embarrassed as a nation and I could go on and on and on.
AAJ: There also seems to be a telling peacefulness with a suggested common understanding that we do understand, that we still have each other, in a certain gospel sense.
TB: Well, that's exactly it, that's exactly it. Because at the end of the day, when people ask me why it's called A Tale of God's Will, I say look: when we all came back to New Orleans for the first time and saw the level of devastation, our hearts were broken. We all asked ourselves how this could have happened. Why did this have to happen and who is responsible? You end up going through the whole scenario and you don't get answers to most of the questions. And the only thing you can rest with is your faith and a sense of family because here is the deal about Katrina: Katrina didn't give a shit about how much money you made or who you were. We were all put into the same boat in a matter of hours, all of us.
There was an amazing moment during the Higher Ground benefit that took place at the Lincoln Center (Jazz at Lincoln Center's Higher ground Hurricane Relief benefit, Sept. 17, 2007, an all-star jazz event). There were all these musicians from New Orleans who were performing, but very few heard any of the night's performances. And that's because we were all backstage wondering how we and our families were doing. Where are you living now? Are you going back? And that was the mantra that was heard and we only went to the stage when it was time for us to play. So the sense of community in what you are talking about had already begun.
Read the full interview HERE.
Wednesday, January 07, 2009
NOLA: Krewe of Zulu turns 100
Congrats to Zulu.
Courtesy of Louisiana State Museum Jazz Collection
Zulu King Louis Armstrong riding on his float, flanked by his court with coconuts in hand, 1949.
Times-Picayune
Presbytere exhibit kicks off Krewe of Zulu's 100th year celebration
Posted by mcmontoy January 07, 2009 14:30PM
Courtesy of Louisiana State Museum
Did you know that in 1949 Louis Armstrong reigned as the first celebrity monarch over the Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Club parade? Or that the club, now widely popular and a favorite among most Mardi Gras parade-goers, at one time had only 15 members?
Thanks to a partnership between Zulu and the Louisiana State Museum that has produced a 3,000-square-foot exhibit, "From Tramps to Kings: 100 Years of Zulu, " Carnival enthusiasts can learn all they ever wanted to know about Zulu's origins and rich history.
The exhibit opens Friday with a grand patron party and gala celebrating the more than 100 artifacts -- many of which have never been presented to the public -- that piece together the club from its beginnings in 1909.
"When it comes to Zulu, there are many myths and misconceptions that have been passed off as history, " said museum historian Charles Chamberlain, who worked closely with Zulu's historian, Clarence A. Becknell, to create the exhibit.
"One of the things you often hear about Zulu is there was no set parade route, when in fact we have three detailed maps -- from 1927, 1939 and 1949 showing the routes of the club, " Chamberlain said. "Also, it's been said that Zulu was founded to be a parody of Rex, when in fact that's not true; Zulu was created in the mold of countless African-American benevolent associations that provided essential social services to members and the community."
The parade rolls on Mardi Gras, which falls on Feb. 24.
Party-goers who attend Friday night's events will be the first to view artifacts such as Louis Armstrong's scrapbook from his reign and hear audio recorded during his ride. They'll also learn how the organization's seven main characters (the Witch Doctor, Big Shot, Mr. Big Stuff, the Mayor, Ambassador, Governor and Grand Marshall) came to be highlights of the parade.
"The exhibition is divided into two sections -- the history and origin, and the modern development of the organization, " Chamberlain said.
Friday's celebration will happen in the Jackson Square mall in and around the Presbytere. The opening will feature the Zulu king's float and larger-than-life Zulu sculptures from Blaine Kern's Mardi Gras World. Patron party guests will feast on food from Nola and gala guests will be served offerings from several noted New Orleans restaurants, including K-Paul's, Drago's and Irene's Cuisine, as well as a special curried chicken dish created by Dooky Chase chef Leah Chase. Entertainment will include music by Deacon John and Jean Knight ("Mr. Big Stuff, " "My Toot Toot").
"It's a great way to get in the Carnival spirit while supporting such a fantastic exhibit, " said Susan Maclay, executive director of the Louisiana Museum Foundation, which directly supports all museum endeavors. "What a deal! For $50, all you can drink and eat and fabulous entertainment; really you couldn't spend a night on the town for that kind of money, I promise you."
Folks who can't attend the kick-off party Friday evening are invited to go out Saturday at noon a.m. to see Zulu members parade from Harrah's Casino to The Presbytere. On Saturday at 1:45 p.m. , a ribbon-cutting ceremony will feature Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu, Zulu dignitaries and guests.
To celebrate the opening, museum admission will be waived for all visitors on Saturday.
If you can't make it this weekend, take heart: Several events are planned over the course of the year to celebrate the exhibit. Check Lagniappe's weekly special events calendar for upcoming events.
FROM TRAMPS TO KINGS: 100 YEARS OF ZULU
What: The Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Club and the Louisiana State Museum have partnered to create a 3,000-square-foot exhibit on Zulu from its beginnings in 1909 to today. The patron party features food from Nola. The gala includes all you can eat and drink with entertainment by Deacon John and Jean Knight.
Chris Granger / The Times-Picayune
Courtesy of Louisiana State Museum Jazz Collection
Zulu King Louis Armstrong riding on his float, flanked by his court with coconuts in hand, 1949.
Times-Picayune
Presbytere exhibit kicks off Krewe of Zulu's 100th year celebration
Posted by mcmontoy January 07, 2009 14:30PM
Courtesy of Louisiana State Museum
Did you know that in 1949 Louis Armstrong reigned as the first celebrity monarch over the Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Club parade? Or that the club, now widely popular and a favorite among most Mardi Gras parade-goers, at one time had only 15 members?
Thanks to a partnership between Zulu and the Louisiana State Museum that has produced a 3,000-square-foot exhibit, "From Tramps to Kings: 100 Years of Zulu, " Carnival enthusiasts can learn all they ever wanted to know about Zulu's origins and rich history.
The exhibit opens Friday with a grand patron party and gala celebrating the more than 100 artifacts -- many of which have never been presented to the public -- that piece together the club from its beginnings in 1909.
"When it comes to Zulu, there are many myths and misconceptions that have been passed off as history, " said museum historian Charles Chamberlain, who worked closely with Zulu's historian, Clarence A. Becknell, to create the exhibit.
"One of the things you often hear about Zulu is there was no set parade route, when in fact we have three detailed maps -- from 1927, 1939 and 1949 showing the routes of the club, " Chamberlain said. "Also, it's been said that Zulu was founded to be a parody of Rex, when in fact that's not true; Zulu was created in the mold of countless African-American benevolent associations that provided essential social services to members and the community."
The parade rolls on Mardi Gras, which falls on Feb. 24.
Party-goers who attend Friday night's events will be the first to view artifacts such as Louis Armstrong's scrapbook from his reign and hear audio recorded during his ride. They'll also learn how the organization's seven main characters (the Witch Doctor, Big Shot, Mr. Big Stuff, the Mayor, Ambassador, Governor and Grand Marshall) came to be highlights of the parade.
"The exhibition is divided into two sections -- the history and origin, and the modern development of the organization, " Chamberlain said.
Friday's celebration will happen in the Jackson Square mall in and around the Presbytere. The opening will feature the Zulu king's float and larger-than-life Zulu sculptures from Blaine Kern's Mardi Gras World. Patron party guests will feast on food from Nola and gala guests will be served offerings from several noted New Orleans restaurants, including K-Paul's, Drago's and Irene's Cuisine, as well as a special curried chicken dish created by Dooky Chase chef Leah Chase. Entertainment will include music by Deacon John and Jean Knight ("Mr. Big Stuff, " "My Toot Toot").
"It's a great way to get in the Carnival spirit while supporting such a fantastic exhibit, " said Susan Maclay, executive director of the Louisiana Museum Foundation, which directly supports all museum endeavors. "What a deal! For $50, all you can drink and eat and fabulous entertainment; really you couldn't spend a night on the town for that kind of money, I promise you."
Folks who can't attend the kick-off party Friday evening are invited to go out Saturday at noon a.m. to see Zulu members parade from Harrah's Casino to The Presbytere. On Saturday at 1:45 p.m. , a ribbon-cutting ceremony will feature Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu, Zulu dignitaries and guests.
To celebrate the opening, museum admission will be waived for all visitors on Saturday.
If you can't make it this weekend, take heart: Several events are planned over the course of the year to celebrate the exhibit. Check Lagniappe's weekly special events calendar for upcoming events.
FROM TRAMPS TO KINGS: 100 YEARS OF ZULU
What: The Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Club and the Louisiana State Museum have partnered to create a 3,000-square-foot exhibit on Zulu from its beginnings in 1909 to today. The patron party features food from Nola. The gala includes all you can eat and drink with entertainment by Deacon John and Jean Knight.
Chris Granger / The Times-Picayune
Sunday, November 02, 2008
New Orleans photographer Michael P. Smith (1937-2008)
I missed this when it happened. He was a documentarian to the wonderful culture of New Orleans.
