Big Man and I are planning a short little trip to Florida to stay with my brother and sister-in-law (yes, where we spent our "hurrication" during Hurricane Gustav last year), and I asked what we could bring. My sister-in-law immediately said, "Creole tomatoes, if you can find them." My brother really loves them, and you can't get them in Florida.
Creole tomato season is upon us once again, with the annual Creole Tomato Festival (blogged about last year) scheduled for two weeks from now. You have to be careful in the stores, watching for the little stickers that say "Creole Tomato" and the name of a particular farm, and not accidentally pick up regular, old, almost-tasteless tomatoes. The ones I found today at Breaux Mart were from a farmer named Liuzza, and all I can say is, "Thank you, Mr. Liuzza!!"
As soon as I got home, I set the Creoles into a pan for safe travel across pieces of four states, but kept one out. I sliced that baby up into thick slabs, slathered Blue Plate mayo onto good bread, set the slices on, sprinkled sea salt on top, and sat down to fully enjoy one of Nature's wonders -- a Creole tomato sandwich.
Oh my God. Maybe we'll swing by Breaux Mart or the French Market on the way to Florida tomorrow afternoon after church. I totally think we did not buy enough.
Saturday, May 30, 2009
"Shotgun" at the Southern Rep
On Thursday night, after a lovely dinner at Eleven-79 (one of the best Italian restaurants in the city), I went with three of my four sisters -- all of the local ones, missing only my sister in Minnesota -- to the Southern Rep Theater in Canal Place to see the second part of a projected Katrina trilogy by local playwright John Biguenot. (The author's surname occasioned some discussion amongst the sisters on correct pronunciation; apparently Southenr rep is of two minds about it as well, since two different employees said it two different ways.)
The first play, "Rising Water," was set on a rooftop during the aftermath of Katrina, and ran to rave reviews. I did not see that play, but the other sisters did -- however, they could not agree on whether or not there had been actual water surrounding the rooftop set. Even if there were no real water, it seems clear that the play was so well written and so well acted that certain audience members went away with at least a memory of water.
"Shotgun" is set in December 2005, after the storm, and continues into several months of 2006. Beau (Rus Blackwell), a white man from Gentilly and Eugene, his surly PTSD son (played so well by young Alex Lemonier that I wanted to smack him for his rudeness and unrelenting bad behavior), come to rent half a one-bedroom shotgun house in Algiers from the owner, a black Creole woman named Mattie Godchaux (Donna Duplantier). Mattie's father, Dexter Godchaux (Lance Nichols), lost his home and all his belongings in the Lower Ninth Ward in the Flood, and has also lost his livelihood, since the machinist shop where he worked did not reopen after the Storm, and is now living with Mattie, sleeping on the couch in the living room.
Mattie is desperate to keep her house and is happy to find renters, and Beau is glad to find a place to live. But both Dex and Eugene are dubious about the arrangement. The old man wants to keep the boundaries between neighborhoods and the races that existed before the Storm. Eugene wants his whole life -- his dead mother, the house that flooded, his old school -- to go back to the way things were before. There's a fifth character, a black man from the neighborhood, Clarence Williams (Kenneth Brown, Jr.), who has known the Godchaux family a long time and is doing the "scuffle" in order to keep his head above water (metaphorically).
I can't say much more about the play without giving away key points, but I can tell you that the play is engaging and absorbing. Things are gotten "right" -- the way New Orleans folks really talk, how people were immediately after the Storm, the tangled feelings, and mixed-up neighborhoods. The actors are all believable and sink into their parts. It makes you laugh knowingly, nod your head, and even tear up occasionally.
I totally recommend you go see this play, and look for the other two plays in this trilogy.
The first play, "Rising Water," was set on a rooftop during the aftermath of Katrina, and ran to rave reviews. I did not see that play, but the other sisters did -- however, they could not agree on whether or not there had been actual water surrounding the rooftop set. Even if there were no real water, it seems clear that the play was so well written and so well acted that certain audience members went away with at least a memory of water.
"Shotgun" is set in December 2005, after the storm, and continues into several months of 2006. Beau (Rus Blackwell), a white man from Gentilly and Eugene, his surly PTSD son (played so well by young Alex Lemonier that I wanted to smack him for his rudeness and unrelenting bad behavior), come to rent half a one-bedroom shotgun house in Algiers from the owner, a black Creole woman named Mattie Godchaux (Donna Duplantier). Mattie's father, Dexter Godchaux (Lance Nichols), lost his home and all his belongings in the Lower Ninth Ward in the Flood, and has also lost his livelihood, since the machinist shop where he worked did not reopen after the Storm, and is now living with Mattie, sleeping on the couch in the living room.
