Red Beans* Rice »n»Red Hot Music chrome and holler coming out of L.A. Their recent album, Fiyou on the Biyou, has received raves all over the land (Rolling Stone and N.Y. Times top 10, Keith Richards’ fave of the year). Only time will tell whether the Nevilles will lead the locals to a wider following. In the interim, if the opportunity arises to catch the Nevilles on an infrequent tour, by all means do so. It’s like nothing you’ve ever heard before. If you, too, want to one spring experience the cross-pollination of Cajun, Spanish, French, Indian, Caribbean and black cultures, write the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, P.O. Box 2530, New Orleans, Louisiana 70176. - There’s a marvelous attempt to begin a great musical festival in Oregon with the upcoming first annual Mt. Hood Jazz Festival. They have an outstanding lineup, with such luminaries as Betty Carter, Richie Cole, Freddie Hubbard, the Persuasions, Sonny Rollins, Airto and Flora Purim. If we want to develop our musical tradition and have a dandy time each year, this is one good place to start. By [Lenny Dee [Photographs by [Paul Diener A Visit to New Orleans Every spring just off Highway 61 the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival provides a great opportunity to revisit a rich regional tradition that has been for over a century a fertile breeding ground for the best in American music. Now in its 13th year, the festival was begun as a celebration for and a tribute to the pantheon of incredibly talented New Orleans musicians. From humble beginnings, the festival has grown to a 10-day extravaganza that brings 70,000 daily to the Louisiana Fair Grounds Race Track just a holler from Bourbon St. On eight stages for just $4.50 a day, your ears can take a walk down memory lane. The legendary Professor Longhair and his walking piano have been a major inspirational force for this gathering, closing the festival each year, and though the Professor is no longer with us, many of his teachers and compatriots still take an annual bow. They had to help “The Honeydripper” Roosevelt Sykes on stage, but once he was there they couldn’t get him off. Champion Jack DuPree, “Tuts” Washington, and James Booker gave prima facie evidence of New Orleans’ unsurpassed excellence at nurturing the cream of barrelhouse piano players. Maybe you prefer some old rock ’n’ roll. How about an afternoon with Antoine “Fats” Domino, Chuck Berry, Ernie K. “Mother-in-Law” Doe, the Dixie Cups, and Lee “Ride Your Pony” Dorsey. Walter “Wolfman” Washington Or is it the jazz tent that draws you with the shouting tenor sax of Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis; the eloquent bop saxophone of Sonny Stitt; the forties swing of the New Leviathan Oriental Fox Trot Orchestra; and Wynton Marsalis, reputed to be the hottest trumpet player to come out of New Orleans since Louis Armstrong! As rich and satisfying as the music are the local culinary delights. Be sure to leave your Weight Watchers card home before you start gorging yourself on hot boudin, red beans and rice, jambalaya, alligator piquante, soft-shell crab, fresh catfish, Caribbean fruit salad, shrimp Creole, barbecued goat, fricassee du poulet, crawfish etouffe, Natchitoches meat pies, boiled crawfish, muffulettas, sweet potato pie, crawfish bisque, frog legs, turtle piquante, crawfish pie, and file gumbo. Now to burn off some of those calories — how about some hot and sweaty, down and dirty blues with B.B. King playin’ like you’ve never heard him before; or catch a 200- pound stage prowler and blues shout- er named Etta James, while local faves Walter “Wolfman” Washington, Johnnie “The Tan Canary” Adams, and Lil’ Queenie and the Percolators wait in the wings. Feel like sashaying across the fair grounds to groove to Percy “Superfly” Mayfield and the queen of N.O. soul Ms. Irma Thomas? Be careful because you may never make it once you hear the infectious zydeco rhythms of West Louisiana’s ragin’ Cajuns — Rockin Dopsie and the Twisters, Belton Richard and the Musical Aces, the Ardoin Family Band, and Clifton Chenier. Having such a good time that maybe it feels like heaven on earth? Then a stop at the packed gospel tent is in order! Over 50 choirs make the goings-on so hot that the 90-degree temperature outside is like a sudden cool breeze. Once you've found religion, it might be time to look for Jah with the hypnotizing rhythms of Rita Marley, who seems to be taking reggae music to unforeseen heights. An afternoon in New Orleans makes the mind wander to days of yore when Huck Finn watched paddle wheelers roll up and down the Mississippi. The festivities conclude each evening with the pleasures of an era long-gone-by when the Riverboat President slowly makes its way along Old Man River. While the likes of Dr. John, David Fathead Newman “Jah” Rita The famed “Honeydripper Roosevelt Sykes Hank Crawford engage in an audacious “swamp jam,” everyone else seems to be looking for a barefoot boy along the shore. If your toes can still wiggle, how about carousing through New Orleans’ countless 24-hour bars, and if you’re lucky you’ll find the premier N.O. band, The Neville Brothers, who embody the history and promise of the varied musical traditions that make up the N.O. sound. Descendants of the Wild Tchoupitoulas, a black Indian marching band that parades through the city during Mardi Gras garbed in resplendent headdresses and feathers, the Neville Brothers have fused the city’s diverse elements (Caribbean-flavored R&B, jazz, salsa, reggae, funk, doo-wop, pop and syncopated rhythms) into a new sound alive with the color and pulse of the Crescent City. In many ways the Neville Brothers could be harbingers of a return to a music that has identifiable roots, rather than the plastic fantastic Clinton St. Quarterly 41
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