Times-Picayune
Photographer, jazz archivist Michael Smith dies at 71
Posted by beggler September 27, 2008 22:31PM
Michael P. Smith, a photographer who spent three decades capturing vivid, vibrant images at jazz funerals, Mardi Gras Indian ceremonies and the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, died Friday at his New Orleans home of two diseases that destroyed his nervous system. He was 71.
A man of boundless energy who devoted himself to the culture he chronicled, Mr. Smith seemed to be everywhere at whatever event he was shooting. Fellow photographers joked that every good Jazzfest picture they took included the back of Mr. Smith's head.
Mr. Smith's subjects included Mahalia Jackson, Irma Thomas, James Booker, Harry Connick Jr., Professor Longhair and the Neville Brothers, as well as anonymous mourners, strutters and Indians whom Mr. Smith always managed to capture caught up in the moment.
"I don't think there's another photographer who has more sensitively documented very significant aspects of the second half of 20th century New Orleans culture," said Steven Maklansky, a former curator of photographs at the New Orleans Museum of Art.
Mr. Smith started concentrating on this kind of photography at a 1969 jazz funeral and kept at it, covering every Jazzfest through 2003. Though he showed up at subsequent festivals, silently cradling his camera, the degeneration of his nervous system had put an end to his career.
He built up a trove of more than 500,000 negatives, many of which remain unprocessed because he couldn't afford to have them developed, said Michael Sartisky, president and executive director of the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities.
"He did something that no other photographer had done: He captured the cultural landscape of the streets and did so with a vision of passion and beauty," said Jason Berry, who has written extensively about indigenous music.
This world provided a sharp contrast to the genteel environment in which he had grown up. A child of Metairie who was a star athlete, he was the son of a member of the Rex organization and the Boston Club, and he graduated from Metairie Park Country Day School and Tulane University.
Everything changed, he said in a 1995 interview, when he went to work as Tulane's jazz archive's staff photographer in the 1960s. He heard hours and hours of the music that had been created in New Orleans' bars and brothels, and he was hooked.
"He paid attention when many locals took that culture for granted or ignored it," said Bruce Raeburn, the archive's curator.
Around that time, Mr. Smith met Matthew Herron, a photographer with the Black Star agency living in New Orleans, and became his assistant.
With Paul Barbarin's funeral in 1969, Mr. Smith began his photographic exploration, abandoning the realm of his youth.
"I have friends in that privileged world, but haven't had much interest in the society I grew up in since discovering the folk community of New Orleans, a side of town I had never known that struck me as the real heart of the city," Mr. Smith said in the interview.
He summed up his philosophy in three words: "Follow the music."
He was a founder of Tipitina's, the Uptown music club that has become famous worldwide. Mr. Smith's pictures have been collected in five books, and in magazine articles.
To supplement his income, Mr. Smith regularly took commercial jobs, such as shooting pictures for annual reports.
Mr. Smith's work has been shown in galleries, embassies and museums and at jazz festivals, and it is part of the permanent collections of the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, the Louisiana State Museum, the Ogden Museum of Southern Art and the New Orleans Museum of Art.
In March 2007, the Historic New Orleans Collection bought Mr. Smith's archives, which contain more than 2,000 rolls of black-and-white film, tens of thousands of color slides and about 200 audiotapes. Collection spokeswoman Mary Mees declined to disclose the price.
"Michael P. Smith has defined the visual appearance of contemporary homegrown New Orleans music for people around the world," said John Lawrence, the collection's director of museum programs.
Mr. Smith's work is important, Lawrence said, because "it serves to document not just the musicians and their music, but the environment, social structures and neighborhoods that both create and sustain the musical traditions."
Mr. Smith received two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the 2002 Lifetime Achievement Award from the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities, the Mayor's Arts Award, the Clarence John Laughlin Lifetime Achievement Award from the local chapter of the American Society of Magazine Photographers and the Artist Recognition Award from the New Orleans Museum of Art's Delgado Society.
Survivors include a companion, Karen Louise Snyder; two daughters, Jan Lamberton Smith of Quail Springs, Calif., and Leslie Blackshear Smith of New Orleans; a brother, Joseph Byrd Hatchitt Smith of Port Angeles, Wash.; and two grandchildren.
Times-Picayune
Photographer, jazz archivist Michael Smith dies at 71
Posted by beggler September 27, 2008 22:31PM
Michael P. Smith, a photographer who spent three decades capturing vivid, vibrant images at jazz funerals, Mardi Gras Indian ceremonies and the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, died Friday at his New Orleans home of two diseases that destroyed his nervous system. He was 71.
A man of boundless energy who devoted himself to the culture he chronicled, Mr. Smith seemed to be everywhere at whatever event he was shooting. Fellow photographers joked that every good Jazzfest picture they took included the back of Mr. Smith's head.
Mr. Smith's subjects included Mahalia Jackson, Irma Thomas, James Booker, Harry Connick Jr., Professor Longhair and the Neville Brothers, as well as anonymous mourners, strutters and Indians whom Mr. Smith always managed to capture caught up in the moment.
"I don't think there's another photographer who has more sensitively documented very significant aspects of the second half of 20th century New Orleans culture," said Steven Maklansky, a former curator of photographs at the New Orleans Museum of Art.
Mr. Smith started concentrating on this kind of photography at a 1969 jazz funeral and kept at it, covering every Jazzfest through 2003. Though he showed up at subsequent festivals, silently cradling his camera, the degeneration of his nervous system had put an end to his career.
He built up a trove of more than 500,000 negatives, many of which remain unprocessed because he couldn't afford to have them developed, said Michael Sartisky, president and executive director of the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities.
"He did something that no other photographer had done: He captured the cultural landscape of the streets and did so with a vision of passion and beauty," said Jason Berry, who has written extensively about indigenous music.
This world provided a sharp contrast to the genteel environment in which he had grown up. A child of Metairie who was a star athlete, he was the son of a member of the Rex organization and the Boston Club, and he graduated from Metairie Park Country Day School and Tulane University.
Everything changed, he said in a 1995 interview, when he went to work as Tulane's jazz archive's staff photographer in the 1960s. He heard hours and hours of the music that had been created in New Orleans' bars and brothels, and he was hooked.
"He paid attention when many locals took that culture for granted or ignored it," said Bruce Raeburn, the archive's curator.
Around that time, Mr. Smith met Matthew Herron, a photographer with the Black Star agency living in New Orleans, and became his assistant.
With Paul Barbarin's funeral in 1969, Mr. Smith began his photographic exploration, abandoning the realm of his youth.
"I have friends in that privileged world, but haven't had much interest in the society I grew up in since discovering the folk community of New Orleans, a side of town I had never known that struck me as the real heart of the city," Mr. Smith said in the interview.
He summed up his philosophy in three words: "Follow the music."
He was a founder of Tipitina's, the Uptown music club that has become famous worldwide. Mr. Smith's pictures have been collected in five books, and in magazine articles.
To supplement his income, Mr. Smith regularly took commercial jobs, such as shooting pictures for annual reports.
Mr. Smith's work has been shown in galleries, embassies and museums and at jazz festivals, and it is part of the permanent collections of the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, the Louisiana State Museum, the Ogden Museum of Southern Art and the New Orleans Museum of Art.
In March 2007, the Historic New Orleans Collection bought Mr. Smith's archives, which contain more than 2,000 rolls of black-and-white film, tens of thousands of color slides and about 200 audiotapes. Collection spokeswoman Mary Mees declined to disclose the price.
"Michael P. Smith has defined the visual appearance of contemporary homegrown New Orleans music for people around the world," said John Lawrence, the collection's director of museum programs.
Mr. Smith's work is important, Lawrence said, because "it serves to document not just the musicians and their music, but the environment, social structures and neighborhoods that both create and sustain the musical traditions."
Mr. Smith received two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the 2002 Lifetime Achievement Award from the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities, the Mayor's Arts Award, the Clarence John Laughlin Lifetime Achievement Award from the local chapter of the American Society of Magazine Photographers and the Artist Recognition Award from the New Orleans Museum of Art's Delgado Society.
Survivors include a companion, Karen Louise Snyder; two daughters, Jan Lamberton Smith of Quail Springs, Calif., and Leslie Blackshear Smith of New Orleans; a brother, Joseph Byrd Hatchitt Smith of Port Angeles, Wash.; and two grandchildren.
Friday, June 13, 2008
2007 New Orleans brass band funeral for Kerwin James
Below is some YouTube footage of a New Orleans brass band funeral for musician Kerwin James, who played for the New Birth Brass Band:
"Noted tuba player Kerwin James, member of the New Birth Brass Band and younger brother to Philip and Keith Frazier of the Rebirth Brass Band, died Friday in a Houston hospital. James, 35, had been in a coma since the summer of 2006, when he suffered a stroke during a performance.
James, a native of the Treme neighborhood in New Orleans, was known for his dedication and devotion to the city after the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina. Considered by bandleader Joe Torregano as “the heir to the throne of the late, great Anthony ‘Tuba Fats’ Lacen,” James was also known for his impressive performances at local events such as the French Quarter Festival.
Yet after a show last year, James suffered a stroke that left him paralyzed and, on Friday, caused complications that led to his death. A parade in James’ honor was spontaneously held on St. Phillip Street in New Orleans when the community heard of his death, but authorities broke up the event and two musicians, snare drummer Derrick Tabb and trombonist/singer Glen David Andrews, were arrested for disturbing the peace."
