“How many hours have you spent on stage?”
The question slows George Porter, Jr. down. Sitting at his living room table, he leans forward on his hands and thinks about it.
“Whoa, man. I can’t even begin to think that,” but he tries to puzzle it out. “Hmmm. Mm hmmm. That’s a lot of hours.”
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He first stepped on stage at the Dew Drop Inn when he was 15, and he celebrates his 60th birthday this month when he plays the Howlin’ Wolf December 26. That’s 45 years of playing. In the days before the Meters were called the Meters, they played five to seven hours a night six nights a week on Bourbon Street. Last year, he played roughly 200 dates, so you have to assume he has been on stage for years.
Perhaps as long as you’ve lived in your house, or as long as you’ve had your job. Could it be the time it took a girl to reach sweet 16? Add to that the innumerable sessions he has been a part of, and it’s a safe bet that Porter has spent more waking hours with his well-worn bass strapped to his chest than without it.
Here’s another way to think about the passing of time: milestones. Porter dates his Bourbon Street days by which Christmases and New Year’s Eves he played there. He has been celebrating his birthdays at the Wolf for years, though this year’s show will be particularly special with a musical guest list that includes Art, Ivan and Ian Neville, Mark Mullins with Bonerama, Tony Hall and Russell Batiste. The features that define our lives—the changing relationships, the connections with others, the accomplishments, the setbacks—define his professional life. Porter has a house in New Orleans, but the stage is the place where he lives. When he talks about his bands, he talks about something happening in “Funky Meters World” or “PBS World.”
Obviously, Porter shows no signs of slowing down. Earlier this year, he released It’s Life, a strong new studio album with songs co-written with David Torkanowsky, Leslie Smith and Joe Stark. The list of players is a who’s who—Ivan Neville, John Gros, Tony Hall, Brint Anderson, June Yamagishi, Terrence Higgins, Stanton Moore, Tracy Griffin, Alonzo Bowens, Jeff Albert and many more, almost all of whom have shared a stage with Porter at one time or another. Many are former Runnin’ Pardners.When Porter starts telling stories that involve musicians, there’s a point when it becomes impossible to pursue discussions of all the relationships. There are too many of them and there’s too much history. He talks affectionately about Mark Mullins, but Porter passed up a tour with Harry Connick, Jr. because he was irritated at the time with Mullins, who had been a member of Porter’s Runnin’ Pardners, was on the tour as well. “When Mark Mullins was playing with me and went out with Harry, it was supposed to be a month and now it’s 12 years later,” he says, laughing.
These days, Snooks Eaglin is on his mind. He’s writing songs for an Eaglin album he’s producing. Porter regularly plays bass with Eaglin, whose reputation as “the human jukebox” is founded on a deep knowledge of songs to cover. “I never played with somebody who can call so many different songs, different styles of songs,” Porter says, laughing. “It’s out there on You Tube—he called a song I’d never heard before in my life. He didn’t trust my ears on that one and called out the changes the whole song: ‘E, F, C.’”
Eaglin has few songwriting credits, though, so Porter wants to pass him a set of songs that he can then make his own. “I want to make sure he has songs with his name on them so he has a legacy for family,” Porter says. When they’re performing together, Porter seems similarly protective of Eaglin, whose shows are unpredictable affairs where almost any song could be played. Not surprisingly, audience members will call out their favorite covers from the past, a habit Porter tires of. “I’ve wanted him to do other things than be dictated to by the audience. Sometimes I feel Snooks Eaglin should be able to play whatever he wants to play. People will call out songs and I’ll lean over and tell him, ‘Do something else.’ How many artists do you go see that the audience dictates the gig?”
Talk of production leads Porter to memories of recording with Earl King—“Earl King was always open to my thoughts, at the same time never, ever giving an inch. I loved that guy. Musically, he was very, very important to me.”—and Allen Toussaint, who used the Meters as the backing band on many of his production sessions. The lack of credit became a source of tension between him and the band but, Porter says, “I’ve always been a big fan of Allen Toussaint, even when it angered my partners when I said that.
“I’m hoping one day Allen Toussaint would let me produce a record on him. There’s more music in Allen Toussaint than anybody has ever known. I’ve seen him in the back room with James Booker playing. I’ve seen him at the old place on St. Philip Street with Booker on one end of the piano and he on the other playing. You can’t sit down next to James Booker and bullshit. Allen Toussaint can play. I know it, he knows it, but he won’t put it on record. If he allowed me to collaborate and have 52 percent input, man, I think me and him could cut a record that would be so bad! It would be more than just songs.”
