To be totally accurate, this CD really ought to be credited to the Donald Harrison Band, billed with Dr. John as the featured guest, because it’s basically a live-gig extension of the studio sessions organized for Harrison’s brilliant 1991 song-cycle, Indian Blues (which, criminally, currently is out-of-print). Indian Blues is a true New Orleans masterpiece that began a long period in Harrison’s career, following the break-up with longtime partner Terence Blanchard, of seeking out and experiencing the widest possible variety of rhythmic roots associated with both jazz and African-American music, an exploration that culminated in 1997’s Nouveau Swing, itself a true modern jazz masterpiece. Eventually, Harrison would travel through the worlds of Latin jazz, Brooklyn hip-hop, Brazilian samba and Adult Contemporary funk, to name a few, but the peripatetic altoist decided to begin his journey at the beginning—with his own Crescent City upbringing and, particularly, the cultural legacy inherited from his father, Donald Harrison, Sr., a progressive thinker, Mardi Gras Indian chief, serious jazz aficionado and all-around, street-wise philosopher.
On Indian Blues, besides his father’s deep admiration for Mardi Gras Indian musical culture, Harrison featured his father’s vocals on several Indian chants and invited contributions from both Dr. John and another, younger Mardi Gras Indian chief, master percussionist Howard “Smiley” Ricks—each of whom is featured prominently on Funky New Orleans.
Recorded at Birdland in New York City six months following the original studio sessions, Harrison’s band now includes at the piano a young, soulfully swinging musician named Stephen Scott, who would soon become a mainstay of master saxophonist Sonny Rollins’ recording and touring combos. Framed at either end by cuts taken straight from Indian Blues—both CDs open with Harrison, Sr., featured on “Hu-Ta-Nay”; Funky New Orleans closes with a live reprise of “Hu-Ta-Nay” followed by Indian Blues’ second-to-last cut, “Walkin’ Home,” an instrumental featuring Harrison, Jr., on saxophone—the Funky New Orleans liner notes list Dr. John as sole guitarist on the set, making it fairly easy to distinguish Scott’s playing from the good Doctor’s as long as there’s guitar in the live mix; otherwise, Scott plays with more than enough intelligence, funky grace and Crescent City dexterity to make accurate identification pure conjecture.
But all doubt vanishes on the pair of cuts that make this set, and this recording, entirely worthy of being marketed as a Dr. John headlining release—the 15-minutes-plus, back-to-back renditions of downhome, risqué, barrelhouse blues, “Livin’ on Borrowed Time” and “You Ain’t Such a Much.”
This is the heart of a nearly forgotten cultural resource that informs entire blues genres (from the vaudeville blues of Victoria Spivey’s “Black Snake Moan” to the Chicago rock of Chuck Berry’s “My Ding-a-Ling”) and clearly remains fundamental to Mac Rebennack’s sense of musical inspiration. Surrounded on both sides by wonderful, extended, jazz-funk jamming, these two gems shine like long lost, buried treasure. Just a taste of the lyrical content, executed in the Doctor’s patented, dealer’s drawl floating the accompaniment of rollicking ivory intoxications, should be enough to make the case:
“I tried to borrow on my house, tried to borrow on my car,” the Doctor tells us in “Livin’ on Borrowed Time,” “I tried to borrow on my woman, but she said that’s goin’ too far ….” And then the chorus hits us with what sounds like Every Grifter’s Lament: “Well, if my life lasts just a little taste longer, I’m gonna tighten up on everyone I know.” Sure, Doc.
Even more ancient is the wicked fun of “You Ain’t Such a Much,” credited to one of the early and obscure New Orleans influences, Pleasant Joseph, a.k.a. Cousin Joe. “Now, I’m only 38,” Cousin Joe insists, “but my woman’s 93; my friends all think I’m crazy, but the wheel’s made out of me. Old women know just what to do,” he continues, “they give you all kinds of lovin’, and some good ole money, too!” All right, now we’re into some of the old-time advice on playing life’s less advertised angles. The chorus, while no where near as provocative, still shimmers with a beautiful kind of unearthly folk poetry: “I wouldn’t give a blind pig an acorn, wouldn’t give a crippled crab a crutch; baby, you and your lovin’, ain’t so such a much!”
Straight from New Orleans’ version of that “old, weird America,” this brief spotlight cast on a rapidly disappearing cultural memory alone is worth the price of admission, as the saying goes. Placed in a setting of remarkable New Orleans gumbo improvisation, it becomes doubly valuable. Package it with a reissue of Indian Blues and you’d have just about the most concise and purely distilled version imaginable of what the modern New Orleans musical tradition is all about. Folklore, bebop, deep conga funk, Funky New Orleans probably ought to considered as more than just an essential purchase, especially given the increasingly short shelf life of our commercially collected culture.