Typically the early music at a jazz funeral consists of slow dirges before later switching to up-tempo jazz. Here, though, instead of a dirge there is a soulful 6/8 lilt to the band's version of the hymn "Just a Closer Walk with Thee," a staple of the jazz funeral repertoire (though often played as a dirge). The band is huge and wailing for one of their own. It's the most powerful version of this hymn I have ever heard. Near the end, they move the coffin around in time so the deceased can step with the band one last time. Beautiful. Bless him and bless New Orleans.
"Noted tuba player Kerwin James, member of the New Birth Brass Band and younger brother to Philip and Keith Frazier of the Rebirth Brass Band, died Friday in a Houston hospital. James, 35, had been in a coma since the summer of 2006, when he suffered a stroke during a performance.
James, a native of the Treme neighborhood in New Orleans, was known for his dedication and devotion to the city after the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina. Considered by bandleader Joe Torregano as “the heir to the throne of the late, great Anthony ‘Tuba Fats’ Lacen,” James was also known for his impressive performances at local events such as the French Quarter Festival.
Yet after a show last year, James suffered a stroke that left him paralyzed and, on Friday, caused complications that led to his death. A parade in James’ honor was spontaneously held on St. Phillip Street in New Orleans when the community heard of his death, but authorities broke up the event and two musicians, snare drummer Derrick Tabb and trombonist/singer Glen David Andrews, were arrested for disturbing the peace."
Typically the early music at a jazz funeral consists of slow dirges before later switching to up-tempo jazz. Here, though, instead of a dirge there is a soulful 6/8 lilt to the band's version of the hymn "Just a Closer Walk with Thee," a staple of the jazz funeral repertoire (though often played as a dirge). The band is huge and wailing for one of their own. It's the most powerful version of this hymn I have ever heard. Near the end, they move the coffin around in time so the deceased can step with the band one last time. Beautiful. Bless him and bless New Orleans.
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Remembering pre-Katrina New Orleans Jazz Funerals
A wonderful article by Dr. Michael White.
Excerpt:
"I met disappointment searching for musical direction in pop music, modern jazz, and the commercialized jazz of Bourbon Street. Things changed when I started going to the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival in 1973 and heard real traditional jazz bands for the first time. It was there I met the brass band leader and legend Ernest “Doc” Paulin. Though the elderly trumpet player seemed skeptical about hiring “young fellas,” a few weeks later I answered the phone to hear his thick Creole accent offer me a job: “Be at my house at nine o’clock sharp next Sunday. You need to wear black pants, a clean white shirt, a solid black tie, black shoes and a white band cap. You won’t mess up will you? You know you young fellas ain’t no good.” That Sunday, after a brief military-like inspection and reprimand of those not properly attired, Doc led a caravan of ten musicians just across the Mississippi River to Marrero and parked in front of the small Morning Star Baptist Church—the place where the baptism into my jazz life began. I was sure it would be my first and last musical engagement. I was very wrong. Over the next four years I was a regular member of the band and played over 200 jobs.
Most of Doc’s work was in the African American community: social club and church parades, jazz funerals, and dances. Doc employed several older musicians who, like himself, had been playing jazz since the 1920s. It was during that time that I really got to know various New Orleans neighborhoods and became immersed in the subculture whence jazz originated. Doc and the older band members taught me that, at least in the neighborhoods, jazz was not the same as tourist music. It was a musical accompaniment to a way of life, an expression of community spirit that permeated dancing, speech, cooking, mannerisms, dress, walking, wit, and humor. And over the years of many memorable engagements I came to appreciate the strong spiritual and cultural ties between the local African American community, West African customs, and European traditions. The band often played for seasonal benevolent society, and social aid and pleasure club parades—very different in look, sound, nature, and purpose from the better-known, more Eurocentric Mardi Gras parades. New Orleans African American social club parades consist of colorfully attired dancing club divisions, uniformed brass bands, and a “second line.” The second line is a crowd of anonymous followers, sometimes numbering in the thousands, who dance and cheer throughout social club parades and jazz funerals. The term also refers to the participants’ free-form, West African–influenced dance that has endless variations and symbolic gestures, and often involves the use of umbrellas and handkerchiefs.
Eventually, I began to see beneath the collective hysteria an important social significance. Like the jazz music that accompanied them, the community parades since the early 1900s not only celebrated ancestral traditions, they gave scope for pride and free expression; they promoted visibility, unity, respect, and strength.
The first nonmusician’s jazz funeral Doc Paulin’s brass band played after I joined was for a member of an old benevolent society across the river from New Orleans in Hahnville. I will never forget the look, sound, and feel of that very spiritual day. Society members wore navy blue nineteenth-century French military-style uniforms trimmed in gold—complete with shiny swords and plumed admirals’ hats. There was an air of beauty, majesty, and seriousness throughout the procession. The band’s sad dirges, played en route to the cemetery, were marked by the slow, orderly steps of the somber, sunken-faced, elderly society members and attendees. Our instruments seemed to sing and cry out the melodies of “The Old Rugged Cross” and “Nearer My God to Thee” with all the passion and somber emotion heard in the sobbing and screams of the deceased’s closest family members. After the burial the traditional joyous second line dancing—to upbeat songs such as “Just Over in the Gloryland” and “Oh, Didn’t He Ramble”—was almost comic in its combination of graceful reserve and soulful expression. It was one of the last of the traditional jazz funerals conducted with the sound, look, and ceremonial dignity originally intended for New Orleans’s unique dualistic celebration of death. There was no way of knowing at the time, but those years marked the end of an era. No longer would the traditional jazz sound and style of brass bands dominate community street processions—as they had for over three-quarters of a century."
Read "Reflections of an Authentic Jazz Life in Pre-Katrina New Orleans" here in the Journal of American History.
Friday, May 30, 2008
Rebirth Brass Band celebrates 25 years
Story including photos at the New Orleans Times-Picayune/Nola.com
Rebirth Brass Band celebrates 25 years of blowing its horns
Posted by amaloney May 29, 2008 16:30PM
Video
. . . . . . .
It was a Tuesday night, and Phil and Keith Frazier were at the Maple Leaf Bar, where they have played every week for 18 years with the Rebirth Brass Band. Instead of performing, however, they were reminiscing about the past 25 years of Rebirth. It took them a while to get started, but once the stories started flowing, they didn't stop.
Their favorite touring partner?
"Ani, " Phil said.
As in Ani DiFranco, the dreadlocks-sporting, righteous babe, acoustic-guitar-playing Ani?
"That's our girl!" exclaimed Phil, as he went on to describe Rebirth's six-week tour opening for the indie-rock heroine. DiFranco's audiences, more in tune with anti-war chants than with brass band beats, "didn't know what was coming, " Keith said.
"And then we'd just hit 'em with it, " Phil said.
They played for more than 10,000 people at Red Rocks in Colorado -- "That was the show, " Phil said -- and opened for the Grateful Dead in 1989, "when Jerry Garcia was still around -- cool guy, " he said.
The Rebirth Brass Band has been playing at the Maple Leaf Bar on Oak Street just about every Tuesday night for nearly 20 years.
One summer in the 1980s, they traveled the same European festival circuit as a slew of jazz legends, and several times shared a hotel floor with Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie and Art Blakely.
At the North Sea Jazz Festival, they crashed the end of a James Brown concert. "He sang the last note, and we busted through the crowd. People were like, 'What is this?' " Keith said.
"We went to Africa for six weeks, " Phil said.
"We went to Syria -- by mistake, " Keith added.
After 20 European tours, 14 albums, four tours of Japan and gigs in 46 states, these guys have seen a lot.
Since emerging in the early 1980s with their street-infused brand of brass band music, Rebirth has become a New Orleans institution, still as welcome and active at home as they are around the world. The band is celebrating its 25th anniversary tonight and tomorrow with two shows at the Howlin' Wolf, which will feature nearly all of the band's 28 members, past and present. They released an anniversary CD, titled simply "25, " in April.
They are both global ambassadors for New Orleans and second-line favorites in New Orleans. And they show no signs of slowing down.
. . . . . . .
The band officially formed in 1983, growing out of the Joseph S. Clark Senior High School marching band, but the Fraziers say Rebirth's story really began on the streets of Treme. Along with founding member Kermit Ruffins, who left the band in 1992 to forge his own career, both the Fraziers played music from an early age. The brothers were encouraged by both their mother, Barbara Frazier, who played gospel piano, and by the vibrant musical culture of the Treme neighborhood.
Phil Frazier, leader of the Rebirth Brass Band, and his brother Keith are the only members to have been with the band for 25 years.
While Keith started out on baritone horn in the seventh grade, Phil, who had been playing trombone since the fourth grade, soon found his passion in the tuba.
"I switched to tuba in high school because it was calling me.
"I would go to bed with the tuba, " he said, laughing, then added, "I don't do that anymore."
The newly formed band cut its first album with 1984's "Here To Stay." Perhaps, at the time, only the players knew how apt that debut title would prove to be.
