New Orleans Brass Bands S/D

Jordan, I would really appreciate it if you could write a little about what is special about the Hot 8 CD. I bought it on the basis of your enthusiasm, but I'm finding it less than thrilling -- good, occasionally interesting, absolutely competent (although not so great recording quality), but nothing to knock my socks off. Several leagues short of my favorite brass band music (which is probably ReBirth's Hot Venom). What am I missing?

It took some time to grow on me. I agree that the mix could be better (drums are way too low), and I'll admit that having seen them live a lot helps to fill in the gaps.

Hot 8 and the Stooges are sort of the generation after Rebirth, and the style is a little bit different. The tempos are slower in general and the beat is more broken up. Things I love about this album:

"Jisten to Me" - the sounds like a street tune to me, and probably best highlights how Dinneral (the snare drummer) isn't afraid to throw in the craziest, out-of-nowhere shit and make it work.

"I Got You" - most of the bands are playing this tune now, the bassline is funky as shit. The 50 Cent quote in the trombone solo (not even a quote really, he sticks with it for 16 bars) is nice. I'm pretty sure it's Joe, the trombone player who got shot and killed by the police last year.

"Skeet Skeet" - this is the hit, and I loved hearing it blasting out of cars in New Orleans. There are no solos, it's like three minutes long, I love the 5th Ward Weebie verse, and whole end sequence going from the "shorty" chant to riff to the shout chorus is fire.

"Sexual Healing" - the drumming on this ridiculous, it's great how they keep the original beat on the song while turning it into something totally New Orleans and unique. They've played it at all the club shows I've been at and it's usually the last, craziest song of the night. It made me realize how well-constructed the original Gaye tune is, and I like the accapella bridges (although it's even better when everyone in the club knows the words).

"Rastafunk" - this is one of the tunes that was recorded a few years back when Shamar and Herb (now in Rebirth) were in the band, and then the newer horn players went back and overdubbed parts as well, so it's a wall of brass.

"Get Up" - this is my favorite joint on the album, listen to this one first. The groove and the bassline are so ridiculous I sometimes have to listen to it three times in a row, and the rapping is on it too. I don't think I've heard them play it live but it seems like it would be the ultimate second-line tune.

Thanks. I don't really disagree much with anything you said -- those are the highlights of the album for me, too. Except: the "wall of brass" on Rastafunk (and elsewhere) comes off as very marching band to me -- more UCLA than NOLA, and not in an interesting way. I don't think the drum mix is so much of a problem, either. Right now, the drumming is probably the thing I like most about it, especially on the tracks you mention -- sometimes really surprising and inventive, always cool. The horns sound very dry and hollow to me, tinny, maybe overcompressed (I don't know, my ears aren't that good), especially when everyone is playing.

Yeah, there's definitely a lot of compression, which can sound weird when the sousaphone or the trombones are obviously playing REALLY LOUD, but it doesn't bother me much. The Stooges record has similar issues with compression and the drum mix, but it's great too.

I think the best SOUNDING brass band records are Hot Venom and D-Boy. It took H8 ten years to come out with this one, but hopefully they'll do another record soon (I know they were planning on going in the studio before the hurricane hit).

Stooges Brass Band opening for Galactic at the 930 Club in DC tonight. Doors open at 9.

I am still waiting to hear back from Hot 8 regarding getting any local dates.

The Saturday 11-19 930 Club show where members of the Stooges brass Band are sitting in with Galactic is sold out. Tickets are still available for tonight.

Looks like Hot 8 will be doing some midwest dates in January!

I'll have to call Hot 8's manager, since my last e-mail to him bounced. He had e-mailed me that he'd let me know if my contacts got him any gigs.

I'll post here later about the Stooges opening for Galactic earlier tonight. I'm reviewing it, so I gotta write that first.

The Looka blog linked to this UK article on New Orleans. Read about Irma Thomas' place, Ernie K Doe's widow buying a hearse which she can keep the full-size statue of her husband in, and Chief Monk...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/filmandmusic/story/0,16373,1644513,00.html

Sounds like things are still pretty dark in New Orleans, but there was a second-line there on Saturday with Hot 8 and the To Be Continued Brass Band.

http://static.flickr.com/15/68062290_ab398a6b86.jpg?v=0

I have seen nothing but gloomy ink about New Orleans everywhere--Time cover story; guest NY Times op-ed; Washington Post, & elsewhere.

I guess Hot 8 are not near the internet these days. Their website has not been updated, and my follow-up e-mails to the various e-mail addresses listed on the site have been ignored. I wonder if any of the contacts I gave them will be booking them in the DC and Baltimore area? I have a phone # that I had put off dialing, maybe I will spend the bucks and do so.

Oh yeah, the Stooges were kinda uneven when they opened for Galactic in DC. I wish they'd stick with being a brass band, and leave the keyboard work to other groups.

