Issue Articles — Features
Loose Cattle: Soulful Harmonies
In New Orleans, the Laissez Faire Laissez/Les Bon Temps Roule vibe and inherent funkiness of the lifestyle obscure the fact that this is a city of songwriters and storytellers.
Guitar Slim Jr.: Trouble Don’t Last
The blues singer and guitarist Guitar Slim Jr., the son of Eddie “Guitar Slim” Jones, has been a New Orleans mainstay for years, though lesser known.
Wendell Brunious
When you enter Preservation Hall, it’s like stepping back in time. The small no-frills room looks pretty much like it did when Allan and Sandra Jaffe first opened their now-legendary French Quarter venue on St. Peter Street in 1961. Bare unvarnished floors serve as the stage, surrounded by wooden chairs where the audience sits — until as often happens, they are moved to get up and march around with a band that celebrates the living past of New Orleans jazz.
Dwayne Dopsie
With broad shoulders, big biceps and a boyish face, Dwayne Dopsie resembles a New Orleans Saints linebacker more than a zydeco accordionist. Dopsie, 46, says his physique reflects good health he’s maintained since the age of nine or 10.
The Creole String Beans
The Creole String Beans are huge fans of that music, and they play it with a sense of joy and fun. Guitarist Rick Olivier, also an internationally renowned photographer, put together the band with bassist Rob Savoy after a chance meeting on Grande Route St. John.
They Call Us Wild: The Mardi Gras Indians of New Orleans
Urban American culture begins and ends in the street, where wave after wave of ethnic immigrants has crested, broken, and, largely, dispersed into the vast suburban landscape of metro America.
Why? John Boutté asks the question that’s on all our minds
John Boutte took the outdoor stage in Austin’s Town Lake Park on March 18 around 6:45 p.m. He was part of the South by Southwest Music Conference’s free outdoor concert to honor Louisiana music and its resilience since Hurricane Katrina. The event had begun early in the afternoon with dancers two-stepping on the green grass to the rural swamp music of Beausoleil and Buckwheat Zydeco, and then to the urban funk of the Dirty Dozen Brass Band and Ivan Neville’s Dumpstaphunk.
Bobby Charles: Talking to New Orleans
Legendary songwriter Bobby Charles has the soul of a Native American. In the history of rock and roll, Charles is one of the genre’s great mysterious spirits, a man who feels guided by his art. He doesn’t play any musical instruments and can’t read music, yet he’s composed such songs as “See You Later Alligator,” “Walking To New Orleans,” “But I Do,” Ain’t Got No Home,” and “The Jealous Kind,” as if he was pulling them out of the wind.
Interview with Aaron Neville
Aaron Neville, born January 24, 1941, is “the” voice of New Orleans. In a city that has a long history of diverse song stylists—from the early originators such as Louis Armstrong in jazz and Mahalia Jackson in gospel, to distinctive and influential R&B shouters such as Professor Longhair and Fats Domino, to generations of major movers on the pop scene such as Dr. John and the new heir apparent, Harry Connick, Jr.—it’s saying a lot to say that anyone singer is “the” voice, but Aaron Neville has certainly earned the honor.
Blue Lu Barker Remembers
Music has always surrounded the life of Blue Lu Barker. The living room of her Sere Street home is filled with the mementos of a lifetime of jazz she shared with her husband, the late great jazzman Danny Barker. Photos and awards hang and lean from the walls and along tabletops. Boxes filled with memorabilia crowd a comer of the low-ceilinged room, while yet another room is devoted entirely to storage of similar treasures.