Professionally, the group was inspired by the Dirty Dozen Brass Band, which, at the time, had achieved the greatest crossover appeal of any New Orleans brass ensemble. But musically, they were most inspired by the second-line tradition, street beats and the funky abandon of Treme. It was that quality they sought to re-create on their albums and in shows, and it is ultimately what has made them so enduring.
"We came along and did a lot of street stuff, " Keith said. "We took the street, and brought it to the stage."
Their early agent, Allison Minor, told them they'd find bigger audiences abroad than in the United States, and sent them to Europe. The intense touring in foreign lands, catching -- and sometimes missing -- trains, "made us grow up faster, " Phil said.
"We were so young, too, " Keith said. "We didn't know what the hell we were doing."
. . . . . . .
At 8:30 p.m., the Maple Leaf courtyard was virtually empty as the brothers Frazier recounted tales from the past quarter-century. A middle-aged African-American couple, dressed for some place fancier than the Maple Leaf, wandered up to the bar next to the courtyard and looked around expectantly.
"Excuse me, " the woman said to Phil. "What's the name of the band tonight?"
"Rebirth, " he said.
"Rebirth, OK, " said the woman, nodding to her husband, who nodded back. The couple was visiting from Atlanta, they said, and had heard about the band from friends from New Orleans.
Phil turned to his brother and flashed a precocious grin. "Ohhhh, I love getting new people!" he exclaimed.
Phil directed the couple to the front bar, telling them to say that "King Phil" had sent them. They looked at him skeptically, but smiled and disappeared toward the front.
"We call them Rebirth virgins, " Keith said. "They listen, and they're like, 'Oh my God, where has this music been my whole life?' "
The couple returned a few minutes later, drinks in hand. They laughed and said to Phil, "You really are the king!" and went into the courtyard.
After fine-tuning their touring chops in Europe, Rebirth conquered the United States, too. San Francisco and New York are among their favorite cities, where their venues often sell out. Amsterdam, they said, remains their favorite locale outside of New Orleans.
"It's so like New Orleans, " Keith said.
In their recording history, which includes 14 full-length albums and countless guest appearances, they have partnered with Robbie Roberston of The Band, Soulja Slim and Harry Connick Jr. Their favorite studio collaboration? Playing "Whole Lotta Loving" with Lenny Kravitz, Troy "Trombone Shorty" Andrews, Fred Wesley, Pee Wee Ellis and Maceo Parker on the album "Going Home: A Tribute to Fats Domino."
"We just gelled like that, instantly, " Phil said. "It was funky."
. . . . . . .
Despite the band's renown, if there's one thing that has stayed with Rebirth over the past quarter-century, it is the street.
The group experienced the inevitable backlash that comes with fame after their first decade of international and domestic touring, and today many locals complain that the long-running Tuesday night gig at the Maple Leaf has become a reservoir for college students and bourgeois Uptowners. But few can deny that Rebirth is still a band of the people.
When not touring, the band plays second-lines nearly every Sunday, and the band's members have kept their roots in New Orleans. Snare drum player Derrick Tabb, who has been with Rebirth 12 years, recently started the organization Roots of Music, which conducts after-school music classes for children.
What drives the Fraziers to keep playing after so long is not money or fame, they said, but the joy of bringing music to the people.
"I love making people happy, " Phil said. "I love giving people my all. If I'm not doing anything, I'm depressed."
"We just dealt with (the criticism), " Keith said. "We told people, 'This is what happens when you go from underground to being famous. It doesn't change who you are.' "
Now, Phil, 42, is a grandfather, and Keith will hit the four-decade mark in October, though he says, "I still feel 18."
Though they say playing music makes them feel young, they have embraced the avuncular role they play with the band's younger members, such as Chadrick Honore, who is 20.
"I could be his father, " Phil said in disbelief, which turned promptly to knee-slapping laughter. "Man, that's some crazy s- - -!"
Keith continued: "I really love to tell them what to expect in life, especially as a musician. It makes you feel good to be able to pass on that stuff."
Their only rule for the band, they say, is no fighting with one another. Everything else is met with New Orleans-style laissez faire. The Fraziers advise their younger band mates on keeping track of their finances and having a good time while paying mind to their image, which is, by extension, the band's image and the city's image.
"We got New Orleans on our shoulders, " Keith said.
Their most important words of wisdom?
"Don't take anything for granted, " Keith said. "Until you leave here, you don't understand what it's like, so don't take it for granted. Just play like it's your last time every time."
Rebirth Brass Band celebrates 25 years of blowing its horns
Posted by amaloney May 29, 2008 16:30PM
Video
| Rebirth Brass Band's 25th Anniversary |
. . . . . . .
It was a Tuesday night, and Phil and Keith Frazier were at the Maple Leaf Bar, where they have played every week for 18 years with the Rebirth Brass Band. Instead of performing, however, they were reminiscing about the past 25 years of Rebirth. It took them a while to get started, but once the stories started flowing, they didn't stop.
Their favorite touring partner?
"Ani, " Phil said.
As in Ani DiFranco, the dreadlocks-sporting, righteous babe, acoustic-guitar-playing Ani?
"That's our girl!" exclaimed Phil, as he went on to describe Rebirth's six-week tour opening for the indie-rock heroine. DiFranco's audiences, more in tune with anti-war chants than with brass band beats, "didn't know what was coming, " Keith said.
"And then we'd just hit 'em with it, " Phil said.
They played for more than 10,000 people at Red Rocks in Colorado -- "That was the show, " Phil said -- and opened for the Grateful Dead in 1989, "when Jerry Garcia was still around -- cool guy, " he said.
The Rebirth Brass Band has been playing at the Maple Leaf Bar on Oak Street just about every Tuesday night for nearly 20 years.
One summer in the 1980s, they traveled the same European festival circuit as a slew of jazz legends, and several times shared a hotel floor with Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie and Art Blakely.
At the North Sea Jazz Festival, they crashed the end of a James Brown concert. "He sang the last note, and we busted through the crowd. People were like, 'What is this?' " Keith said.
"We went to Africa for six weeks, " Phil said.
"We went to Syria -- by mistake, " Keith added.
After 20 European tours, 14 albums, four tours of Japan and gigs in 46 states, these guys have seen a lot.
Since emerging in the early 1980s with their street-infused brand of brass band music, Rebirth has become a New Orleans institution, still as welcome and active at home as they are around the world. The band is celebrating its 25th anniversary tonight and tomorrow with two shows at the Howlin' Wolf, which will feature nearly all of the band's 28 members, past and present. They released an anniversary CD, titled simply "25, " in April.
They are both global ambassadors for New Orleans and second-line favorites in New Orleans. And they show no signs of slowing down.
. . . . . . .
The band officially formed in 1983, growing out of the Joseph S. Clark Senior High School marching band, but the Fraziers say Rebirth's story really began on the streets of Treme. Along with founding member Kermit Ruffins, who left the band in 1992 to forge his own career, both the Fraziers played music from an early age. The brothers were encouraged by both their mother, Barbara Frazier, who played gospel piano, and by the vibrant musical culture of the Treme neighborhood.
Phil Frazier, leader of the Rebirth Brass Band, and his brother Keith are the only members to have been with the band for 25 years.
While Keith started out on baritone horn in the seventh grade, Phil, who had been playing trombone since the fourth grade, soon found his passion in the tuba.
"I switched to tuba in high school because it was calling me.
"I would go to bed with the tuba, " he said, laughing, then added, "I don't do that anymore."
The newly formed band cut its first album with 1984's "Here To Stay." Perhaps, at the time, only the players knew how apt that debut title would prove to be.
Professionally, the group was inspired by the Dirty Dozen Brass Band, which, at the time, had achieved the greatest crossover appeal of any New Orleans brass ensemble. But musically, they were most inspired by the second-line tradition, street beats and the funky abandon of Treme. It was that quality they sought to re-create on their albums and in shows, and it is ultimately what has made them so enduring.
"We came along and did a lot of street stuff, " Keith said. "We took the street, and brought it to the stage."
Their early agent, Allison Minor, told them they'd find bigger audiences abroad than in the United States, and sent them to Europe. The intense touring in foreign lands, catching -- and sometimes missing -- trains, "made us grow up faster, " Phil said.
"We were so young, too, " Keith said. "We didn't know what the hell we were doing."
. . . . . . .
At 8:30 p.m., the Maple Leaf courtyard was virtually empty as the brothers Frazier recounted tales from the past quarter-century. A middle-aged African-American couple, dressed for some place fancier than the Maple Leaf, wandered up to the bar next to the courtyard and looked around expectantly.
"Excuse me, " the woman said to Phil. "What's the name of the band tonight?"
"Rebirth, " he said.
"Rebirth, OK, " said the woman, nodding to her husband, who nodded back. The couple was visiting from Atlanta, they said, and had heard about the band from friends from New Orleans.
Phil turned to his brother and flashed a precocious grin. "Ohhhh, I love getting new people!" he exclaimed.
Phil directed the couple to the front bar, telling them to say that "King Phil" had sent them. They looked at him skeptically, but smiled and disappeared toward the front.