Mattie is desperate to keep her house and is happy to find renters, and Beau is glad to find a place to live. But both Dex and Eugene are dubious about the arrangement. The old man wants to keep the boundaries between neighborhoods and the races that existed before the Storm. Eugene wants his whole life -- his dead mother, the house that flooded, his old school -- to go back to the way things were before. There's a fifth character, a black man from the neighborhood, Clarence Williams (Kenneth Brown, Jr.), who has known the Godchaux family a long time and is doing the "scuffle" in order to keep his head above water (metaphorically).
I can't say much more about the play without giving away key points, but I can tell you that the play is engaging and absorbing. Things are gotten "right" -- the way New Orleans folks really talk, how people were immediately after the Storm, the tangled feelings, and mixed-up neighborhoods. The actors are all believable and sink into their parts. It makes you laugh knowingly, nod your head, and even tear up occasionally.
I totally recommend you go see this play, and look for the other two plays in this trilogy.
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Being Greek for Two Out of Three Days
The Greek Fest sponsored by Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Cathedral and the local Greek community was held last weekend. As happened last year, the Greek Fest coincided with the Bayou St. John Bayou Boogaloo festival, so hard choices had to be made. (Although the energetic and the enterprising could have squeezed in both, at least theoretically. The Times-Picayune suggested renting canoes at the Greek Fest and then paddling your way to the Boogaloo -- I don't know how many people actually did that though.)
Big Man had a gig at the Boogaloo with Russell Batiste's band on Saturday, with requirements to arrive at least an hour early, so that meant no Greek Fest for us on that day. Since (loyal readers of this blog may recall) last year we missed the roast lamb-on-a-spit by going to the Greek Fest on the Sunday, we were determined not to miss out this year. And so, with this in mind, we arrived at the Greek Fest on Friday within a few minutes of the gates opening for the first time. (We were so early that they hadn't put the rock-climbing wall upright yet!) We were happy to be among the first in line to get our pound of roast lamb (and then another pound to take home.)
All three days of the Greek Fest (sign out front: "Be Greek for Three Days!") were heavily overcast with grey and even black clouds, but it never did rain much (there was some misting or drizzling on Sunday evening, but that was it), but as many folks know, festivals with clouds are the best ones. The Greek community had done a little rearranging of the festival layout, and completely eliminated the Porta-Potties, electing to go with the luxury model air conditioned trailer with flush toilets and running water sinks --a good decision! Those folks keep the extensive lawn of the church grounds in excellent shape -- full, lush, and thick, it's like a comfortable green carpet. The view on the bayou was sweet, and there were ample breezes. Really lovely festival weather.
The people-watching was superb. In addition to the attractive members of the Greek Orthodox community, of all ages and genders, there were African-Americans and Latinos and Indian-Americans and white of all kinds. It was like a virtual festival United Nations. Sunday was especially fun, since it had been advertised that folks in "family-friendly" togas would get in free, and be eligible for a Toga Contest. There were some sights, believe you me! We saw the woman who won, an older lady of apparent Greek lineage, whose elegant and tasteful toga made her into a goddess. We gave her props for sure.
In addition to the fabulous succulent roast lamb, there was also fried calamari with feta cheese, feta fries (French fries with feta), souvlaki, gyros, and a full Greek dinner with 3 courses. (Good trick: on Sunday evening, as the festival draws to a close, the ladies in the cafeteria line really heap your plate, just piling it up, all for the same reasonable price.) There was a wealth of Greek and American alcohol to imbibe (judging from all the empty ouzo bottles in the trash, there were lots of hangovers round the city), pomegranate iced tea (yum!), fresh lemonade, sodas, Greek coffee (iced and hot). For dessert, there were booths selling Greek pastries, either singly or in "express boxes" with a nice assortment. There was also a killer baklava sundae (like baklava NEEDS ice cream and chocolate syrup, right?) and something they were calling "Greek beignets" covered in Greek honey. (A kids area had snowballs and hot dogs, but that doesn't really count.)
Inside the community center, past the cafeteria, a Greek grocery store had been created. Six kinds of Greek cheeses were available (we bought five), along with pitas and Greek loaf breads, olives, frozen trays of homemade Greek entrees to take home, eggplant, feta, and fish rose dips in plastic containers, orzo mixes, Greek salad olive oil, salad dressing, and (yum!) Greek honey infused with pear. There were natural sponges from off the coast of Greece for your bath, and wonderful hard-milled soaps made of Greek olive oil. There was also canned goods and pottery. You could've spent a fortune in there, but we managed to escape with about $40 worth of groceries, money well spent.
