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© Copyright 1991, 1996 <br>by <A HREF="mailto:brianalpert@email.com">Brian Alpert;</A><br>
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<p align="left"><font size="3">The First Road Trip: Remembering New Orleans</font></p>
<p align="left"><font size="3">
Truth be told, I'm no expert concerning New Orleans or its native culture. But I can state without hesitating it is one of my favorite places. Here's why:</font>
<p>
<font face="helvetica,arial" color="#000000">My first exposure to this
fascinating musical Mecca came in 1979. Two members of <a
href="../tales/kurt.html" target="_blank">my first band</a> had lived
there and had enough connections to book a few gigs, enough to pay for a trip to the annual <a href="http://www.nojazzfest.com/" target="_blank">New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival.</a>
<p>
It wasn't necessary to play AT the festival (an impossible feat for a new band); our goal was to pay for the trip. It would be FUN.
<p>
<a href="http://www.mardigrasday.com/" target="_blank">Mardi Gras</a> is New Orleans' most famous event; when the average tourist thinks he or
she might like to visit. Mardi Gras is <a href="http://www9.pair.com/lincecum/mardi_gras/images/large/tlmg95036n.html" target="_blank">an
amazing spectacle,</a> but it is thoroughly exhausting—as much pure work as vacation. The city is jammed, traffic is unbelievable, prices are
jacked up, and a "war zone" attitude prevails. Mardi Gras is worth seeing, but it is not really a good way to try to experience New Orleans.
It overwhelms the city; a caricature of culture.
<p>
The Jazz Festival, on the other hand, still works as a celebration of New Orleans music and culture. There is live music <i>everywhere,</i> plenty of people
to pay to see it, but not so many that the city is choked to its limits. The Spring weather is nicer than the earlier Mardi Gras and the full flower
of the local culture is on display with, um, robust enthusiasm.
<p>
Many people think current "New Orleans Music" is Dixieland, which isn't true. The stereotype of New Orleans as the birthplace of
Jazz is true enough, and indeed, Dixieland was the happening jazz in the twenties, but today it is as much an anachronism there as anywhere.
There is plenty of Dixieland to be heard in New Orleans, but (with the exception of the famous Preservation Hall) it is played largely in
French Quarter <a href="http://www.bones.org/dersk/US/Nawlins/nawlins.html" target="_blank">tourist</a> traps, for people who want to squeeze in some
"New Orleans Music" between visits to Jackson Cathedral and the Superdome.
<p>
Modern New Orleans music is a unique syncopated, funky attitude.
<img src="images/NO_quote6.GIF" width="185" height="179"
border="0" align="left" HSPACE="4" VSPACE="4" alt="New Orleans
has spawned some of the greatest American drummers.">
It is the result of the centuries of African, Caribbean, Latin and Acadian
influences, blessed with purely American influnces: Jazz, Blues, Brass Bands, Rock and Funk.
<p>
The great New Orleans musicians have left a legacy that continues to
evolve. A legion of great musicians cut their chops there: Fats
Domino, Huey "Piano" Smith, Dr. John, Allen Toussaint, Al Hirt, Pete
Fountain, The Meters (and their modern incarnation <a href="http://www.nevilles.com/" target="_blank">Neville Brothers</a>—the current Kings of New Orleans funk), and perhaps the greatest of all New Orleans musicians:
<a href="http://www.foppejohnson.com/armstrong/" target="_blank">Louis Armstrong</a> and
<a href="http://www.blueflamecafe.com/Professor_Longhair.html" target="_blank">Professor Longhair.</a>
This is only a fraction of a list of course. (A side trip of interest: this <a
href="http://home.comm.net/~lmc/SCPSatchmo1.html"
target="_blank">additional link</a> leads to a memoir of a memorable
Louis Armstrong gig, which occurred on Mother's Day, 1952.)
<p>
New Orleans has spawned some of the greatest American drummers. Their style of playing is unique and alive, and exists in any density only there. Consequently, generations of New Orleans drummers have grown up with the knowledge passed to them, watching and learning from great, if unknown, <a href="http://www.turnipseed.com/johnnyv.html" target="_blank">masters.</a>
<p>
And we were going there.
