Journey To Nawlins, Chapter VI - The Rough Guide To The Music of New Orleans (2-CD Special Edition, 2012)

→ Thanks also to the late Blue DeVille

The city where music never stops

In a recent review, I wrote : “New Orleans and her Mardi-Gras and Carnival, New Orleans and her old dixie jazz, New Orleans and her jazz funerals and second line parades, New Orleans and her tribal rhythms, New Orleans and her swamp blues and bayou R'n'B, New Orleans and her Zydeco and Cajun music, New Orleans and her French creole culture, New Orleans the unique, New Orleans the Big Easy where music is a way of life, New Orleans the Big Funky…” These few lines would fit perfectly this 2-CD Rough Guide.

Journey To Nawlins, Chapter V - New Orleans Funk (Vol. 1, 2, 3 & 4 - 2000, 2008, 2013, 2016)

→ Thanks also to the late Blue DeVille

The Big Easy...

The Big Funky

New Orleans is a fascinating musical melting-pot which not only gave birth to jazz more than a century ago, but also to funk. Funk is before all a matter of rhythm and groove, and both are historically printed in the city's DNA. This amazing four-volume 85-track collection (mostly rare singles) intends to show how this new genre of music evolved, from the pioneering steps of innovative musicians in the 1950s to adulthood in the 1970s.

Journey To Nawlins, Chapter IV - The Neville BrothersFiyo On The Bayou (1981) - Live at Tipitina's 1982 (1998) - Yellow Moon (1989) - Brother's Keeper (1990) - Valence Street (1999) - Walkin' In The Shadow Of Life (2004)

→ Thanks also to the late Blue DeVille

Art, Charles, Aaron & Cyril Neville

Mystic funk on the bayou

Nawlins R'n'B, bayou funk, Afro-Caribbean voodoo atmosphere and... the unique angelic voice of brother Aaron : the Neville Brothers' sound became one of the trademarks of the Crescent City.

The origins of the Neville Brothers as a band are intricately entangled with the history of several previous New Orleans groups where the brothers honed their trade : eldest brother Art's band The Hawketts in the 1950s; The Sounds, that became the house band for Allen Toussaint's Sansu label in the late 1960s, and later took the name The Meters; The Wild Tchoupitoulas, a Mardi-Gras Indian group led by their uncle George Landry aka Big Chief Jolly, whose backing band were the Meters until 1976 when they disbanded.

Journey To Nawlins, Chapter III - The Dirty Dozen Brass Band (My Feet Can't Fail Me Now, 1984 / We Got Robbed! Live In New Orleans, 2003 / Funeral for a friend, 2004)

 → Thanks also to the late Blue DeVille

The fabulous dozen brass band

The Dirty Dozen Brass Band (DDBB) couldn't be from anywhere else but New Orleans (please pronounce “noo orlayhan” like Gregory Davis shouts at the beginning of "We Got Robbed!". Founded in 1977, the DDBB is a modern re-incarnation of the traditional brass bands that animated the streets, especially for “jazz” funerals and “second line” parades organized by “Social Aid and Pleasure Clubs” (SAPCs). Redad more detailed info below.

In the 1970s and early 1980s, the New Orleans brass band tradition experienced a renaissance, with bands breaking away from traditional styles and adding elements of funk, be-bop jazz, and later even hip hop, to their repertoires, applying one of the primary law of life on earth : who can't evolve disappears. This is exactly what the DDBB did : they added “modern” instruments, mainly electric guitar and keyboards, to the traditional brass structure, and modernized the drumming style. While old brass bands gave birth to traditional New Orleans jazz, contemporary brass bands incorporated in turn some modern jazz patterns, especially improvisation spaces.

Journey To Nawlins, Chapter II - The New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival The 50th Anniversary 5-CD Set (2019)

 → Thanks also to the late Blue DeVille

→ The pics on this page concern only the artists featured in the 5-CD box Set

JazzFest : the fantastic New Orleans gumbo

The opening Golden Eagles track immediately takes you to the roots of New Orleans rich music : a mix of African chants and percussion, early jazz and blues lament. Next, Trombone Shorty and his band add a little Latin touch with their long “One Night Only”. With the Donald Harrison band or Terence Blanchard, we enter the world of classic modern jazz (“Free To Be”, “A Streetcar Named Desire”)… All the ingredients of the Nola musical heritage are featured in this fantastic 5-CD box featuring 48 artists, 50 songs, two announcements and… one rain alert (doesn't that remind Woodstock ?)