An excert of an article on the New Birth Brass Band by John Nova Lomax, Houston Press.com (Peter S. of City Pages noted that John has been doing writing about New Orleans bands in Houston)

Published: Thursday, November 24, 2005
"...At any rate, with 2005's catastrophic hurricane season finally safely past, it seemed as good a time as ever to check in on some of those most affected: the evacuees in the temporarily Houston-based New Birth Brass Band.

Outwardly, they are doing great. Every Wednesday evening, they play to a marvelously enthusiastic midweek crowd at Under the Volcano, and they also have standing Friday- and Sunday-night gigs at St. Pete's Dancing Marlin and a Sunday-afternoon affair at Dan Electro's. At the Volcano gig last week, despite the absence of their trombone player, they were simply smokin'. Trumpet and sax interwove over tuba boo-yahs amid the polyrhythmic rumble and clatter of bass drums, snare drums and hissing tiny cymbals -- this stuff is a syringe full of pure China white heroin for you beat junkies out there.

And like Volcano owner Pete Mitchell says, nobody can sit still at these shows. Sure, half the room (there were about 100 people in there on a midweek night) might not be dancing outright, but they're either tapping their feet or nodding their heads. And dancing is what this band is all about. The New Birth feeds off the crowd, and the crowd feeds off the New Birth. People holler encouragement and sing along. Guys dance with girls, girls dance in packs, guys dance alone, blacks and whites and evacuees and locals dance together -- and the people who sit boogie on the way to the bathroom when they go take a leak. I'm a pretty inhibited guy and no kinda dancer, but at one point I found myself cutting a rug with a girl I had just met when all I intended to do was go get a beer. The vibe is terrifically hellafied: Where there is the New Birth Brass Band, there is also the infectious joy of New Orleans.

I talked to three twentysomething women -- Volcano regulars who had never heard of the band before stumbling into one of their sets a month or so ago -- who have become staunch converts to the New Birth cause. "There should be more people here," says account executive Laurie Chidlow. "There are lots of Houstonians who love New Orleans, and if they knew this was going on, I think they would be here."

"Laurie told us about it, and this is our first time here, and we are very impressed," adds financial analyst Susie Hale. "We are gonna be here every Wednesday from now on, definitely."

"They are so New Orleans!" says Chidlow. "And not the creepy New Orleans -- not the 'Let's go to Pat O'Brien's and pay $9 for a drink' New Orleans," adds their friend Katie Edwards. "This is like you're on the street and a band plays and you're dancing in the street."

And Edwards, Hale and Chidlow all hope the New Birth is here to stay. Hell, all of us would love that; right now New Orleans is a culture without a city, and in many ways Houston is still a city without a culture.

All of us, that is, except for the members of the New Birth and the New Orleans natives at the show. I caught up with New Birth bass drummer and bandleader Tanio Hingle between sets and asked him what he missed the most about his hometown. "I just miss it -- just the whole nine yards, just bein' in our neighborhood playin' music -- bein' able to step out the door and just start playin' music…Seein' everybody -- family. I miss my family -- I got some people who ended up in Atlanta. My mother, grandmother and a bunch of others are up there. That's one of the hardest parts: not bein' around my family, because I am a family man."

From the New Orleans Times Picayune:

Plans in works for `musicians' village' in New Orleans
12/6/2005, 4:45 p.m. CT
By JANET McCONNAUGHEY
The Associated Press

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Singer Harry Connick Jr. and saxophone player Branford Marsalis are working with Habitat for Humanity to create a "village" for New Orleans musicians who lost their homes to Hurricane Katrina.

More than $2 million has been raised for the project dreamed up by Connick and Marsalis — a neighborhood built around a music center where musicians can teach and perform, Jim Pate, executive director of New Orleans Area Habitat for Humanity, said Monday.

The first $1 million came from benefit concerts in New York three weeks after the storm, said Quint Davis, the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival producer who helped arrange the concerts.

"The money being used to build these homes for New Orleans musicians was raised by New Orleans musicians. Our pact with them was to help New Orleans' musical community," Davis said during a Tuesday news conference.

In a telephone interview Monday, Connick said he and Marsalis — both honorary chairs for the national Habitat's hurricane rebuilding program — returned to their hometown several weeks after the storm and were trying to think of ways to help.

"I had been kind of coming up blank. The problem is so massive, it's hard to know where to begin," Connick said. "As we talked, we both realized we should really stick to what we know, which is music."

Connick said four or five of the 16 musicians in his own band lost their homes. "There's a ton of musicians who have no place to go," he said.

Pate said the organization hasn't decided on a location, but is looking at three older, predominantly black neighborhoods in New Orleans. He said Tuesday that the project will need $7.5 million to $15 million, and would include a music center named for Ellis Marsalis, the jazz pianist and educator. Marsalis has taught hundreds of high-school and college musicians over the years and is the father of the musical family that includes Branford, Wynton, Delfeayo and Jason.