"We call them Rebirth virgins, " Keith said. "They listen, and they're like, 'Oh my God, where has this music been my whole life?' "
The couple returned a few minutes later, drinks in hand. They laughed and said to Phil, "You really are the king!" and went into the courtyard.
After fine-tuning their touring chops in Europe, Rebirth conquered the United States, too. San Francisco and New York are among their favorite cities, where their venues often sell out. Amsterdam, they said, remains their favorite locale outside of New Orleans.
"It's so like New Orleans, " Keith said.
In their recording history, which includes 14 full-length albums and countless guest appearances, they have partnered with Robbie Roberston of The Band, Soulja Slim and Harry Connick Jr. Their favorite studio collaboration? Playing "Whole Lotta Loving" with Lenny Kravitz, Troy "Trombone Shorty" Andrews, Fred Wesley, Pee Wee Ellis and Maceo Parker on the album "Going Home: A Tribute to Fats Domino."
"We just gelled like that, instantly, " Phil said. "It was funky."
. . . . . . .
Despite the band's renown, if there's one thing that has stayed with Rebirth over the past quarter-century, it is the street.
The group experienced the inevitable backlash that comes with fame after their first decade of international and domestic touring, and today many locals complain that the long-running Tuesday night gig at the Maple Leaf has become a reservoir for college students and bourgeois Uptowners. But few can deny that Rebirth is still a band of the people.
When not touring, the band plays second-lines nearly every Sunday, and the band's members have kept their roots in New Orleans. Snare drum player Derrick Tabb, who has been with Rebirth 12 years, recently started the organization Roots of Music, which conducts after-school music classes for children.
What drives the Fraziers to keep playing after so long is not money or fame, they said, but the joy of bringing music to the people.
"I love making people happy, " Phil said. "I love giving people my all. If I'm not doing anything, I'm depressed."
"We just dealt with (the criticism), " Keith said. "We told people, 'This is what happens when you go from underground to being famous. It doesn't change who you are.' "
Now, Phil, 42, is a grandfather, and Keith will hit the four-decade mark in October, though he says, "I still feel 18."
Though they say playing music makes them feel young, they have embraced the avuncular role they play with the band's younger members, such as Chadrick Honore, who is 20.
"I could be his father, " Phil said in disbelief, which turned promptly to knee-slapping laughter. "Man, that's some crazy s- - -!"
Keith continued: "I really love to tell them what to expect in life, especially as a musician. It makes you feel good to be able to pass on that stuff."
Their only rule for the band, they say, is no fighting with one another. Everything else is met with New Orleans-style laissez faire. The Fraziers advise their younger band mates on keeping track of their finances and having a good time while paying mind to their image, which is, by extension, the band's image and the city's image.
"We got New Orleans on our shoulders, " Keith said.
Their most important words of wisdom?
"Don't take anything for granted, " Keith said. "Until you leave here, you don't understand what it's like, so don't take it for granted. Just play like it's your last time every time."
Friday, March 28, 2008
New Orleans Musician Glen David Andrews
Offbeat
BackTalk with Glen David Andrews
By John Swenson
The late January afternoon shadows shiver across the flagstones on Jackson Square as a crowd of about 50 tourists in winter clothes passively watches an unlikely collection of musicians—a chubby, red-faced schoolboy trumpeter, a trombone player, tuba player, trap drummer and stand-up bassist—huff through a ragtag version of “Saints.” Glen David Andrews arrives with his trombone case slung over his shoulder, sits next to the kid trumpeter and transforms this tableau into an impromptu party.
During “I Have a Friend in Jesus,” Andrews shoulders his trombone and sends a bolt of electricity through the crowd with a solo that corkscrews in intensity as he throws in four and eight bar quotes from sources including horseracing’s “Call To Post.”
Andrews signals the other trombonist to solo, then shows the trumpeter how to comp under the solo. Andrews starts singing “My Bucket’s Got a Hole in It,” adding verses from “I Hear You Knockin’” and “Blueberry Hill.” Suddenly the tourists are doing that spasmodic tourist dance, the involuntary shuffle, and a handful of homeless men who’ve been watching in silence start dancing around and gesturing as if they’re part of the entertainment. Andrews encourages the kid to sing “New Orleans Street Parade” and does a scat vocal call-and-response, making the kid take another chorus. Andrews then plays the opening strains of “Georgia,” but when he starts to sing, he changes it to “Louisiana.” The crowd goes nuts, filling the tip bucket with paper money, and Andrews takes a bow.
Andrews has been playing in this exact spot since he was younger than that red-faced trumpeter, learning from the legendary Tuba Fats. His career has taken him through the Lil’ Rascals Brass Band, the New Birth Brass Band and some spectacular moments in the Andrews Family Band along with his cousins James and Troy Andrews. As part of the new breed of brass band musicians, he wrote the refrain “Gimme a dime /I only got eight,” which has become a staple of the new brass band repertoire.
Since Katrina, Andrews has been homeless—he’s currently sleeping in his uncle’s FEMA trailer—and has turned into an outspoken critic of street violence, the slow pace of the recovery and police crackdowns on second line parades. “I got a lot to play,” he says, “and a lot to say!”
What may even be more interesting about his post-Katrina persona, though, is that Andrews has moved away from his role as one of the young turks of the new brass band movement and embraced traditional brass band music. His band, Glen David Andrews and the Lazy Six, plays the old school New Orleans jazz of his ancestors in regular gigs at Preservation Hall and Mid City Lanes Rock ’n’ Bowl.
It’s interesting to see that you still play in Jackson Square.
I like to play in Jackson Square. That’s what I’m interested in doing, teaching people. Nobody’s teaching the traditional music. The only way you can really hear the traditional music is through the Treme Brass Band or at Preservation Hall.
You were recently arrested for second lining in the Treme, which brought attention to the pressure being applied by the police to the second line tradition.
You have to just do it. They shouldn’t even ask for permission. I’ve been second lining all my life and I’m going to keep on doing it. We paraded in the Treme yesterday for about three hours. Nobody bothered us.
You’ve been an effective spokesperson for a lot of post-Katrina issues. Unfortunately, if you say what’s on your mind, you’re branded as a troublemaker. Look at what happened to Cyril Neville.
He was right to say what he said. He said we didn’t leave New Orleans, New Orleans kicked us out. On one hand the city wants to use you to promote it, “Come to New Orleans to hear the great music,” but on the other hand there’s no place for you here.
It’s like the Musicians’ Village, which I have a real problem with. And not just because they turned me down for a house. They turned down most of the musicians who applied, most of the brass band members. The only people who are qualifying are people with good credit, older people with social security and folks like that. How does that help us, really? How are you supposed to have good credit when you’re wiped out, lost all your possessions and are living in somebody else’s trailer? Even if I had good credit, if I could get a loan from a bank, what do I want to live in the Ninth Ward for, anyway? I grew up in the real Musicians’ Village, Treme. I want to live in the real Musicians’ Village.
A lot of the older people have been sidelined since Katrina. You didn’t have to drown to be kept from being able to do what you were doing before. It seems like a big part of the social infrastructure that kept the traditional brass bands going is just gone.
They ran them off. I used to talk to [Olympia’s] Doc Watson all my days. I would just call him and talk to him; he ain’t here to do that anymore. There’s no Tuba Fats left in the Sixth Ward. Tuba Fats taught everybody and not just about the music. He took us to London every year to play, and he took us to Amsterdam.
I talk to Irvin Mayfield a lot. He says, “They know what you’re trying to do. They don’t like people that speak out.” You go against the grain, they stay away from you. Everything’s a clique. That’s why the city’s in the trouble it’s in.
With so many of the older keepers of the flame out of commission or out of the city, it falls on younger guys like you not only symbolize the new blood in the brass band sound, but now you’ve got to uphold the old tradition, too.
When I saw the Olympia Brass Band for the first time I was like six, seven years old. I knew I wanted to be a part of that. I knew when I saw James (Andrews) at the World’s Fair I knew I was going to be playing with him. I grew up with it in the Treme, it was all around me. Ironing Board Sam. James Black lived around the corner. I grew up with the Olympia, the Pinstripe band all my life, and I realize that’s my niche. I love to sing the old tunes. Every Sunday when I get on the stand at Preservation Hall, I get a chill.
What’s your ideal repertoire for playing there?
I always try to play some Bunk Johnson, some Punch Miller, some Red Allen.
At places like Fritzel’s they play traditional jazz like classical music, note for note reproductions.
I’ve only seen one black musician play there in the 27 years of my life and that was Gregg Stafford. The best place you’re going to get down there [on Bourbon Street] is the Maison Bourbon; Jamil Sharif is there to commemorate the traditional music. That’s the thing about the tradition. You’ve got to know “Sunny Side of the Street” before you can know “Gimme a Dime.” You’ve got to know the tradition. And that’s what’s happening with these new brass bands. It’s the same thing with these Indian chiefs. Everybody wants to be the Big Chief now. There’s like 23 chiefs now; nobody wants to start off being the Spyboy.
How did you learn the tradition?
