Have you ever tried to leave New Orleans during rush hour on a Friday evening after spending five hours at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, in hopes of catching a Cajun band in one of the dance halls near Lafayette? Even worse, have you ever been pounding a beer at Fred’s Lounge in [...]
The best restaurants in New Orleans, be they Creole, Continental, Cajun or Down Home, all use the same pantry. They all reach into a box packed with peppers, smoked sausages and cold, fresh seafood. What comes out of their kitchens, however, can be as different as banana pudding and Bananas Foster. This guide is for [...]
The highlight of my visit to the Cajun Mardi Gras celebration in the tiny town of Church Point this spring was a record hunting stop at the Sound Center Record Store. Store operator and Lanor Records boss and producer Lee Lavergne popped a Cajun tape into my car deck that stayed on the machine all [...]
The first vibrato-laden notes of Robert Ward’s guitar grab your spinal column and crawl up your back like The Tingler. With all the expressiveness of a column of Leslie speakers hooked onto a screaming Hammond B-3 organ, Ward’s guitar plumbs the depths of soul. I had no idea who Ward was until I picked up [...]
The best news about this CD is that it is a new collection of Eddie Hinton tunes and has been released on a label that will make it widely available. Also good news is that Hinton still sings like a tortured John Fogerty, and plays the same tasty soul guitar that he did backing up [...]
I generally don’t like live recordings. Simply The Best is an exception. It is a straightforward recording of the Soul Queen of New Orleans doing her thing with her own crack stage band. Without the “gotta find a hit” sound of her early sides, this disc is carried as much by Thomas’ joyous personality as [...]
“Give me a good round or seven steak with potato salad or rice dressing, that’s Cajun cooking. I got to have that blue plate!” Chef Sonny Prather, Enola Prudhomme’s Cajun Cafe. If you want to eat the kind of country cooking that Cajun and Creole people have enjoyed for centuries, the best place to [...]