"Ellis has been kind of a rock for music in this city," Mayor C. Ray Nagin said.

Branford Marsalis said the project is a thank-you to the musicians "who made it possible for people like me and my brother Wynton and Harry Connick Jr. to get out and spread the word."

Habitat cannot reserve houses for a specific group, and non-musicians would also live in the musicians' village, Pate said. However, musicians who lost their houses and have little or no insurance — and will provide labor for a Habitat house — will be asked if they'd like to live there.

"We'd hope some of our musician partner families could do some of their sweat equity by doing performances or concerts for some of our volunteers who are coming from all over the world," Pate said.

It's a fantastic idea, said Banu Gibson, who sings '20s and '30s jazz.

"So many musicians have moved out of town, and a lot of the good ones, too, which is really depressing," she said.

Gibson is back in her own house, but two of the seven musicians in her band lost homes they had bought in the last couple of years. "All the money they raised to put down as a house payment, $25,000 to $35,000, is gone," she said.

Bassist Peter "Chuck" Badie, 80, would love to see the dream become reality, and to live in a Habitat home.

"I'd be tickled to death," said Badie, who's staying at a jazz enthusiast's home after floods destroyed his house in the Lower Ninth Ward. "A village for musicians would be the finest thing. But build it where?"

The New Orleans Area Habitat for Humanity covers Jefferson, Orleans and St. Bernard parishes, and is in the "embryonic" stages of adding Plaquemines Parish. Pate said it hopes to build 250 to 500 houses in the four parishes, and possibly as many as 200 in the musicians' village.

"We desperately need them back, because they are the soul of our community, or much of the soul of our community," he said.

The Hot 8 Brass Band cc'd me on an e-mail to local DC/Baltimore places that could possibly book them. I hope some gigs are coming together.

Great. I'm looking forward to seeing them around next month.

(btw, I YSI'd a Stooges tune from last year's tour, before the keyboard/drumset lineup on this thread)

Maybe this should be on ILE, but I'm gonna post it here anyway:

Death of an American City
The New York Times | Editorial

Sunday 11 December 2005

We are about to lose New Orleans. Whether it is a conscious plan to let the city rot until no one is willing to move back or honest paralysis over difficult questions, the moment is upon us when a major American city will die, leaving nothing but a few shells for tourists to visit like a museum.

We said this wouldn't happen. President Bush said it wouldn't happen. He stood in Jackson Square and said, "There is no way to imagine America without New Orleans." But it has been over three months since Hurricane Katrina struck and the city is in complete shambles.

There are many unanswered questions that will take years to work out, but one is make-or-break and needs to be dealt with immediately. It all boils down to the levee system. People will clear garbage, live in tents, work their fingers to the bone to reclaim homes and lives, but not if they don't believe they will be protected by more than patches to the same old system that failed during the deadly storm. Homeowners, businesses and insurance companies all need a commitment before they will stake their futures on the city.

At this moment the reconstruction is a rudderless ship. There is no effective leadership that we can identify. How many people could even name the president's liaison for the reconstruction effort, Donald Powell? Lawmakers need to understand that for New Orleans the words "pending in Congress" are a death warrant requiring no signature.

The rumbling from Washington that the proposed cost of better levees is too much has grown louder. Pretending we are going to do the necessary work eventually, while stalling until the next hurricane season is upon us, is dishonest and cowardly. Unless some clear, quick commitments are made, the displaced will have no choice but to sink roots in the alien communities where they landed.

The price tag for protection against a Category 5 hurricane, which would involve not just stronger and higher levees but also new drainage canals and environmental restoration, would very likely run to well over $32 billion. That is a lot of money. But that starting point represents just 1.2 percent of this year's estimated $2.6 trillion in federal spending, which actually overstates the case, since the cost would be spread over many years. And it is barely one-third the cost of the $95 billion in tax cuts passed just last week by the House of Representatives.

Total allocations for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the war on terror have topped $300 billion. All that money has been appropriated as the cost of protecting the nation from terrorist attacks. But what was the worst possible case we fought to prevent?

Losing a Major American City

"We'll not just rebuild, we'll build higher and better," President Bush said that night in September. Our feeling, strongly, is that he was right and should keep to his word. We in New York remember well what it was like for the country to rally around our city in a desperate hour. New York survived and has flourished. New Orleans can too.

Of course, New Orleans's local and state officials must do their part as well, and demonstrate the political and practical will to rebuild the city efficiently and responsibly. They must, as quickly as possible, produce a comprehensive plan for putting New Orleans back together. Which schools will be rebuilt and which will be absorbed? Which neighborhoods will be shored up? Where will the roads go? What about electricity and water lines? So far, local and state officials have been derelict at producing anything that comes close to a coherent plan. That is unacceptable.

The city must rise to the occasion. But it will not have that opportunity without the levees, and only the office of the president is strong enough to goad Congress to take swift action. Only his voice is loud enough to call people home and convince them that commitments will be met.