They gave me a horn when I was like 13 and said, “Do this” and I’ve been doing this ever since. I used to come by Tuba Fats and he’d have me play the bass drum. He’d say, “Sit there and do this.” I didn’t realize it at the time, but he was training me. My brothers, James and Troy Andrews, Nicholas Payton, they were my earliest influences. They all played together in brass bands. Kerwin James, who just passed away, he was there. It all started there in the Sixth Ward. We were a close family, 15 children, me and my cousins. Eight of them are named Glen Andrews. You know the New Kids Brass Band? Well, that’s all my cousin and brother’s children. Three of them in the band are named Glen Andrews. So the three of them and me and my cousin with the Rebirth, we went to channel 4 about two months ago. Everybody is signing in as Glen Andrews. The security guard says, “I don’t know if you take security seriously or not, but this is not funny.” So we all get to pulling out our IDs.
So you see your role now, at 27 years old, as an older guy passing along the tradition?
People don’t respect the tradition. The young people don’t seem to respect much. If I’m playing at the Rock ’n’ Bowl, everybody wears suits and ties. Suits and ties. At Preservation Hall, if you don’t come out there with a coat and tie, you can go home. You could be the tuba player, somebody I need. If you don’t come with a suit and tie, you can go home. Tuba Fats told me that’s the way you run a band. You’ve got to pay them, make sure everybody’s looking good and professional and sounding good. Otherwise it’s going to fall on you.
You were also part of the brass band new wave with the Rascals and New Birth.
I did the song “Gimme a Dime, I only got 8” with New Birth. But that ain’t what I want to do. I’m through with that. The new shit dishes the old folks.
So you put that aside.
It’s violence. It’s not music. It’s one chord over the same groove over and over. No offense to the Hot 8. My brother Derek started that band. No offense to the Soul Rebels. I like all those people as people. I don’t want to listen to that. “That’s the street thing,” they say. “I’m trying to do something new.” How the hell are you going to do that if you don’t know where it came from? Do you know “Palm Court Strut?” Do you know who Danny Barker was? You need to find out about some of these things. You need to go by George Buck and get you a couple of them records.
You’ve been under a lot of psychological stress over the last couple of years…
I look at it that I am actually homeless. I’m living in my uncle’s trailer. If I didn’t have the help of my family, if I was a weak-minded person, I’d be back on drugs. I’d most likely have killed myself by now. I look out the door and there’s a woman across the street with her two babies sleeping in the outdoors. That shit breaks my heart, but I know God and I know God is merciful. I know he’ll look down on me and give me the courage and strength to keep going.
You were relocated to Texas for a while…
I was in Houston for six months but I left. I was stressed. They don’t welcome us there. They have an ad campaign right now there encouraging all the people in Houston to buy a gun to protect themselves from those people from New Orleans. Those people. They did have that bunch of assholes that went out there killing everybody, but that doesn’t represent the rest of us.
What do you think the future is for brass band music?
There’s not enough cooperation among the younger brass band players. All the white players stick together. All these so-called retro jazz bands, I don’t hear anything I like down on Frenchmen Street outside of Snug Harbor except if it’s John Boutte. It’s sad.
If you’re going to play the traditional music do it the right way. The Storyville Stompers. They’re doing traditional music the right way. Rebirth works so hard and travels up and down that road, so they’re going to survive. Them and the Dozen are all right. Not all the individuals in those bands are all right financially, but those bands are all right as far as work. But I’ve got to worry about myself.
Everybody compares me to Troy and James, but Troy and James are working. I guess I’m just as good as them; I just don’t get as much work. The last 15 years of my career, I’ve spent backing up. I backed Troy, I backed James, I backed the New Birth. The time has come for me to step out on my own. Going on this trip to Austin is a big step for me.
I’m a musician. I don’t build homes. I don’t paint. I don’t know how to paint. I don’t know nothing about changing tires. But I can sing and that’s what I want to do. If I sit in that trailer, I’ll go crazy.
BackTalk with Glen David Andrews
By John Swenson
The late January afternoon shadows shiver across the flagstones on Jackson Square as a crowd of about 50 tourists in winter clothes passively watches an unlikely collection of musicians—a chubby, red-faced schoolboy trumpeter, a trombone player, tuba player, trap drummer and stand-up bassist—huff through a ragtag version of “Saints.” Glen David Andrews arrives with his trombone case slung over his shoulder, sits next to the kid trumpeter and transforms this tableau into an impromptu party.
During “I Have a Friend in Jesus,” Andrews shoulders his trombone and sends a bolt of electricity through the crowd with a solo that corkscrews in intensity as he throws in four and eight bar quotes from sources including horseracing’s “Call To Post.”
Andrews signals the other trombonist to solo, then shows the trumpeter how to comp under the solo. Andrews starts singing “My Bucket’s Got a Hole in It,” adding verses from “I Hear You Knockin’” and “Blueberry Hill.” Suddenly the tourists are doing that spasmodic tourist dance, the involuntary shuffle, and a handful of homeless men who’ve been watching in silence start dancing around and gesturing as if they’re part of the entertainment. Andrews encourages the kid to sing “New Orleans Street Parade” and does a scat vocal call-and-response, making the kid take another chorus. Andrews then plays the opening strains of “Georgia,” but when he starts to sing, he changes it to “Louisiana.” The crowd goes nuts, filling the tip bucket with paper money, and Andrews takes a bow.
Andrews has been playing in this exact spot since he was younger than that red-faced trumpeter, learning from the legendary Tuba Fats. His career has taken him through the Lil’ Rascals Brass Band, the New Birth Brass Band and some spectacular moments in the Andrews Family Band along with his cousins James and Troy Andrews. As part of the new breed of brass band musicians, he wrote the refrain “Gimme a dime /I only got eight,” which has become a staple of the new brass band repertoire.
Since Katrina, Andrews has been homeless—he’s currently sleeping in his uncle’s FEMA trailer—and has turned into an outspoken critic of street violence, the slow pace of the recovery and police crackdowns on second line parades. “I got a lot to play,” he says, “and a lot to say!”
What may even be more interesting about his post-Katrina persona, though, is that Andrews has moved away from his role as one of the young turks of the new brass band movement and embraced traditional brass band music. His band, Glen David Andrews and the Lazy Six, plays the old school New Orleans jazz of his ancestors in regular gigs at Preservation Hall and Mid City Lanes Rock ’n’ Bowl.
It’s interesting to see that you still play in Jackson Square.
I like to play in Jackson Square. That’s what I’m interested in doing, teaching people. Nobody’s teaching the traditional music. The only way you can really hear the traditional music is through the Treme Brass Band or at Preservation Hall.
You were recently arrested for second lining in the Treme, which brought attention to the pressure being applied by the police to the second line tradition.
You have to just do it. They shouldn’t even ask for permission. I’ve been second lining all my life and I’m going to keep on doing it. We paraded in the Treme yesterday for about three hours. Nobody bothered us.
You’ve been an effective spokesperson for a lot of post-Katrina issues. Unfortunately, if you say what’s on your mind, you’re branded as a troublemaker. Look at what happened to Cyril Neville.
He was right to say what he said. He said we didn’t leave New Orleans, New Orleans kicked us out. On one hand the city wants to use you to promote it, “Come to New Orleans to hear the great music,” but on the other hand there’s no place for you here.
It’s like the Musicians’ Village, which I have a real problem with. And not just because they turned me down for a house. They turned down most of the musicians who applied, most of the brass band members. The only people who are qualifying are people with good credit, older people with social security and folks like that. How does that help us, really? How are you supposed to have good credit when you’re wiped out, lost all your possessions and are living in somebody else’s trailer? Even if I had good credit, if I could get a loan from a bank, what do I want to live in the Ninth Ward for, anyway? I grew up in the real Musicians’ Village, Treme. I want to live in the real Musicians’ Village.
A lot of the older people have been sidelined since Katrina. You didn’t have to drown to be kept from being able to do what you were doing before. It seems like a big part of the social infrastructure that kept the traditional brass bands going is just gone.
They ran them off. I used to talk to [Olympia’s] Doc Watson all my days. I would just call him and talk to him; he ain’t here to do that anymore. There’s no Tuba Fats left in the Sixth Ward. Tuba Fats taught everybody and not just about the music. He took us to London every year to play, and he took us to Amsterdam.
I talk to Irvin Mayfield a lot. He says, “They know what you’re trying to do. They don’t like people that speak out.” You go against the grain, they stay away from you. Everything’s a clique. That’s why the city’s in the trouble it’s in.
With so many of the older keepers of the flame out of commission or out of the city, it falls on younger guys like you not only symbolize the new blood in the brass band sound, but now you’ve got to uphold the old tradition, too.
When I saw the Olympia Brass Band for the first time I was like six, seven years old. I knew I wanted to be a part of that. I knew when I saw James (Andrews) at the World’s Fair I knew I was going to be playing with him. I grew up with it in the Treme, it was all around me. Ironing Board Sam. James Black lived around the corner. I grew up with the Olympia, the Pinstripe band all my life, and I realize that’s my niche. I love to sing the old tunes. Every Sunday when I get on the stand at Preservation Hall, I get a chill.
What’s your ideal repertoire for playing there?
I always try to play some Bunk Johnson, some Punch Miller, some Red Allen.