Porter’s musical relationship with Art Neville has been well-documented, but as a bass player, Porter has a special relationship with drummers. Because of the Meters’ prominence, the tendency is to think of Russell Batiste as somehow a secondary relationship to Porter’s with Zigaboo Modeliste, but Porter and Batiste have now played together longer than he and Modeliste did. “I’ve been playing with Russell 20-some odd years,” Porter says. “We started playing with Zig in 1965 I believe, and it went away in 1978. That’s what, 12, 13 years?”
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Batiste developed his chops as an extension of Modeliste’s, but, Porter says, “Russell is more in your face. Both of them are very creative as drummers. They’re always in the creative mode when playing.”
One early disagreement between Porter and Batiste came when they approached Meters material. The original recordings were played at faster tempos than Porter thought was right for them, and when he had the chance, he slowed them down. “I always heard those songs slower. I thought it made them greasier,” he says. Batiste, however, tried to be true to Modeliste’s playing on those songs, including the tempos. “Russell slowed them down against his will.”
Though some songs have changed over the years for artistic reasons, others have changed because Porter has played them for so long. “I’ve changed the structure, changed the groove,” he says. “With PBS, we play ‘Cissy Strut.’ We call it ‘Cissy Got the Blues;’ we play it in a 12-bar blues format and play the second lick first and the first lick on the turnaround, on the bottom of the four chord.”
One of the most exciting moments in any Porter-related show comes when the band starts to segue from one song to another. It’s not always clear when the segue starts because it’s more like a ripple.
Something’s different but you’re not sure what. As the band picks up the movement, the changes become more obvious until all the pieces are finally in place and the next song is fully formed.
“It’s an easy thing to do as long as everybody knows where one is,” Porter says. Once someone calls the song, he will signal Batiste who’ll start the change. “All these songs have patterns, so when you get to the end of that pattern, then the next song will start. It’s only because the drummer knows where one is and everybody else knows where four is. We ended that phrase, that lick; it means the next lick is going to start the next song. The tempos are majorly different sometimes, so he has to slow it down or speed it up.”
Porter visibly shudders thinking about musicians who couldn’t find the one. “Some big names. It drove me up a wall. Time would get lost. I try very much to limit those choices and am a lot more selective. If I play with a guy once and it’s not happening, I rarely go back unless the money’s so stupid, I’ll say, ‘Yeah, I’ll do it.’”
The dominant visual memory of any Porter performance is him talking to people. More than the knee-high socks, it’s him walking around the stage and leaning in a musician’s ear. It only seems odd by contrast; think of how few other musicians talk off mic as much as Porter. Typically, conversation on stage happens through the mic and is incorporated into the performance, but his is more natural. What he has to say isn’t for everybody’s benefit, and it looks like the sort of casual conversation people enjoy at home or at work. Sometimes he’s making jokes or sharing a joke. At a PBS show, he cracked Stoltz up when he leaned over and told him, “I just went brain-dead right now and didn’t know what song we were playing.”
That, he suggest, happens more often than you might think. With the Funky Meters, he says, “we would be doing something and Art would go blank and start somewhere else and create a new one. In a lot of other bands, the shit would have fell apart, but this band would sssssssshp to wherever Art was. Art would look up and realize he had done something and give you a look, like ‘What took you so long?’”
Frequently, the conversation on stage is for practical reasons. On larger stages such as those at Jazz Fest, drummers, organists and keyboard players are stationed a fair distance apart, so much so that they can’t communicate with each other easily. Because he’s wireless and centrally located on stage, it often falls to him make sure everybody’s on the same page. “Sometimes it’s calling shots, sometimes it’s correcting,” he says. Sometimes it’s peacemaking. “I’ve tried to put a cap on a fight that was getting ready to start. I’ve been on stage with people that got pissed off and wanted to throw a stick across the stage or throw a cowbell at somebody.”
In a music that is often conversation between members, none of that comes as much of a surprise, and if audiences knew what to listen for, they’d hear jokes, sarcasm, anger and affection in the musicians’ playing. That’s one level of wordless communication on stage; another is more straightforward. Over the years, he and Batiste have developed hand signals so they can go seamlessly into certain songs. In funk, after all, part of the showmanship is making the endless groove seem effortless. “I can raise my arm over my shoulder and that means ‘Runnin’ Pardners,’” Porter says. “If I bend my wrist it means ‘Cissy Strut.’ I take my right arm and move it over here and it means we’re going to the bridge. If the song doesn’t have a bridge, we’re going to the solo.”