Maybe America does not want to rebuild New Orleans. Maybe we have decided that the deficits are too large and the money too scarce, and that it is better just to look the other way until the city withers and disappears. If that is truly the case, then it is incumbent on President Bush and Congress to admit it, and organize a real plan to help the dislocated residents resettle into new homes. The communities that opened their hearts to the Katrina refugees need to know that their short-term act of charity has turned into a permanent commitment.

If the rest of the nation has decided it is too expensive to give the people of New Orleans a chance at renewal, we have to tell them so. We must tell them we spent our rainy-day fund on a costly stalemate in Iraq, that we gave it away in tax cuts for wealthy families and shareholders. We must tell them America is too broke and too weak to rebuild one of its great cities.

Our nation would then look like a feeble giant indeed. But whether we admit it or not, this is our choice to make. We decide whether New Orleans lives or dies.

-------

Fuck. I looked through Erik's post-flood photos the other day (taken over the weekend), the debris and abandonment in most of parts of the city is pretty striking.

On a slightly brighter note, some of these pictures of the Rebirth show on Thanksgiving for second-liner refugees are amazing:

http://www.chriscarson.com/html/photo_of_the_day_archives/archives/2005_11_24_01.htm

Those are great pics, Jordan.
------

http://www.bestofneworleans.com/dispatch/current/news_feat2.php

December 13, 2005 Gambit Weekly

West of the Sixth Ward
The Treme Brass Band fled the flood. They ended up in the desert.

Compiled by Katy Reckdahl

Two months ago, six men arrived in Arizona with no instruments. They came to play music.
Members of the Treme Brass Band gathered in Phoenix a few weeks after the hurricane. Still, the place doesn't feel like home, says bandleader Benny Jones Sr.

"When I see the cactus, I think of the Western movies and the cowboys that we used to watch on TV," he says. "It feels pretty odd to me."

Jones was staying in Dallas when he received a phone call from the head of an Arizona-based group, the Jazz Refugee Project. The man had gotten Jones' name and number from a bandmate who had evacuated to Phoenix.

The Refugee Project promised six months of housing and gigs. Jones found the idea appealing, but implementation might be tough, he said. "I told the man, 'My band is scattered out like a checkerboard.'" But after two days, Jones had reached three guys. Two days later, a few more. Within a week, he had an entire band -- but no instruments.

Of the group that moved to Phoenix, only Eddieboh Paris escaped with a horn -- his trombone. "That's because the other guys had to think about themselves, not their instruments," says Paris, who evacuated early, on Sunday. Most of his bandmates didn't leave. Three -- bass drummer Anthony Bennett and saxophonists Elliott "Stackman" Callier and Frederick "Shep" Sheppard -- spent the storm in their homes, then left by boat and chopper. Tuba player Jeffrey Hills weathered the hurricane in the Lafitte housing project, then walked across town in chest-deep water with his two small children on his shoulders. (Longtime Treme bass drummer and singer "Uncle" Lionel Batiste also sat out the storm in the Lafitte and evacuated a few days later by bus. He opted to return to New Orleans rather than travel to Phoenix.)

In late September, the Jazz Refugee Project dispatched a van that started in Mississippi and wound its way through Texas, picking up musicians. It was 120 degrees and sunny when they arrived in Phoenix. "Oh, Lord, it was hot," says bass drummer Bennett. "I was wearing shorts and flip-flops, and it felt like the flip-flops were melting off my feet."

At first, the Refugee Project supplied loaner horns. Soon, donated horns came via overnight delivery from members of the Jack Brass Band in Minneapolis, the Tipitina's Foundation and national charitable organizations.

The band has now settled into a routine, playing a few gigs a week and traveling around town in a Refugee Project van. But it's taken a few adjustments. The 2 a.m. bar-closing time has prompted at least one bandmember to carry a flask. The band plays a significant number of gigs in Phoenix's retirement communities, where the band is less apt to perform contemporary numbers like "Gimme My Money Back."

Treme's presence has also bolstered the city's traditional-jazz community. "There are 47 venues in Phoenix that play jazz, but it's mostly modern -- bebop and fusion," says Phoenix clarinetist Joe Hopkins, vice president of the Arizona Jazz Society. "Yet the Treme band has made inroads into clubs and with people who've never listened to this music. I think that's significant."

How long Treme will remain in Phoenix is still unclear. But on Tuesday, Nov. 22, the CBS' The Early Show, as part of its "Week of Wishes," featured Minnesotan Pat Lindgren saying that she'd seen Treme play at Donna's Bar & Grill. Her wish was to see them perform again in New Orleans. In response, the program marshaled weighty resources: temporary housing for band members in the French Quarter courtesy of Hibernia Bank, $60,000 worth of home furnishings from Sam's Club, and -- from the Jazz Foundation of America -- employment playing jazz in Louisiana schools, some new instruments, and first-month's rent and security deposits.

