Issue Articles
Fest Focus: Wardell Quezergue
There isn’t a musical instrument in sight in Wardell Quezergue’s living room. The city’s most in-demand arranger works on a card table filled with a dozen pencils, a pencil sharpener […]
Remembering James Booker
On November 8, 1983 pianist James Carroll Booker III was wheeled into New Orleans’ Charity Hospital waiting room, where he died while awaiting medical attention. Rumors have spread through the […]
Fest Focus: C.J. Chenier
Born into royalty, the son of zydeco’s most famous artist has spent his life and career between two worlds. Raised in Port Arthur, Texas, C.J. Chenier lived with his mother, […]
Fest Focus: D.L. Menard
One rainy afternoon, a busload of 65 people crammed themselves into D.L. Menard’s three-bedroom house outside Erath, Louisiana. Every day, it seems, folks from other states and other countries stop […]
Marcia Ball: The Life and Times of a Circuit Queen
Just me and the TV sittin’ here glowin’in a lonely roomStill wearing my spurs and a quarter’sworth of someone else’s cheap perfume …I know I’ll always get the Maybellinestares from […]
Celebration of Spirits
A head flings back as if jerked by the hair, eyes widen to a glare, the body gets rigid and arches backward, trembling as it appears to attempt to fly […]
Fest Focus: The New Orleans Klezmer All Stars
As the sun sets somewhere between Romania and Yugoslavia, a peasant lays his scythe at the side of a grassy meadow and takes off his cap to wipe his sweaty […]
Fest Focus: Little Freddie King
Don’t let the name fool you: Little Freddie King is an underrecognized giant of country blues. In a town filled with funk, r&b and jazz, King is a living link […]
Fest Focus: Joe Louis Walker
When multi-talented guitarist and singer Joe Louis Walker returns to the Jazz and Heritage Festival after an eleven year absence, he will be preaching from a different musical pulpit. In […]
Fest Focus: The Iguanas
Iguanas’ guitarist Rod Hodges will never forget the first embraces of their New Orleans fans. “There was a certain period during one summer in New Orleans, and I don’t remember […]