Booths around the periphery of the festival grounds sold art, jewelry, candles, perfume, religious icons, clothing for both sexes and for children, and the ubiquitous belly-dancer scarves with the jangly border of tiny faux coins. (They must've sold a ton of those, since every woman under the age of 40 had apparently bought one and immediately tied it around her hips.)
The Greek group Alpha-Omega displayed great musicianship and sense of style, and huge numbers of people, both Greek and non-Greek, were dancing in the dance floor area in front of the stage. Giant speakers were set up around the grounds, so that the music was everywhere.
Friday we had been kind of rushed, since Big Man had to get to Bourbon Street for his regular gig, but Sunday afternoon and evening there was no rush. It was a sweet to be there, with the other New Orleanians turning Greek for one weekend, eating ourselves silly, enjoying music, and watching the interesting and attractive people go by.
On the edge of Bayou St. John, under a large oak, someone had set up a giant soft electric light in a paper globe lantern. As the sun went down and the sky darkened, it was like a lovely full moon dipping down to light the ending of the festival.
Big Man had a gig at the Boogaloo with Russell Batiste's band on Saturday, with requirements to arrive at least an hour early, so that meant no Greek Fest for us on that day. Since (loyal readers of this blog may recall) last year we missed the roast lamb-on-a-spit by going to the Greek Fest on the Sunday, we were determined not to miss out this year. And so, with this in mind, we arrived at the Greek Fest on Friday within a few minutes of the gates opening for the first time. (We were so early that they hadn't put the rock-climbing wall upright yet!) We were happy to be among the first in line to get our pound of roast lamb (and then another pound to take home.)
All three days of the Greek Fest (sign out front: "Be Greek for Three Days!") were heavily overcast with grey and even black clouds, but it never did rain much (there was some misting or drizzling on Sunday evening, but that was it), but as many folks know, festivals with clouds are the best ones. The Greek community had done a little rearranging of the festival layout, and completely eliminated the Porta-Potties, electing to go with the luxury model air conditioned trailer with flush toilets and running water sinks --a good decision! Those folks keep the extensive lawn of the church grounds in excellent shape -- full, lush, and thick, it's like a comfortable green carpet. The view on the bayou was sweet, and there were ample breezes. Really lovely festival weather.
The people-watching was superb. In addition to the attractive members of the Greek Orthodox community, of all ages and genders, there were African-Americans and Latinos and Indian-Americans and white of all kinds. It was like a virtual festival United Nations. Sunday was especially fun, since it had been advertised that folks in "family-friendly" togas would get in free, and be eligible for a Toga Contest. There were some sights, believe you me! We saw the woman who won, an older lady of apparent Greek lineage, whose elegant and tasteful toga made her into a goddess. We gave her props for sure.
In addition to the fabulous succulent roast lamb, there was also fried calamari with feta cheese, feta fries (French fries with feta), souvlaki, gyros, and a full Greek dinner with 3 courses. (Good trick: on Sunday evening, as the festival draws to a close, the ladies in the cafeteria line really heap your plate, just piling it up, all for the same reasonable price.) There was a wealth of Greek and American alcohol to imbibe (judging from all the empty ouzo bottles in the trash, there were lots of hangovers round the city), pomegranate iced tea (yum!), fresh lemonade, sodas, Greek coffee (iced and hot). For dessert, there were booths selling Greek pastries, either singly or in "express boxes" with a nice assortment. There was also a killer baklava sundae (like baklava NEEDS ice cream and chocolate syrup, right?) and something they were calling "Greek beignets" covered in Greek honey. (A kids area had snowballs and hot dogs, but that doesn't really count.)
Inside the community center, past the cafeteria, a Greek grocery store had been created. Six kinds of Greek cheeses were available (we bought five), along with pitas and Greek loaf breads, olives, frozen trays of homemade Greek entrees to take home, eggplant, feta, and fish rose dips in plastic containers, orzo mixes, Greek salad olive oil, salad dressing, and (yum!) Greek honey infused with pear. There were natural sponges from off the coast of Greece for your bath, and wonderful hard-milled soaps made of Greek olive oil. There was also canned goods and pottery. You could've spent a fortune in there, but we managed to escape with about $40 worth of groceries, money well spent.
Booths around the periphery of the festival grounds sold art, jewelry, candles, perfume, religious icons, clothing for both sexes and for children, and the ubiquitous belly-dancer scarves with the jangly border of tiny faux coins. (They must've sold a ton of those, since every woman under the age of 40 had apparently bought one and immediately tied it around her hips.)