<p>
Our trip was planned; we made the 20-hour drive in our singer's oversize Buick station wagon. We visited the Jazz Festival, wandering around gaping at the plethora of
great bands. We saw Fess (Professor Longhair) and piano wizard <a href="http://offbeat.com/booker/" target="_blank">James Booker—"The Piano Prince of New Orleans."</a>
<p>
A genius of the New Orleans style, Booker was known to perform brilliantly if it was his choosing, and decidedly not so if annoyed. We made special effort
to see him play at a few other venues, one gig being marred by the unruly Booker, angry with the club owner, refusing to play more than a few songs.
<p>
Though he died in 1983, his body exhausted from years of alcoholism and heroin addiction, his <a href="http://offbeat.com/booker/discography.html" target="_blank">recorded
work</a> is available, though it is not a mass market commodity. (If you can't find Booker's records, you can easily find CD's by his wildly
successful protegé <a href="http://www.connick.com/" target="_blank">Harry Connick Jr.</a>)
<p>
As a young drummer on his first road trip, I was agog. We saw the legendarily-eccentric <a href="http://ubd2.vdospk.com/ulmer/ibsam.html" target="_blank">Ironing
Board Sam</a> play "underwater" in a 1500 gallon aquarium, and some Gospel Choirs that seemed to shake the earth. I was captivated by the unique drumming and
lucky for the chance to get to know some of the players. Since a couple of us were former members of the New Orleans musical community, I was introduced around and given the first-timer's tutorial about music in Crescent City.
<p>
I learned "The Quarter" isn't cool, and the <a href="http://mbus.com/clubs/genadm/Maple.Leaf.Bar.htm" target="_blank">Maple Leaf Bar</a> is.
The Maple Leaf is the grandaddy of New Orleans music clubs, "the
oldest continuously-operating nightclub in New Orleans outside of the
French Quarter." Nowhere near the French Quarter, it is 'uptown' in Carrollton (where many of the hipper clubs are found) on Oak St. The Maple Leaf was a drug store at the turn of the century. The original walls and ceiling are there; they are made of ornately pressed tin and are painted fire engine red. The acoustics of a long narrow room lined with tin are horrible beyond description, but it doesn't matter—the place is perfect.
<p>
<a
href="http://godzilla.eecs.berkeley.edu/recipes/ethnic/cajun/boiled-crawfish1.html"
target="_blank"><img src="images/crawfish_sm.gif" width="100"
height="93" border="0" align="right" HSPACE="8" VSPACE="8" alt="Crawfish: Suck the heads."></a>When we visited in 1979, the patio out back was overgrown with tropical plants, and there was a little seafood joint next door where
one could buy a Po-Boy sub or a pound of <a
href="http://godzilla.eecs.berkeley.edu/recipes/ethnic/cajun/boiled-crawfish1.html"
target="_blank">crawfish</a> to eat in the bar. Another room contained a few washing machines and dryers. If one hungers for a "New Orleans experience," eating crawfish and drinking locally-brewed Dixie beer while doing laundry in the Maple Leaf is more on the mark than catching a plastic necklace thrown from a float in a Mardi Gras Parade.
<p>
We played the Maple Leaf, opening for some friends of my bandmates, <a href="http://www.fishheads.com/" target="_blank">The Radiators.</a>
'The Rads' have since released major-label recordings and acquired a nationwide following to match. Though they were popular at the time
they had many miles to travel before this success would find them. Both groups played that night for the same 100 people at the Maple Leaf.