Journey To Nawlins, Chapter I - Doctors, Professors, Kings & Queens : The Big Ol' Box Of New Orleans (1927-2003)

→ Thanks also to the late Blue DeVille

The Big Easy in a box

The Crescent City, The Big Easy (sometimes The Big Sleazy for its darker sides), The City that Care Forgot, NOLA... welcome to New Orleans announces the short opening track by Galactic & Theryl deClouet, mischievously adding “welcome to the Third World”.

This fascinating 4-CD box embarks us on a 5-hour cruise into the extreme richness of the unique musical melting-pot of New Orleans. A Wikipedia article describes it better than I would : “New Orleans has long been a significant center for music, showcasing its intertwined European, African and Latino American cultures. The city's unique musical heritage was born in its colonial and early American days from a unique blending of European musical instruments with African rhythms. As the only North American city to have allowed slaves to gather in public and play their native music (largely in Congo Square, now located within Louis Armstrong Park), New Orleans gave birth in the early 20th century to an epochal indigenous music : jazz. Soon, African American brass bands formed, beginning a century-long tradition. […] The city's music was later also significantly influenced by Acadiana, home of Cajun and Zydeco music, and by Delta blues.”

Mighty Sam McClain : Solo Discography

→ Thanks to my accomplice L.C.

 

A man's redemption

Another good one gone… It's a long time I wanted to write about this soulful mystic blues singer. The early life of Samuel McClain is not very different from dozens of other bluesmen : born in Monroe, North Louisiana, in 1943, singing in church very young, early vocation for music, escape from home and from an abusive step-father at 13, "school" on the Chitlin' Circuit with R&B guitarist "Little Melvin" Underwood, meeting of DJ and producer "Papa Don" Schroeder at the 506 Club in Pensacola, Florida, who opened him the doors of the Muscle Shoals studios, first hit single in 1966 with a cover of Patsy Cline's "Sweet Dreams", more sides recorded in Muscle Shoals and Nashville for Amy Records and Atlantic, but without any commercial success (most of these sides were later compiled in "The Amy Records Sessions, 1966-1969", released in 2014).

Eric Clapton - Blue's (Live in Oslo, April 5, 1995)

→ Thanks to my friend L.C.

Warning ! Before all, to prevent any disappointment from Clapton's fans (and other blues aficionados), I'll quote my friend L.C. who shared this bootleg with me : “While far from being perfect, the general sound is good enough to enjoy the music, provided the listener has the proper audio system.” The proper audio system… You've been warned.

Slowhand in Viking land
This two-CD bootleg was taped at the Spektrum in Oslo, Norway, on April 5, 1995, one of the over 120 concert halls visited by Clapton during his 1994-95 “Nothing But the Blues” world tour which followed the release of his studio album “From The Cradle”. The same tour during which the official 2022 release “Nothing But the Blues” was recorded on November 7, 8 & 9, 1994 at the San Francisco Fillmore.

Deborah Coleman - Takin' A Stand (1994), I Can't Lose (1997)

→ Thanks to L.C.

From Van Halen to Billie Holiday

Deborah Coleman died much too early, in 2018, at age 61, leaving us wondering how high her career would have taken her.

She was born in 1956 in Portsmouth, Virginia, in a very musical family : her father, a Marine, played piano, her brothers and sister, guitar and/or keyboards. She started guitar at eight, later changing to bass and playing in local R'n'B and rock bands in her mid-teens, before switching back to guitar after discovering Hendrix, Cream or Led Zeppelin. But she had to reach 19 years old to fall for the blues after hearing John Lee Hooker, Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf at a festival.

Dwayne Dopsie & The Zydeco Hellraisers - Now It Begins (2001), Jazzfest 2001, Traveling Man (2006), Up In Flames (2009), Set Me Free (2021)

→ Thanks to the late missed Blue DeVille and L.C.

High voltage Dopsie fever

I don't know what kind of voodoo medicine Alton Rubin aka Rockin' Dopsie or his wife were ingesting before making children, but there's no doubt it was strong stuff. A glimpse at the incredible energy of two of their sons, Rockin' Dopsie Jr and his younger brother Dwayne Dopsie, and you're convinced !

With his bodybuilder look, Dwayne Rubin aka Dwayne Dopsie, born in 1979 in Lafayette, he was 19 when he founded his own band, the Zydeco Hellraisers, in 1999. That same year he won a competition run by the American Accordion Association and was declared “America’s Hottest Accordionist”.

His band fully deserves its name of Hellraisers as, under Dwayne's leadership they deliver a high-voltage Zydeco built from a mix of rock'n'roll, rhythm'n'blues and red-hot two-steps, peppered with occasional reggae rhythms.