The Greek group Alpha-Omega displayed great musicianship and sense of style, and huge numbers of people, both Greek and non-Greek, were dancing in the dance floor area in front of the stage. Giant speakers were set up around the grounds, so that the music was everywhere.
Friday we had been kind of rushed, since Big Man had to get to Bourbon Street for his regular gig, but Sunday afternoon and evening there was no rush. It was a sweet to be there, with the other New Orleanians turning Greek for one weekend, eating ourselves silly, enjoying music, and watching the interesting and attractive people go by.
On the edge of Bayou St. John, under a large oak, someone had set up a giant soft electric light in a paper globe lantern. As the sun went down and the sky darkened, it was like a lovely full moon dipping down to light the ending of the festival.
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
Looking for Buddy Bolden
Having just finished one of the books we bought at Jazz Fest, In Search of Buddy Bolden by tireless researcher Donald Marquis, Big Man and I took it upon ourselves to check a few spots associated with the famed cornetist (NOT trumpeter!) who is thought by many to be the "inventor" of jazz. Since we were headed out to City Park, to do one of our long walks, we decided to drive down Carrollton Avenue along the way and see if we could find the sites of what used to be two outdoor parks or picnic grounds on the edge of the black neighborhood of Gert Town where Buddy Bolden and his band used to play on weekends for enthusiastic crowds of mostly, if not entirely, black folks.
One was called Lincoln Park and the other, Johnson Park. I believe but do not know for sure that the two parks, which were primarily for black folks, had been named after Presidents Lincoln and Andrew Johnson (Lincoln's vice-president), who would have been associated in the minds of African-Americans with emancipation and freedom. They were located across Carrollton Avenue from each other, Lincoln on the Uptown side and Johnson on the Downtown side, bounded by what is now Oleander and Forshey Streets. According to Marquis, Lincoln Park was the more developed, with, in addition to trees and picnic tables and open bandstands (which both had), a Ferris wheel and other amusement rides, a covered skating rink and an indoor theater. Lincoln also had more events and special promotions, including the regular ascent of a hot-air balloon with a dare-devil balloonist who used to do aerial stunts.
Marquis reports that whenever Buddy Bolden and his band played at one park, a rival band would be at the other, and it was Buddy's practice to try to outplay and outdo the other band, so that the crowds would leave that band and cross the street to come to where Buddy was. Buddy named this, "Calling his children home" and he would do something similar in town as well, often blowing his horn out the window of the hall to entice revelers at another hall to come to him.
We found the blocks in question, one block on the lakeside of the Carrollton and Earhart intersection. Lincoln Park's former block had various buildings facing onto Carrollton, looking like they were built no earlier than the 1930s (which was when Lincoln Park was sold and developed), but as we went down Forshey, we noticed an auto-repair place on the back corner of the lot that was shaped long and narrow, made of tin, with an arched-over roof of the same material. According to Marquis' map, this would have been the spot at Lincoln Park where the skating rink would have been. The skating rink I patronized as a kid in the Lower Ninth Ward had been shaped and constructed in a similar fashion. We wondered -- could this be the *actual* skating rink building, now re-purposed?
We made the turn at the end of the block on Dublin and strained to see inside the block, behind the houses and businesses that now made up the block. At a used car lot that faces on Dublin, we got a glimpse in the back of what looked like a rather large open shed-like structure, in the approximate location of where the open bandstand would have been in Marquis' layout of Lincoln Park. (I wish I could direct you to a spot on the Internet that would show you the plan of Lincoln Park, but unfortunately it's nowhere on the Web, and can only be found in Marquis' book.) My heart actually beat a little faster -- what if that was all that was left of the actual pavillion where Buddy Bolden stood up and blew his cornet to call his children home?
Big Man was in favor of getting out of the car and going into the used car lot, to try to see more of that open structure, but for whatever reason I didn't want to do that, so we contented ourselves with driving around the block. As we made the turn onto Oleander, there was a building on the corner, newly painted and stuccoed, that had a sign in front advertising it as rental hall for large group events. It was hard to tell the date of the structure, it was so heavily altered, but could this hall be all that was left of the theater that had been in this general location in Lincoln Park? (Buddy did not play in the theater, only in the outdoor bandstand; the theater was for musicals and vaudeville and plays.) In any case, it gave me a funny feeling.