In Phoenix, band members sat and watched, speechless. Jones, certainly, plans to return home as soon as FEMA gives him a trailer. Trombonist Eddie King also plans to go back. But others aren't sure. They talk about the sputtering New Orleans economy, hard-to-find housing, and gigs that pay half as much as Phoenix gigs. Saxophonist Sheppard says that he misses friends but has no other reason to return to what he calls "The Big Raggedy."

Not surprising, says New Orleans cultural advocate Morgan Clevenger. "Most musicians that I know, they love New Orleans and they want to come back. But if you don't have the necessary quality of life, they're not coming back."

Final decisions have yet to be made. In the meantime, music is the perfect distraction. "Often I sit around thinking about how my homeowner's insurance has not come through or wondering what my children are doing," says Bennett. "The only time I get any peace is when I'm playing music."

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Thanks for that. I didn't know Jeffrey Hills was out with Treme, I know he's trying to round up the Lil' Rascals for a tour.

I'm not surprised that Uncle Lionel didn't go with them, I honestly can't picture him outside of New Orleans. He IS New Orleans.

Not brass band related, but close enough...More sad news from the Looka blog:

http://www.gumbopages.com/looka/
"Bad news. I got an email from Mary Katherine yesterday ... Stevenson Palfi, the New Orleans-based documentary filmmaker best known for his amazing film "Piano Players Rarely Ever Play Together" (featuring performances from Tuts Washington, Allen Toussaint, and Professor Longhair two days before his death), took his own life a few days ago. He had lost his home, his office and almost all of his possessions, presumably including several years worth of work he had done on an unfinished in-depth biography of Allen Toussaint."

Thanks for keeping this thread going. It's a subject that's at once almost unbearable to think about, and can't be let to slip away.

:(

I'm finally leaving for New Orleans tomorrow. I'm starting to freak out a little bit about what it's going to be like. Stupid hurricane.

Financially at least, the New Birth are absolutely thriving here -- in addition to the weekly gigs I mentioned in the story above, they are very active on Houston's Plutocrat Party / Organ Ball circuit, and they are starting to perform at schools during the day.

Also this week, Keith "Wolf" Anderson rejoined the band here. He had been in Detroit and I think I heard he got busted up there for public urination of all things.

Tuba Phil and some other guys from the Rebirth were at this week's Volcano show, and the whole joint went crazy when they tore into "Hush Your Mouth." Glen David's rewrite of Levert's "Casanova" was also damn cool, and having Wolf in the band has led to some serious 'bone battles. (Incidentally, I think Glen David's as much a potential breakout star as Kermit is... the guy is an incredible showman.)

I don't know what this has to do with anything, but it's pretty funny. Kenny Terry was walking around after the show sporting a Rand McNally map of NO -- he is the guy on the cover in the red jacket and white marching band cap blowing his horn in the Quarter.

Ha, I played a Mardi Gras gig with Glen David once. I think he has the loudest singing voice I've ever heard. The last time I saw him, he was flying (and crashing) a kite in a crowd at the Jazzfest grounds last year. (I think that Casanova arrangement comes from when Tyrus Chapman was in Rebirth, btw.)

I'm glad New Birth is doing good.

Adam, are you moving back? Good luck, dude.

Yeah, GD's really got that Monk Boudreaux / Bo Dollis holler workin' for him

Jordan, I fully expect to see you (and everyone else in this thread, dammit) in NO for Mardi Gras and Jazzfest this year.

I absolutely will be there, seriously. We'll be at Donna's.

I'm also getting married in N.O. sometime within the next year!

!!! Awesome.

Yea, maybe at Jazzfest. I wonder if local DC promoters are suffering from Katrina fatigue. None of the folks I had Hot 8 e-mail re playing around here, have contacted them back. I'm trying another promoter.

The Nation magazine has several articles on serious New Orleans stuff:

Here's an excerpt from Ari Kelman's "In the Shadow of Disaster":

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060102/kelman
"Craig Colten, a Louisiana State University geographer, agrees. He insists low-lying parts of the city shouldn't be rebuilt. His proposal is extremely controversial, with displaced residents understandably invoking their "right of return" and with most members of the reconstruction committees reluctant to reintegrate wetlands into the city after Mayor Nagin got burned for suggesting that the Ninth Ward might not be rebuilt. But Colten still believes that part of the backswamp should ooze into selected low-lying areas. An equitable method, he believes, would be to "take land from many neighborhoods--Lakefront, Ninth Ward, Gentilly--and relocate rich, poor, middle class to denser settlement on higher ground." Colten's "new New Orleans," then, would resemble the old New Orleans--from an era before wetlands vanished. It would also touch off battles over whose neighborhoods should be abandoned."