<p>
<A HREF="queenie_art.html" target="_blank"><img
src="images/queenie_sm2.gif" width="100" height="149" border="0"
align="left" HSPACE="8" VSPACE="8" alt="Li'l Queenie"></a>The
following afternoon we jammed in a garage with the Radiators. I
learned their leader Eddie Volker wrote songs by the hundreds, and had
them all recorded and stashed on cassette tapes. Also in the garage
was the now-defunct <A HREF="queenie_art.html" target="_blank">L'il Queenie and the Percolators.</a> (A bit of trivia: Radiator guitarist Dave Malone and Percolator guitarist Tommy Malone are brothers. They are from from Edgard Louisiana, where their roots extend back many generations. After Tommy left the Percolators, he achieved some measure of success by leaving New Orleans
for Colorado, where he bacame a founding member of <a href="http://george.scranton.com/subdudes.html target="_blank">The Subdudes.</a>)
<p>
The Percolators ultra-funky drummer was one <b>Kenneth Blevins.</b> Kenneth's long career extends beyond such diverse talent as New Orleans mambo-king
<a href="http://hobmusic.com/mooney.html" target="_blank">John Mooney,</a> John Hiatt and the Mamas and the Papas. He now plays with country
star Don Williams; such are the twists and turns of the music
business. Kenneth's version of the "second line,"—a mainstay of New Orleans
style so named due to its association with marching in parades, the drums typically second after the trombones—opened my
eyes wider than manhole covers. I got to discuss it with him during a late-night, post-gig breakfast at one of the Quarter's 24-hour
restaurants, <I>Lucky Pierre's.</i> (Also in attendance were other Percolators, and a favorite of the New Orleans scene, Austin Texas'
<a href="http://www.marciaball.com" target="_blank">Marcia Ball.</a>)
<p>
We jammed all over town. I sat in during a jam session at <a href="http://www.turnipseed.com/cooter_browns/" target="_blank">a
local oyster bar,</a> and tried my hand at this foreign music. After viewing my naive attempt at second line style, and learning I was not from New Orleans,
local music promoter <b>Ricky Furrillo</b> took me under his wing to another bar to see the Meters, the breakthrough group who first played New
Orleans funk on a mass scale. Ricky introduced me to the Meters' master drummer,
<a href="http://www.netstep.com/Zigaboo/" taregt="_blank">Joseph "Zigaboo" Modeliste,</a> thusly:
<blockquote>
<font face="courier">Ziggy, this is Brian. He's a drummer too, and a Baaad Mother******!</font>
</blockquote><br>
<p>
<font face="helvetica,arial" color="#000000">Suffice it to say I thought I had died and gone to heaven.
<p>
Our trip was low budget; bohemian. We ate <a href="http://www.myneworleans.com/Foods.htm" target="_blank">Manuel's
Hot Tamales</a> sold from a cart on Charles Street and slept on boxsprings on the floor of the <a
href="http://www.prcno.org/shotgun.html" target="_blank">shotgun house</a> where one of the Percolators (and two of the future
Subdudes) lived. A shotgun house is a common sight in Carrollton. So-called because it is long and narrow, one room connected to the next in a
straight line. One could fire a shotgun in the front door, and the blast would come out the back. This style house, frequently
utilized as plantation slave quarters, characterized the city's poorer neighborhoods at the turn of the century.
<p>
<A HREF="jimmys.html" target="_blank"><img
src="images/jimmys_sm2.JPG" width="200" height="212" border="0"
align="left" HSPACE="4" VSPACE="4" alt="Mardi Gras at Jimmys"></a>
I have been back to New Orleans three times since that first road
trip, visiting <A HREF="jimmys.html" target="_blank">Mardi Gras in 1981</a> and 1982, and a 1987 tour with (my then
full-time band) <A HREF="assassins.html" target="_blank">The Assassins.</a> Only on the 1987 tour did I feel any sense of the legitimacy of experience. The Assassins were booked at
New Orleans' premier showcase club, <a href="http://offbeat.com/tipitinas/" target="_blank">Tipitina's,</a> a place where I had danced
and listened until I could no longer stand. (The weekend before Mardi Gras 1981, the bill included the Nighthawks, Neville Brothers and
Etta James—in ONE NIGHT. Etta James didn't even <i>start</i> until 5AM!)
<p>
Today, my ability to play New Orleans second line and mambo styles has come a long way from the wide-eyed 1979 version, or the more experienced 1987
version for that matter. But in 1987 I had enough to solo in that
style during Jimmy Thackery's "Too Tall to Mambo." New Orleans being
the only place in the world where second line and mambo are
<i>normal,</i> I was nervous. But the crowd embraced it and danced
right on through. To play that club, for those people, in that style was (unbeknownst to me at the time) a very special career milestone.
<p>
Of course, like any American city, New Orleans has its ups and downs. It is cold and wet in the winter, hotter than Satan's Sauna in the Summer, and the cockroaches are as
big as Volkswagons. Many who live or have lived there view it as a gilded cage; it's easy to stay and accomplish nothing. There is extreme
poverty and serious racial tension (witness the election of white supremecist David Duke as State Representative from Metairie, a New Orleans
suburb).
<p>
But the Music. That's it. There's a line in the Meter's song <i>Hey Pocky Way:</i>
<blockquote>
<font face="courier">Feel Good Music... I been told... Good for your Body... Good for your Soul.</font>
</blockquote>
<p>
Anyone who loves music owes themselves a trip to New Orleans to investigate these unique artists, and their wonderful style.
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<a href="mailto:brianalpert@email.com"><font size="-1" face="courier">© Copyright 1988-1989, 1998 by Brian Alpert.<br>All Rights Reserved.</font></a>
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