Like Bolden's fans, we crossed over Carrollton to the site of Johnson Park and found that while the Carrollton side was developed, the back part of the block toward Short Street was empty, a fenced lot. We surmised that there had been something there, at one time, pre-Katrina perhaps, but had been torn down -- we did not think it has been vacant all that time since the early 1900s. According to Marquis, Johnson had been a less developed park to begin with, and now there was nothing at all on this side to give you a glimpse of anything associated with Buddy Bolden.
As we continued to City Park, I felt a strange exhilaration, as though we had had a glimpse, not of Buddy Bolden himself, of course, but at least of something connected with him.
Our walk through City Park was fun but relatively uneventful (see previous post about the tree that wouldn't die), and my mind was stuck on Buddy. I suggested that we look for Holt Cemetery, where Buddy was buried in an unmarked grave, after his death at the Jackson State Institution for the Insane. In the early 21st century, pre-K, a group of jazz lovers gathered donations from around the world and with the help of Delgado College (which borders the cemetery), a monument was erected for him and a big jazz funeral was held. I was living in the Philadelphia area at the time, and one of my sisters had sent me the newspaper coverage of the event, but I had never been there.
We found poor little truncated "Buddy Bolden Place" just off City Park Avenue, behind Delgado. (Don't let anyone tell you that the City of New Orleans named a "street" after Buddy -- all they did was designate a lonely, naked, one-block stretch of Toulouse Street leading to Holt Cemetery as Buddy's "Place." Huh! They said they did it that way so nobody living on it would have to go to the trouble of changing all their IDs, but it's a poor excuse of a tribute, if you ask me.)
Holt Cemetery was established in 1879, which would have been the beginning of the post-Reconstruction, Jim-Crow era, as basically a potter's field for black people. Today, no plots are available for purchase, but families with loved ones buried there are allowed to make new burials in the same plot, successively on top. What happened with Buddy Bolden is that over time with no family to keep it up, his original plot was dug up, what was left of his bones buried deeper, and then more burials were made above him. All we can know now is the general area where his plot was located.
It was easy to find Buddy's monument; it is located right off one of the few driveways through the cemetery (please don't picture something paved, we're just talking tracks where brave vehicles could navigate if it was dry). To be helpful, someone -- perhaps somebody from the Funeral Services Education department at Delgado, which has kind of taken on the cemetery as their project, albeit without any funding -- has made a crude map of the place, posted on the wall of the little caretaker house near the entrance, marking where it can be found, as well as other sites of interest. Buddy's monument ("Blowingest man since Gabriel," Jelly Roll Morton) needed a weed-whacker and I was sorry we had not brought anything. We promised to come back on All Saints Day (Boy, that list keeps growing!).
We walked around and marveled at the graves and monuments and the old, unused single crematoria on the grounds. Holt is an strange and interesting place, both gay and sad at the same time, historic and current. (You can see photographs of the place online. There are thousands and thousands of websites devoted to it; apparently it has quite a following.) Holt features graves marked with home-made, folk art-style grave markers, graves decorated profusely with artificial flowers, graves holding the favorite items of the dead (most poignant are graves of children with their toys), graves destroyed by Katrina's flood waters (you can tell by the way the wooden grave frame has floated up and landed askew from its original place). We stayed for quite a while, making our way painfully around the higgledy-piggledy graves and the rutted, almost gullied cemetery. It gave us strangely mixed feelings.
We were leaving Holt Cemetery when a young white couple in a new looking white PT Cruiser with Louisiana plates pulled up and began taking pictures out the windows of the car. I walked over and asked if they were there to see Buddy Bolden's grave, figuring I could be helpful and direct them to it. Turns out they weren't, in particular, just had heard about it and wanted to see it.
The young woman got out of the car, looked around a bit, and turned to me in wonder. "They're buried in the ground," she breathed out, in tones of amazement and even disbelief. "Yes, it's a poor people burial ground," I said, "They couldn't afford vaults." (Big Man shook his head and laughed about that all the way home, how only in New Orleans could an adult person be surprised at in-ground burial.)
One was called Lincoln Park and the other, Johnson Park. I believe but do not know for sure that the two parks, which were primarily for black folks, had been named after Presidents Lincoln and Andrew Johnson (Lincoln's vice-president), who would have been associated in the minds of African-Americans with emancipation and freedom. They were located across Carrollton Avenue from each other, Lincoln on the Uptown side and Johnson on the Downtown side, bounded by what is now Oleander and Forshey Streets. According to Marquis, Lincoln Park was the more developed, with, in addition to trees and picnic tables and open bandstands (which both had), a Ferris wheel and other amusement rides, a covered skating rink and an indoor theater. Lincoln also had more events and special promotions, including the regular ascent of a hot-air balloon with a dare-devil balloonist who used to do aerial stunts.