From the offbeat weekly e-mail:

OffBeat Magazine [offbeat@offbeat.com]

"L. J. Goldstein, New Orleans attorney, photographer and founder of the infamous Krewe de Jieux, has organized a Honakkah Second Line on Thursday December 22 beginning at 6 p.m. at Spanish Plaza (Riverwalk) proceeding to Jackson Square. The Reunion Klezmer Band will perform, the first time the New Orleans Klezmer Allstars and former clarinetist Ben Schenk have played together since Schenk left the band."

Haha.

Btw, I don't know if the YSI is still working, but here is a WWOZ show from a year or two ago. They play a bunch of brass band shit, but the highlight is a live set by the Real Untouchables Brass Band. They're complete unknowns as far as the scene goes, but it's fucking hot.

http://s38.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=2WX72H6TOE43V34S22C0V2F6NC

I'll have to give it a shot. Here's more of the usual depressing news from Offbeat:

GONE...BUT NOT FORGOTTEN
Hurricane Katrina has taken more from us than our homes, neighborhoods and businesses. We’re profoundly sorry to report that these wonderful members of our music community have passed on within the last week.

Brian O’Neill
1955-2005
Composer, arranger, vocalist, pianist and Bonerama trombonist, Brian O’Neill passed away suddenly after suffering an apparent heart attack while on a solo gig in New Orleans O’Neill was noted for his work with Wayne Cochran and the CC Riders in the ’70s as well as being a mainstay of the popular New Orleans R&B vocalist Luther Kent’s band “Trick Bag” for the past 25 years. As a freelance trombonist O’Neill was one of the most frequently-called trombonists in New Orleans. O’Neill penned the most recent “Bone Up” from the Bonerama’s Live From New York. O’Neill appeared in countless sit-ins with the Bonerama horns including appearances with Gov’t Mule and the Radiators. Fellow Bonerama trombonist Mark Mullins recalls, “I met Brian on a gig at a Mardi Gras parade 21 years ago and after the first song I realized that is what I wanted to sound like. To have him in the Bonerama band was just a constant inspiration on both a personal and musical level. There was so much he had not had a chance to say yet.”

Stevenson Palfi
1952-2005
The director of Piano Players Rarely Ever Play Together, a documentary that presented New Orleans legends Allen Toussaint, Tuts Washington and Professor Longhair playing together in the studio, was found dead of a gunshot wound in in New Orleans. Palfi had lost much in the wake of Hurricane Katrina; his Mid-City home was severely flooded, and reportedly was very depressed over the loss of his home and life's work. Palfi was staying with his ex- wife at the time. Reportedly he left a suicide note. Palfi is survived by his daughter, Nell.
“His seminal work was non-pareil as a rare, timely and brilliant piece of documentary film-making. Henry Roeland Byrd, a.k.a. Professor Longhair, died during the filming of this work. Stevenson had the foresight to capture the entire second line celebration of Fess’ life and death.” said Justin Zitler, attorney for SongByrd Inc., the Professor Longhair estate. Informed of Palfi’s death, Allen Toussaint said, “My friend Stevenson Palfi’s life’s work was immortalizing others and in so doing, he has immortalized himself. His work will outlast all of us.”

Stevenson Palfi will be honored with a tribute this year at OffBeat's Best of The Beat Awards on January 21 at the House of Blues.

More from Offbeat's weekly e-mail thing:

The New Orleans Musicians Hurricane Relief Fund is
proud to sponsor the Social Aid & Pleasure Club All-
Star Second Line on Sunday January 15, 2006. For
the first time ever, a coalition of 27 Social Aid &
Pleasure Clubs will march together through the
streets of New Orleans to call attention to their
needs and role in renewing the city. The Second Line
begins at the Backstreet Cultural Museum at 1116 St.
Claude Avenue in Treme at 11:30 a.m. and ends
uptown at Washington Avenue and South Saratoga
at about 4 p.m.

Oh wow. I wish I could go down for that.

My band will be going down around Mardi Gras, and just before that playing a concert for NOLA relocatees in Chicago.

From the NY Times:

By GARY RIVLIN
Published: January 11, 2006
NEW ORLEANS, Jan. 10 - The commission devising a blueprint to reconstruct the city will propose on Wednesday . . . the creation of a new jazz district downtown. . . . The jazz district would be in the old Storyville section, north of the French Quarter, an idea championed by the trumpeter Wynton Marsalis, a member of the commission and the co-chairman of its culture committee."

"The old Storyville section" really doesn't exist anymore. Virtually all of those buildings were torn down years ago to make way for the Iberville housing project. I have no idea what condition those projects are in post-flood, but if they are to be torn down to make way for some sort of glitzy new jazz theme park, I'm more than a little dubious.

Me too.

I am not clear what the NY Times was referring to and I have not seen more details elsewhere. I'd be dubious of the theme park also, but maybe they are referring to something else. Upthread on December 9th I pasted something that included this excerpt about a project Branford Marsalis and Harry Connick were pushing: " A village for musicians would be the finest thing. But build it where?"

