reviewed together with James Booker’s Blues & Ragtime from New Orleans. There are around 15 James Booker albums on the market, but in fact the Piano Prince released only five LPs of music during his lifetime. Four of these five should be considered the very best of his work. The easy-to-find ones are New Orleans [...]
reviewed together with James Booker’s The Piano Prince of New Orleans. There are around 15 James Booker albums on the market, but in fact the Piano Prince released only five LPs of music during his lifetime. Four of these five should be considered the very best of his work. The easy-to-find ones are New Orleans [...]
Many of us in New Orleans have listened to Kathleen Lee’s swing music show on WWOZ for years. What a nice surprise, then, for us to hear her sing on this debut disc. If some of the covers (“All of Me,” “Fever”) are a little shopworn, other cuts are anything but ordinary. Her powerful take [...]
There are few listeners in New Orleans who’ve devoted themselves as fervently to the cause of covering traditional jazz as Tom Jacobsen. Traditional New Orleans Jazz: Conversations With the Men Who Make the Music is a unique oral history of a subject surprisingly neglected: the lives of people who’ve made their living playing trad jazz [...]
In the year 2011, there are still plenty of people around who saw James Booker and Professor Longhair perform on multiple occasions, or who caught the Dirty Dozen 20 times at the Glass House. But not many in this group has the writing chops to equal Michael Oliver-Goodwin. Oliver-Goodwin has been an accomplished journalist for [...]
Dickie Taylor, a drummer on the New Orleans scene for 45 years, passed away November 30. Taylor grew up in Chicago, where he began his career in blues and rock bands. He dated the future pop star Jackie DeShannon in high school and played a couple gigs with Muddy Waters, but turned down the regular [...]
It’s not all that surprising that Donna’s Bar and Grill, the Rampart Street club beloved by New Orleans music followers around the globe, closed its doors this summer. The joint was in disrepair, and Charlie Sims, the primary force behind the club for years, had turned 75 and had grown tired. “The owners wouldn’t repair [...]
New Orleans locals are familiar with sousaphonist Matt Perrine playing any style in any situation. His virtuosity brings forth the inevitable “I’ve never heard a tuba played like that” comment; then you take it for granted until you hear another tuba player. Less noticeable, but apparent to his bandmates, are Perrine’s arranging and composing chops. [...]
It is no secret to musicians trying to play New Orleans jazz for a living that jazz writers have agendas, and that what passes for worthy in the jazz media often has little to do with the music. This fine book is for these souls, and for anyone with an interest in New Orleans music [...]
I’ve surprised many friends over the years by saying that Cindy Scott’s debut album from 2002, Major to Minor, is my favorite album by a local woman singer. This is problematic for some, since 1) Scott is not from here and 2) her back-up band on this album is from Houston. Scott’s second disc, the [...]