Marquis reports that whenever Buddy Bolden and his band played at one park, a rival band would be at the other, and it was Buddy's practice to try to outplay and outdo the other band, so that the crowds would leave that band and cross the street to come to where Buddy was. Buddy named this, "Calling his children home" and he would do something similar in town as well, often blowing his horn out the window of the hall to entice revelers at another hall to come to him.
We found the blocks in question, one block on the lakeside of the Carrollton and Earhart intersection. Lincoln Park's former block had various buildings facing onto Carrollton, looking like they were built no earlier than the 1930s (which was when Lincoln Park was sold and developed), but as we went down Forshey, we noticed an auto-repair place on the back corner of the lot that was shaped long and narrow, made of tin, with an arched-over roof of the same material. According to Marquis' map, this would have been the spot at Lincoln Park where the skating rink would have been. The skating rink I patronized as a kid in the Lower Ninth Ward had been shaped and constructed in a similar fashion. We wondered -- could this be the *actual* skating rink building, now re-purposed?
We made the turn at the end of the block on Dublin and strained to see inside the block, behind the houses and businesses that now made up the block. At a used car lot that faces on Dublin, we got a glimpse in the back of what looked like a rather large open shed-like structure, in the approximate location of where the open bandstand would have been in Marquis' layout of Lincoln Park. (I wish I could direct you to a spot on the Internet that would show you the plan of Lincoln Park, but unfortunately it's nowhere on the Web, and can only be found in Marquis' book.) My heart actually beat a little faster -- what if that was all that was left of the actual pavillion where Buddy Bolden stood up and blew his cornet to call his children home?
Big Man was in favor of getting out of the car and going into the used car lot, to try to see more of that open structure, but for whatever reason I didn't want to do that, so we contented ourselves with driving around the block. As we made the turn onto Oleander, there was a building on the corner, newly painted and stuccoed, that had a sign in front advertising it as rental hall for large group events. It was hard to tell the date of the structure, it was so heavily altered, but could this hall be all that was left of the theater that had been in this general location in Lincoln Park? (Buddy did not play in the theater, only in the outdoor bandstand; the theater was for musicals and vaudeville and plays.) In any case, it gave me a funny feeling.
Like Bolden's fans, we crossed over Carrollton to the site of Johnson Park and found that while the Carrollton side was developed, the back part of the block toward Short Street was empty, a fenced lot. We surmised that there had been something there, at one time, pre-Katrina perhaps, but had been torn down -- we did not think it has been vacant all that time since the early 1900s. According to Marquis, Johnson had been a less developed park to begin with, and now there was nothing at all on this side to give you a glimpse of anything associated with Buddy Bolden.
As we continued to City Park, I felt a strange exhilaration, as though we had had a glimpse, not of Buddy Bolden himself, of course, but at least of something connected with him.
Our walk through City Park was fun but relatively uneventful (see previous post about the tree that wouldn't die), and my mind was stuck on Buddy. I suggested that we look for Holt Cemetery, where Buddy was buried in an unmarked grave, after his death at the Jackson State Institution for the Insane. In the early 21st century, pre-K, a group of jazz lovers gathered donations from around the world and with the help of Delgado College (which borders the cemetery), a monument was erected for him and a big jazz funeral was held. I was living in the Philadelphia area at the time, and one of my sisters had sent me the newspaper coverage of the event, but I had never been there.
We found poor little truncated "Buddy Bolden Place" just off City Park Avenue, behind Delgado. (Don't let anyone tell you that the City of New Orleans named a "street" after Buddy -- all they did was designate a lonely, naked, one-block stretch of Toulouse Street leading to Holt Cemetery as Buddy's "Place." Huh! They said they did it that way so nobody living on it would have to go to the trouble of changing all their IDs, but it's a poor excuse of a tribute, if you ask me.)
Holt Cemetery was established in 1879, which would have been the beginning of the post-Reconstruction, Jim-Crow era, as basically a potter's field for black people. Today, no plots are available for purchase, but families with loved ones buried there are allowed to make new burials in the same plot, successively on top. What happened with Buddy Bolden is that over time with no family to keep it up, his original plot was dug up, what was left of his bones buried deeper, and then more burials were made above him. All we can know now is the general area where his plot was located.