At places like Fritzel’s they play traditional jazz like classical music, note for note reproductions.
I’ve only seen one black musician play there in the 27 years of my life and that was Gregg Stafford. The best place you’re going to get down there [on Bourbon Street] is the Maison Bourbon; Jamil Sharif is there to commemorate the traditional music. That’s the thing about the tradition. You’ve got to know “Sunny Side of the Street” before you can know “Gimme a Dime.” You’ve got to know the tradition. And that’s what’s happening with these new brass bands. It’s the same thing with these Indian chiefs. Everybody wants to be the Big Chief now. There’s like 23 chiefs now; nobody wants to start off being the Spyboy.
How did you learn the tradition?
They gave me a horn when I was like 13 and said, “Do this” and I’ve been doing this ever since. I used to come by Tuba Fats and he’d have me play the bass drum. He’d say, “Sit there and do this.” I didn’t realize it at the time, but he was training me. My brothers, James and Troy Andrews, Nicholas Payton, they were my earliest influences. They all played together in brass bands. Kerwin James, who just passed away, he was there. It all started there in the Sixth Ward. We were a close family, 15 children, me and my cousins. Eight of them are named Glen Andrews. You know the New Kids Brass Band? Well, that’s all my cousin and brother’s children. Three of them in the band are named Glen Andrews. So the three of them and me and my cousin with the Rebirth, we went to channel 4 about two months ago. Everybody is signing in as Glen Andrews. The security guard says, “I don’t know if you take security seriously or not, but this is not funny.” So we all get to pulling out our IDs.
So you see your role now, at 27 years old, as an older guy passing along the tradition?
People don’t respect the tradition. The young people don’t seem to respect much. If I’m playing at the Rock ’n’ Bowl, everybody wears suits and ties. Suits and ties. At Preservation Hall, if you don’t come out there with a coat and tie, you can go home. You could be the tuba player, somebody I need. If you don’t come with a suit and tie, you can go home. Tuba Fats told me that’s the way you run a band. You’ve got to pay them, make sure everybody’s looking good and professional and sounding good. Otherwise it’s going to fall on you.
You were also part of the brass band new wave with the Rascals and New Birth.
I did the song “Gimme a Dime, I only got 8” with New Birth. But that ain’t what I want to do. I’m through with that. The new shit dishes the old folks.
So you put that aside.
It’s violence. It’s not music. It’s one chord over the same groove over and over. No offense to the Hot 8. My brother Derek started that band. No offense to the Soul Rebels. I like all those people as people. I don’t want to listen to that. “That’s the street thing,” they say. “I’m trying to do something new.” How the hell are you going to do that if you don’t know where it came from? Do you know “Palm Court Strut?” Do you know who Danny Barker was? You need to find out about some of these things. You need to go by George Buck and get you a couple of them records.
You’ve been under a lot of psychological stress over the last couple of years…
I look at it that I am actually homeless. I’m living in my uncle’s trailer. If I didn’t have the help of my family, if I was a weak-minded person, I’d be back on drugs. I’d most likely have killed myself by now. I look out the door and there’s a woman across the street with her two babies sleeping in the outdoors. That shit breaks my heart, but I know God and I know God is merciful. I know he’ll look down on me and give me the courage and strength to keep going.
You were relocated to Texas for a while…
I was in Houston for six months but I left. I was stressed. They don’t welcome us there. They have an ad campaign right now there encouraging all the people in Houston to buy a gun to protect themselves from those people from New Orleans. Those people. They did have that bunch of assholes that went out there killing everybody, but that doesn’t represent the rest of us.
What do you think the future is for brass band music?
There’s not enough cooperation among the younger brass band players. All the white players stick together. All these so-called retro jazz bands, I don’t hear anything I like down on Frenchmen Street outside of Snug Harbor except if it’s John Boutte. It’s sad.
If you’re going to play the traditional music do it the right way. The Storyville Stompers. They’re doing traditional music the right way. Rebirth works so hard and travels up and down that road, so they’re going to survive. Them and the Dozen are all right. Not all the individuals in those bands are all right financially, but those bands are all right as far as work. But I’ve got to worry about myself.
Everybody compares me to Troy and James, but Troy and James are working. I guess I’m just as good as them; I just don’t get as much work. The last 15 years of my career, I’ve spent backing up. I backed Troy, I backed James, I backed the New Birth. The time has come for me to step out on my own. Going on this trip to Austin is a big step for me.
I’m a musician. I don’t build homes. I don’t paint. I don’t know how to paint. I don’t know nothing about changing tires. But I can sing and that’s what I want to do. If I sit in that trailer, I’ll go crazy.
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
With Regrets, New Orleans Is Left Behind
From the New York Times
December 18, 2007
With Regrets, New Orleans Is Left Behind
By ADAM NOSSITER
LAKE CHARLES, La. — With resignation, anger or stoicism, thousands of former New Orleanians forced out by Hurricane Katrina are settling in across the Gulf Coast, breaking their ties with the damaged city for which they still yearn.
They now cast their votes in small Louisiana towns and in big cities of neighboring states. They have found new jobs and bought new houses. They have forsaken their favorite foods and cherished pastors. But they do not for a moment miss the crime, the chaos and the bad memories they left behind in New Orleans.
This vast diaspora — largely black, often poor, sometimes struggling — stretches across the country but is concentrated in cities near the coast, like this one, or Atlanta or Baton Rouge or Houston, places where the newcomers are still reaching for accommodation.
The break came fairly recently. Sometime between the New Orleans mayor’s race in spring 2006, when thousands of displaced citizens voted absentee or drove in to cast a ballot, and the city election this fall, when thousands did not — resulting in a sharply diminished electorate and a white-majority City Council — the decision was made: there was no going back. Life in New Orleans was over.
Now, they are adjusting to places where the pace is slower, restaurants are fewer, existence is centered on the home, and streets are lonely and deserted after 5 p.m., as in this city in southwest Louisiana. These exiles, still in semi-limbo and barely established in a routine, describe their new lives less in terms of what it now consists of than of what they left behind.
“I told them, ‘I love turtle soup.’ People here go, ‘What’s that?’ ” said Pauline Hurst, a former therapy technician at a New Orleans hospital who settled here after her home was destroyed in the post-hurricane flood.
Dreadlocks, accepted in New Orleans, might mean a reservation at a fancy restaurant is suddenly “lost,” as in the telling of one exile here. A burst of gunfire might mean an instant police response rather than none at all, as in New Orleans, in the amazed recounting of another. Late-night cravings mean the IHOP rather than the famous Camellia Grill; going to work means hourlong trips on country roads, rather than, say, a 10-minute hop across the Industrial Canal from the Gentilly neighborhood of New Orleans.
Warily, they praise the quiet, the friendliness and the absence of crime.
“It’s the country, but it’s — lovely,” said Barbara Shanklin, a retired city bus driver who has settled 50 miles to the southwest of New Orleans in a Terrebonne Parish hamlet, Gray. Still, Ms. Shanklin added quickly, “I miss New Orleans.”
The precise calculus that went into these painful choices was complex, a mix of emotion and reason, in the telling of former New Orleanians. They voted in 2006 clinging to a hope of return, and in some cases a desire to protect decades of black political gains by returning an African-American, C. Ray Nagin, to the mayor’s office. But while 113,000 voted in May 2006, only 53,000 did last October. The mirage of the old, comfortable life in a city of densely woven neighborhoods, beguiling if sometimes dangerous street life, and inviting po’ boy sandwich shops contrasted too sharply with the grimmer present-day reality of New Orleans for these exiles.
The old house was gone. The neighborhood was empty. The friends were missing. The job had vanished. Rents were high, when you could find them. Murder had returned (with about 200 victims so far this year), even if many of their friends had not.
And the city seemed frozen in its half-ruined state, strangely alien and unfamiliar. The current population remains stuck at somewhere between 200,000 and 280,000, far below the pre-hurricane level of 450,000. These exiles do not see the New Orleans that has picked itself up; instead, they see the one that remains largely destroyed.
Away from the city, a less threatening existence awaited: blander and demanding adjustment, yet less oppressive. The quiet of languid country-town streets was deemed preferable to the absolute silence of whole abandoned blocks. Outside New Orleans, it was easier to deal with the still-fresh trauma of being homeless and losing “everything,” as several put it.
“In the beginning, I thought I might go back,” said Ms. Hurst, who came here with her sister and 88-year-old mother, also chased out by the hurricane, and lived with them for five months in a single large room at St. Mary’s Missionary Baptist Church. They now work at the church, which has become a regional relief center for storm evacuees.
The 2005 flood, Ms. Hurst said, turned everything in her home at the edge of the Broadmoor section of New Orleans “black, purple and green,” as though somebody had “just put everything in a blender.” Yet the city had not relinquished its grip on her, and she voted in the 2006 New Orleans election, at a special polling place in the white-columned Calcasieu Parish courthouse here.
Voting for the familiar New Orleans candidates was an act of normalcy. But that election, once over, did not magically conjure up the old New Orleans. Going back was a jolt.
“Everything was gone,” Ms. Hurst said. “All that was gone — community, friends — scattered. You feel like, when you go there, you’re walking into a strange country. It’s just totally different. It just feels like you’re in outer space.”