The New Orleans Area Habitat for Humanity covers Jefferson, Orleans and St. Bernard parishes, and is in the "embryonic" stages of adding Plaquemines Parish. Pate said it hopes to build 250 to 500 houses in the four parishes, and possibly as many as 200 in the musicians' village."

Is this the "musician's village"?

I think Branford Marsalis and Wynton Marsalis are working on 2 different things.

Here's an excerpt from the L.A. Times re Wynton's project:

"To accelerate the process, Nagin's commission is asking the Federal Emergency Management Agency to release updated floodplain maps which effectively could make the decision for many homeowners by raising home insurance rates and setting other new financial barriers to redevelopment.

A subcommittee is proposing a new jazz district near the French Quarter at the former location of Storyville, a fabled district of musicians and houses of ill-repute at the turn of the last century.

It later fell into disrepair and was demolished. The idea to re-create a cleaned-up version of Storyville, which gave rise to musical legends including Jelly Roll Morton, is being championed by the Pulitzer Prize-winning jazz virtuoso Wynton Marsalis."

Cleaned up and recreated early 20th century bordellos in WyntonMarsalis-land! Ugh. Putting Wynton on the committee may help kill New Orleans music rather then help it.

I wonder when Wynton was even in New Orleans last. Branford was hanging out at Donna's last Jazzfest, though.

Btw, I'm going to be down for four days during the last weekend of Mardi Gras, for a gig at Donna's and just to check things out.

Where's the hiphop n bounce and more brass? Well some of the below looks good:

"On Saturday, January 21, 2006, OffBeat
presents “The Best of the Beat Awards,”
its annual celebration of the best of New
Orleans’ music at the House of Blues, 225 Decatur
Street. The Best of
The Beat starts at 6 p.m. and ends at 2 a.m.

This year, OffBeat recognizes R&B legends
Allen Toussaint and Irma Thomas
with Lifetime Achievement in Music awards.
Toussaint is the influential songwriter and producer of
some of the city’s signature records, as well as a
performer in his own right. Thomas is the voice of
such classics as “Wish Someone Would Care,” “It’s
Raining” and “Breakaway.” Also honored are
Wanda Rouzan for Lifetime Achievement in
Music Education, “Uncle” Lionel Battiste of
the Treme Brass Band, who receives this year’s
Heartbeat Award, and George and Nina Buck
(GHB Records and the Palm Court Jazz Café), for the
Lifetime Achievement Award in Business.

The Best of The Beat will also include a tribute to the
late music documentarian, Stevenson Palfi.

HOB STAGE

7:00: John Autin

7:45: Morning 40 Federation

8:30: Awards with Stevenson Palfi Tribute

9:15: Papa Grows Funk with Anders Osborne and Tim
Green

10:00: Davis Rogan

10:30: Fred LeBlanc and Paul Sanchez of Cowboy
Mouth

11:15: Theresa Andersson with members of World
Leader Pretend

12:00: James Andrews with Shannon Powell

12:45: Walter “Wolfman” Washington

1:30: New Orleans Live Animals

PARISH STAGE

7:15: Coco Robicheaux

8:00: New Orleans Jazz Vipers

9:30: Quintron with C.C. Adcock

10:15: Ingrid Lucia

11:00: Michael Hurtt & His Haunted Hearts

11:45: White Bitch

12:30: Shannon McNally

1:15: Ghost"

My article on the Jack Brass Band in Minneapolis (a lot of whom are playing in the Krewe du Vieux February 11):

http://citypages.com/databank/27/1313/article14090.asp

I'm heading down too, in time for the night of Feb. 23.

Everyone who's in town should come to the Thoth parade, which runs down Magazine St, ie right in front of my house. My building, as well as everyone all up and down the street, has a massive party. We have t-shirts made and everything. Sunday b4 Fat Tuesday, be there!

I will be there! And you guys have got to come to Donna's on the Friday before Fat Tuesday. Mama Digdown's, but the band will probably be half New Orleans dudes.

I'm there, for real this year. PS I finally bought the Hot 8 album due to your constant pimping--it's fucking great.

Interesting and a bit sad piece on an 80 year-old bassist, son of a brass band player...

After Katrina, the Jazzman Plays On

By Anne Hull
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, January 30, 2006; A02

NEW ORLEANS -- Peter Badie is in the kitchen, rummaging around in a drawer for a spoon. This isn't his kitchen. His kitchen was filled with 10 feet of water during Hurricane Katrina and likely awaits the wrecking ball. The 80-year-old jazz musician is homeless and temporarily living in a spare bedroom of a Creole cottage here in the Faubourg Marigny section of town. This is Sue Hall's kitchen.

"Sue Hall, where is that big pan?" Badie calls out.

"Peter, it's where you left it," says the voice from the other room.