It was easy to find Buddy's monument; it is located right off one of the few driveways through the cemetery (please don't picture something paved, we're just talking tracks where brave vehicles could navigate if it was dry). To be helpful, someone -- perhaps somebody from the Funeral Services Education department at Delgado, which has kind of taken on the cemetery as their project, albeit without any funding -- has made a crude map of the place, posted on the wall of the little caretaker house near the entrance, marking where it can be found, as well as other sites of interest. Buddy's monument ("Blowingest man since Gabriel," Jelly Roll Morton) needed a weed-whacker and I was sorry we had not brought anything. We promised to come back on All Saints Day (Boy, that list keeps growing!).
We walked around and marveled at the graves and monuments and the old, unused single crematoria on the grounds. Holt is an strange and interesting place, both gay and sad at the same time, historic and current. (You can see photographs of the place online. There are thousands and thousands of websites devoted to it; apparently it has quite a following.) Holt features graves marked with home-made, folk art-style grave markers, graves decorated profusely with artificial flowers, graves holding the favorite items of the dead (most poignant are graves of children with their toys), graves destroyed by Katrina's flood waters (you can tell by the way the wooden grave frame has floated up and landed askew from its original place). We stayed for quite a while, making our way painfully around the higgledy-piggledy graves and the rutted, almost gullied cemetery. It gave us strangely mixed feelings.
We were leaving Holt Cemetery when a young white couple in a new looking white PT Cruiser with Louisiana plates pulled up and began taking pictures out the windows of the car. I walked over and asked if they were there to see Buddy Bolden's grave, figuring I could be helpful and direct them to it. Turns out they weren't, in particular, just had heard about it and wanted to see it.
The young woman got out of the car, looked around a bit, and turned to me in wonder. "They're buried in the ground," she breathed out, in tones of amazement and even disbelief. "Yes, it's a poor people burial ground," I said, "They couldn't afford vaults." (Big Man shook his head and laughed about that all the way home, how only in New Orleans could an adult person be surprised at in-ground burial.)
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Symbol of New Orleans
Seen in City Park, across the lagoon from the old casino building, on the City Park Avenue side:
The remains of a giant old oak tree, probably more than a hundred and fifty years old, destroyed in Hurricane Katrina. All that's left is the stump, about 3 feet high, with a chunk of worn-looking cement sticking out of a section of it -- as if, before the Storm, the tree had had a large hollow spot that had been filled in by pouring cement into it. You could see from the chunks of the original trunk that were on the ground that the tree had had a lot of rot, and despite the attempted "save" with the cement, it wouldn't have been long for this world, Katrina or no.
Apparently, the tree had broken off unevenly, since on the side opposite where the stump was nearly horizontal, there was a tall splintered piece of inner core and outer bark sticking up in the air, shaped like a shard of broken glass.
At the very top of that ragged, jagged piece, waving with shreds of Spanish moss, was a spindly little branch, still somehow clinging to its source. And on that little branch were green, healthy-looking, living leaves.
In spite of everything, it still lived! With all it had been through, this old tree was clinging to Life, sending out a shoot, putting forth leaves.
Incredible, inspiring. A metaphor for the City That Care Forgot. Still clinging to Life, still somehow finding a way to live.
Yeah you right!
The remains of a giant old oak tree, probably more than a hundred and fifty years old, destroyed in Hurricane Katrina. All that's left is the stump, about 3 feet high, with a chunk of worn-looking cement sticking out of a section of it -- as if, before the Storm, the tree had had a large hollow spot that had been filled in by pouring cement into it. You could see from the chunks of the original trunk that were on the ground that the tree had had a lot of rot, and despite the attempted "save" with the cement, it wouldn't have been long for this world, Katrina or no.
Apparently, the tree had broken off unevenly, since on the side opposite where the stump was nearly horizontal, there was a tall splintered piece of inner core and outer bark sticking up in the air, shaped like a shard of broken glass.
At the very top of that ragged, jagged piece, waving with shreds of Spanish moss, was a spindly little branch, still somehow clinging to its source. And on that little branch were green, healthy-looking, living leaves.
In spite of everything, it still lived! With all it had been through, this old tree was clinging to Life, sending out a shoot, putting forth leaves.
Incredible, inspiring. A metaphor for the City That Care Forgot. Still clinging to Life, still somehow finding a way to live.
Yeah you right!
Monday, May 4, 2009
Jazz Fest 09 -- Day 7 (Last day)
This is how the last day of Jazz Fest 09 went:
It was a heavily overcast day, with the usual and unpredictable "scattered showers" in the forecast. The emotional feeling was ambivalent -- excitement, joy, sadness at the fest ending for the year, and yet a sense of relief that it's over, for who can keep on festing at this rate for more than 7 days? Those mixed emotions gave the day an almost elegiac air, that was aided by all the dark clouds overhead.