Each return visit to New Orleans brings sharp reminders of what was lost. “It hurts me, every time I go back,” said Ms. Hurst’s sister, Cynthia Jones.
Others spoke of being alienated from their old surroundings.
“There is nothing to go back to,” said Renee Roussell, whose husband found a job as a manager at a casino restaurant in Lake Charles.
Sylvia Young, a former public school teacher in the Lower Ninth Ward, now works as a mental health counselor in La Place, just up the Mississippi River from New Orleans. Her old school and job are gone.
“I go, and I get depressed,” Ms. Young said.
She drove to New Orleans to vote in 2006 — “I thought for a minute I could possibly move back,” she said — but not this year.
“When I go to Gentilly,” Ms. Young said, “and I see my son’s school is not back, and the house we lived in is gone, and the house next door to Tammy and them is gone. Everything is just gone. It’s either torn down or partially being rebuilt or just nothing done to it at all.”
But, in the accounts from people who left New Orleans after the storm, the missing or ruined physical landscape is barely half of it. Even more absent now is the human landscape — the network of friends, relations and acquaintances that often, in New Orleans, helps compensate for fragmentary families and neighborhoods that can be dangerous. Life in the city takes place outside the home as much as inside; now, that would not be possible.
“It’s not New Orleans to me,” said Ms. Shanklin, the retired bus driver in Terrebonne Parish. “And I find myself asking, Where are all the people? I see all the empty houses, and I knew once there was people in all those houses.”
“Where are the people, you know? Where are the people?” Ms. Shanklin said. “It’s like somebody threw a bomb on it.”
Now, she lives in a trim little house that Habitat for Humanity built in a curving subdivision of similar dwellings definitely unlike New Orleans. The town of Houma is nearby, but there are fields all around, and it is quiet enough to hear birds. New Orleans noises — police sirens, traffic, honking car horns, children, hip-hop music — can be conjured only with difficulty. At night, Ms. Shanklin boasted, she opens her window and listens to the cows in the pasture.
But a year ago, she had a nervous breakdown and spent 10 days in the hospital. She missed New Orleans.
Ms. Roussell, in Lake Charles, said, “If anybody asks me where I’m from, I say New Orleans. It’s not easy to let go. But why go back home, when nothing is what it used to be?”
December 18, 2007
With Regrets, New Orleans Is Left Behind
By ADAM NOSSITER
LAKE CHARLES, La. — With resignation, anger or stoicism, thousands of former New Orleanians forced out by Hurricane Katrina are settling in across the Gulf Coast, breaking their ties with the damaged city for which they still yearn.
They now cast their votes in small Louisiana towns and in big cities of neighboring states. They have found new jobs and bought new houses. They have forsaken their favorite foods and cherished pastors. But they do not for a moment miss the crime, the chaos and the bad memories they left behind in New Orleans.
This vast diaspora — largely black, often poor, sometimes struggling — stretches across the country but is concentrated in cities near the coast, like this one, or Atlanta or Baton Rouge or Houston, places where the newcomers are still reaching for accommodation.
The break came fairly recently. Sometime between the New Orleans mayor’s race in spring 2006, when thousands of displaced citizens voted absentee or drove in to cast a ballot, and the city election this fall, when thousands did not — resulting in a sharply diminished electorate and a white-majority City Council — the decision was made: there was no going back. Life in New Orleans was over.
Now, they are adjusting to places where the pace is slower, restaurants are fewer, existence is centered on the home, and streets are lonely and deserted after 5 p.m., as in this city in southwest Louisiana. These exiles, still in semi-limbo and barely established in a routine, describe their new lives less in terms of what it now consists of than of what they left behind.
“I told them, ‘I love turtle soup.’ People here go, ‘What’s that?’ ” said Pauline Hurst, a former therapy technician at a New Orleans hospital who settled here after her home was destroyed in the post-hurricane flood.
Dreadlocks, accepted in New Orleans, might mean a reservation at a fancy restaurant is suddenly “lost,” as in the telling of one exile here. A burst of gunfire might mean an instant police response rather than none at all, as in New Orleans, in the amazed recounting of another. Late-night cravings mean the IHOP rather than the famous Camellia Grill; going to work means hourlong trips on country roads, rather than, say, a 10-minute hop across the Industrial Canal from the Gentilly neighborhood of New Orleans.
Warily, they praise the quiet, the friendliness and the absence of crime.
“It’s the country, but it’s — lovely,” said Barbara Shanklin, a retired city bus driver who has settled 50 miles to the southwest of New Orleans in a Terrebonne Parish hamlet, Gray. Still, Ms. Shanklin added quickly, “I miss New Orleans.”
The precise calculus that went into these painful choices was complex, a mix of emotion and reason, in the telling of former New Orleanians. They voted in 2006 clinging to a hope of return, and in some cases a desire to protect decades of black political gains by returning an African-American, C. Ray Nagin, to the mayor’s office. But while 113,000 voted in May 2006, only 53,000 did last October. The mirage of the old, comfortable life in a city of densely woven neighborhoods, beguiling if sometimes dangerous street life, and inviting po’ boy sandwich shops contrasted too sharply with the grimmer present-day reality of New Orleans for these exiles.
The old house was gone. The neighborhood was empty. The friends were missing. The job had vanished. Rents were high, when you could find them. Murder had returned (with about 200 victims so far this year), even if many of their friends had not.
And the city seemed frozen in its half-ruined state, strangely alien and unfamiliar. The current population remains stuck at somewhere between 200,000 and 280,000, far below the pre-hurricane level of 450,000. These exiles do not see the New Orleans that has picked itself up; instead, they see the one that remains largely destroyed.
Away from the city, a less threatening existence awaited: blander and demanding adjustment, yet less oppressive. The quiet of languid country-town streets was deemed preferable to the absolute silence of whole abandoned blocks. Outside New Orleans, it was easier to deal with the still-fresh trauma of being homeless and losing “everything,” as several put it.
“In the beginning, I thought I might go back,” said Ms. Hurst, who came here with her sister and 88-year-old mother, also chased out by the hurricane, and lived with them for five months in a single large room at St. Mary’s Missionary Baptist Church. They now work at the church, which has become a regional relief center for storm evacuees.
The 2005 flood, Ms. Hurst said, turned everything in her home at the edge of the Broadmoor section of New Orleans “black, purple and green,” as though somebody had “just put everything in a blender.” Yet the city had not relinquished its grip on her, and she voted in the 2006 New Orleans election, at a special polling place in the white-columned Calcasieu Parish courthouse here.
Voting for the familiar New Orleans candidates was an act of normalcy. But that election, once over, did not magically conjure up the old New Orleans. Going back was a jolt.
“Everything was gone,” Ms. Hurst said. “All that was gone — community, friends — scattered. You feel like, when you go there, you’re walking into a strange country. It’s just totally different. It just feels like you’re in outer space.”
Each return visit to New Orleans brings sharp reminders of what was lost. “It hurts me, every time I go back,” said Ms. Hurst’s sister, Cynthia Jones.
Others spoke of being alienated from their old surroundings.
“There is nothing to go back to,” said Renee Roussell, whose husband found a job as a manager at a casino restaurant in Lake Charles.
Sylvia Young, a former public school teacher in the Lower Ninth Ward, now works as a mental health counselor in La Place, just up the Mississippi River from New Orleans. Her old school and job are gone.
“I go, and I get depressed,” Ms. Young said.
She drove to New Orleans to vote in 2006 — “I thought for a minute I could possibly move back,” she said — but not this year.
“When I go to Gentilly,” Ms. Young said, “and I see my son’s school is not back, and the house we lived in is gone, and the house next door to Tammy and them is gone. Everything is just gone. It’s either torn down or partially being rebuilt or just nothing done to it at all.”
But, in the accounts from people who left New Orleans after the storm, the missing or ruined physical landscape is barely half of it. Even more absent now is the human landscape — the network of friends, relations and acquaintances that often, in New Orleans, helps compensate for fragmentary families and neighborhoods that can be dangerous. Life in the city takes place outside the home as much as inside; now, that would not be possible.
“It’s not New Orleans to me,” said Ms. Shanklin, the retired bus driver in Terrebonne Parish. “And I find myself asking, Where are all the people? I see all the empty houses, and I knew once there was people in all those houses.”
“Where are the people, you know? Where are the people?” Ms. Shanklin said. “It’s like somebody threw a bomb on it.”
Now, she lives in a trim little house that Habitat for Humanity built in a curving subdivision of similar dwellings definitely unlike New Orleans. The town of Houma is nearby, but there are fields all around, and it is quiet enough to hear birds. New Orleans noises — police sirens, traffic, honking car horns, children, hip-hop music — can be conjured only with difficulty. At night, Ms. Shanklin boasted, she opens her window and listens to the cows in the pasture.
But a year ago, she had a nervous breakdown and spent 10 days in the hospital. She missed New Orleans.
Ms. Roussell, in Lake Charles, said, “If anybody asks me where I’m from, I say New Orleans. It’s not easy to let go. But why go back home, when nothing is what it used to be?”
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