He doesn’t downplay his own abilities—“I’m very happy with being a damned good musician. I do give myself that; I know I can play”—but he doesn’t make funk out to be any great mystery. “There is absolutely an ABC to all of this, and there are a lot of young players who want to jump from A to F. They may play funk really well, but they’ve got no substance because they’ve got nothing to fall back on. I’m so happy I grew up in the world I grew up in.” That world was dominated by “the Earl Kings, the Benny Spellmans, the Allen Toussaints,” one where songs were still in vogue. That grounding can be heard in his own writing and the Meters material, where even the instrumentals still had traditional song structures at their core. As a teenager, Porter starting going to the Dew Drop Inn, Shorty’s Corner, and the GTO. “Music was being shared not only to the people drinking, but young musicians like myself used to go there to sponge,” he says. “At the Dew Drop, after the show, from 2 a.m. to 5, 6, 50 or so players were jamming. I heard jazz and the hard grit R&B that grew into funk.” He considered it part of learning his craft. He faced a whipping from his mother for going on weekends, but, he says, “I went anyway because I was going to school.”
Those days drifted into Meters days, the days that brought him some of his greatest joys and greatest frustration. The Meters played on many of the city’s great singles, but, he says, “There’s still a lot of pain in the way the Meters were used in the production of most of this music. We were given notes, but the essence of the music was us.” He’s not sure the money was ever right, but the issue of due credit is the one that still clearly rankles him. When Robert Palmer released Sneaking Sally Through the Alley in 1974, the band didn’t even get recognition on the album jacket. The slight was rectified on the CD reissue, but it typified the problem. “What does the house band have to do to get credit?” Porter asks.
“There are members of that band that absolutely feel like somebody on a daily basis sticks a finger in their eye and tries to ignore the fact that they existed and contributed so much, and are very angry about it. I find it easier to continue with my life by not being angry, and to find out that some positive stuff came out of all of that. One, I learned to play better music; two, I learned to produce music; and three, as a musician, I learned how to record. Now I want to learn how to master this music. All I’ve got to do is live long enough and I’ll have the hat on my head that says I’m a fully grown musician/songwriter/producer.”
That philosophical attitude is all over It’s Life, which he produced. He sings “All I do everyday / is work” matter-of-factly, and “The Blues I Love” is a simple statement of affection. In every song, he sounds comfortable in his skin, even Curtis Mayfield’s melancholy treatment of addiction, “Here but I’m Gone.” When he talks about his former addictions, he does so without drama, speaking of it in the same tone of voice and the same level of interest he brings to a discussion of the new van PBS tours in, which has wi-fi.
He’s similarly realistic about his age. “I feel good,” Porter says. “I’ve done all the most important doctor’s appointments and tests for all the tracts that men tend to get in trouble for not doing and passed them.” He also knows how easy it is to get seduced into playing more than you want to or should. “You can go out and make the kind of money that makes life comfortable. It’s very easy to get lost in that comfort zone, and if there’s not time in there for you to be you, you’re lost.” He recently resigned from the New Orleans Social Club for that reason. “It’s one of those things that didn’t want to die,” he says of producer Leo Sacks’ post-Katrina project. The album Sing Me Back Home started as a benefit CD, but the core band—Porter, Henry Butler, Leo Nocentelli, Ivan Neville and Raymond Weber—became a de facto New Orleans supergroup and were booked without consideration for the other singers involved in the project. “It outlived its purpose,” he says, but his main reason for leaving is that the agency booking it wasn’t respecting his other projects. These days, PBS is his main musical project, and when Social Club dates were scheduled in conflict with PBS dates, he made a choice.
“I’m out a lot more than my wife would like to see me out,” he says. “Her idea that I should already be past all that ripping and running, and that I should be more selective about who I work with and when I want to work. But the storm put us in a predicament that didn’t address the fact that I wanted to be less active at 60. I’m enjoying what I’m doing. I hope traveling doesn’t get harder, but I assume it will. When it’s harder for me to get around and be independent, then I’ll slow down. I hope that isn’t anytime soon.”
Published December 2007, OffBeat Louisiana Music & Culture Magazine, Volume 20, No. 12.