Horns and clarinets drift from speakers above. Badie catches sight of his black sunglasses on the counter. He snatches them up and slips them into his shirt pocket, mindful of being a neat houseguest. "Sue Hall, I've got some fish cakes out here."

The hurricane has forced all sorts of unexpected arrangements, and Badie and Hall are just one unlikely Odd Couple living in the aftermath. Badie is an accomplished acoustic bass player who has toured with Lionel Hampton. Hall booked bands at the Palm Court Jazz Cafe. When she heard that Badie lost his home in the Lower Ninth Ward, she offered him a place to stay.

Hall has red hair and pearly skin. She was born in Kankakee, Ill. Chili pepper lights hang in her kitchen; Southern folk art and pink flamingos abound. In the middle of this bright whimsy is Badie, an austere modern jazzman, as cool as midnight itself, dealing with his homelessness, anger and unsure future.

This is life in New Orleans now: tenuous, with strange forgings and new beginnings. No one is saying how long the arrangement will last.

Badie -- known as "Chuck" -- has a salt-and-pepper soul patch. He is a widower and devout Catholic. His routine is simple. He rises mid-morning, says his prayers and then emerges from his borrowed room and makes a pot of grits. He is immensely proud, almost to the point of defiance. He recently returned a $4,000 check that the musicians union sent him by mistake.

At Hall's kitchen table, he reads the New Orleans Times-Picayune from cover to cover. "They say New Orleans will be back," Badie says. "Not for me it won't. I'm 80 years old."

Badie was born in 1925 in the Black Pearl section of Uptown in New Orleans. His father was a jazz saxophonist with the Eureka and Olympia brass bands. Badie didn't pick up music until he got out of the Navy in 1945 and used the GI Bill to enroll at the Grunewald School of Music in New Orleans, a beacon of progressivism in a city cleaved by race. "Whites were on the first floor and blacks were on the second floor; to me, that's integrated," Badie says.

Zoot Sims, Dizzy Gillespie -- Badie played with the best of them. Along with other black musicians, he helped found the A.F.O. (All For One) record label in 1961. But musicians were paid so little that Badie worked as a lunch waiter at the Royal Sonesta Hotel in the French Quarter for 15 years, making $500 a week, five times what he earned playing music.

Before the hurricane, he had a standing gig at the Palm Court, and he rolled up in style: punctual, a pressed shirt and a 1979 black Cadillac roomy enough to carry his bass in the back seat. He lived alone at his house on North Johnson Street. Other musicians die in rental apartments, but Badie had his house.

Now he sits in Hall's kitchen, holding a letter from his homeowner's insurance company, typed with the words "No Compensation."

"Not one quarter," he says, smoldering.

Five months after the storm, Badie still drives to his house every day and stares at it. The mysteries of his losses plague him. "I had six suits," he says. "I'm talking about suits. Not that mix-'n'-match jive. Six suits. Now, where did they go?"

He was wise enough to store his two basses on the second floor of the Palm Court before the storm, saving them from ruin. He momentarily forgets his troubles when describing his 1946 Epiphone. "It's got a sound, baby, you can hear around the corner," he says. "People said, 'Chuck, don't ever sell it.' Cats would snap it up in a second. I did a lot of records with that." "The Man I Love," "A Change Is Gonna Come." One of the basses is stretched out across Hall's living room. Who knows where it will finally rest. Badie has been looking into the Habitat for Humanity "musicians' village" that singer Harry Connick Jr. and saxophone player Branford Marsalis are trying to create for Louisiana musicians left homeless by the storm.

For now, this pink cottage is home. Badie shows his appreciation by cooking: breaded pork chops, cabbage, neck bones, turnips and carrots, and oyster dressing. "Oyster dressing?" Badie says. "Oh, that will kick you. See, I re-boil them crawfish heads and get that stock ."

The phone rings again, and Hall comes into the kitchen. She's been trying to find a trombonist for a gig. The hurricane scattered New Orleans jazz musicians across the country; two-thirds have still not returned. "I must have called 10 trombone players," Hall says.

Badie frets over what to wear to the gig. His suits are gone. He goes into his bedroom to make a call about finding a new white shirt.

Hall drops her voice and whispers, "He's old school, the last of a generation. A man of integrity."

When Badie takes his place on stage at the Palm Court the next night, he reveals nothing of his troubles. The club owner introduces the musicians. "Mr. Chuck Badie has lost his home," she tells the crowd. Badie's eyes are hidden behind his dark shades. Someone counts off a beat, and the band sets off, with Badie plucking fiercely to the end.

© 2006 The Washington Post Company

Big Chief Smiley Ricks is now in Columbia, Tennessee

http://www.rctimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060129/ENTERTAINMENT05/601290321/1005/MTCN0303

Oh, Dan Phillips, a current Lafayette, Louisiana resident linked to the above article on his always excellent digging in the record crates of New Orleans r'n'b blog Home of the Groove.

http://homeofthegroove.blogspot.com/