We arrived at the fest in time for Allen Toussaint's set at the Acura Stage, which is where we intended to set up. The stage was full, as Allen sat behind a concert grand, with a trumpeter, 2 saxophonists, and Big Sam (of the Funky Nation) on trombone, Renard Poché on guitar, a bassist, and 3 women back-up singers, all in white dresses (one of them was Elaine of ELS, the band that does commercial gigs that Big Man plays with). Allen, smooth and elegant as always in a light yellow jacket, played the piano effortlessly, his hand with their long fingers running swiftly over the keys. In a sense this set also had a somewhat mournful feel, as so many of the old hits that Allen played and sang had been written by him for other singers, now gone from us. When he did "Mother-in-Law," he referenced not only Ernie K-Doe, but paid tribute to Miss Antoinette K-Doe, who died just a few months ago. He blended "Certain Girl" (another K-Doe hit, written under the pseudonym Naomi Neville due to a record contract dispute) with "Fortune Teller" which had been the B-side of "Lipstick Traces" -- also written by "Naomi Neville, this time for the late great Benny Spellman. Of course, Allen also did a bit of "Lipstick" -- the man has so many hits he has to try to touch on them all. And he did "Night People" and "Ride Your Pony" which he wrote for the also late-great Lee Dorsey. Them gone, but Allen still here, to remember and to honor them in songs they made famous.
He reprised his wonderful "Yes We Can Can" which he had done with the New Orleans All-Stars last weekend. He sang a song I had never heard before "What Ever Happened to Rock'n'Roll" and of course he did "Southern Nights". I'm probably forgetting half of what he did, but it was a lovely musical journey through the history of New Orleans R&B and Allen's extensive songbook, with each of the terrific musicians backing Allen up getting chances for solos. Every time it was Big Sam's turn, he just blew the roof off the stage, seemingly spurring the other horn men to greater heights and more funkiness.
We left as Allen started introducing the band members, knowing that meant the end, and we hauled it over to the Economy Hall Tent to hear the New Leviathan Oriental Foxtrot Orchestra. We found 2 seats on the aisle near the front and totally enjoyed the whole NLOFO experience -- the fake-naval uniforms, the top-notch musicianship, the crazy-funny early twentieth century novelty song lyrics, the tongue-in-cheek vocals by their long-time lead singer and banjo player, the off-beat instruments, such as the theremin. We caught at least half of their set, and were as charmed and impressed as everyone else there. It's such a shame that there are few venues suitable for an 18+ piece foxtrot orchestra, because it would be so delicious to be able to hear them more often -- and even to dance to them, like the old Tea Dances at the Hyatt back in the day. (Nice Jazz Fest moment for me: a lady sitting behind me at Economy Hall tapped me on the shoulder and politely asked where I had gotten my hat. It was the new hat, purchased the day before, and I was happy to give her directions to the booth to try to get her own.)
We spent some time shopping and browsing around the fest after leaving Economy Hall. We bought some books (naturally, as neither one of us can escape from a bookstore without a purchase), were disappointed that Theresa Anderson's mind-blowing set had not been recorded (damn!), and ate some things we hadn't tried before: dibbi, curry chicken patties, creole stuffed bread. We kept up the search for an African-style shirt or dashiki for Big Man, with no luck. Eventually, we ended up back at our chairs at Acura for part of Neil Young's long set. We heard him do several old hits, to the apparent delight of the devoted fans in the crowd. (Another Jazz Fest moment: a young man screamed at the top of his lungs, "Neil, I want to have your baby!") But we're not really giant Neil Young fans -- in fact, Big Man characterizes Young's singing as "whining" -- so we left to go catch some of Los Lobos, all the way over at Gentilly.
Unfortunately, Los Lobos was a bit late getting going, but we did manage to hear around 3 songs form them, and they were hot. If we had pushed ourselves hard, we might have managed to hear some of Luther Kent and Trickbag in the Blues Tent, but we had a tacit agreement to take things easy, so we missed that set. (Later, we saw Luther in front of the Music Tent, signing CDs for his fans.)
I was feeling the need for something sweet and had originally thought the white chocolate bread pudding would hit the spot, but apparently dozens of other people had the same idea. I'm not about to break my no-line-longer-than-3-people rule on the last day, so I by-passed that crowd and went right up to the counter at Brocato's for a cannoli. They handed me a near-frozen cannoli in a sealed plastic bag, which turned out to be a darn good thing, as you'll see.
As we walked back to our chairs through the large crowd (but NOT as large as it had been the day before for Bon Jovi), dark clouds rolled in overhead, covering the sun and dropping the ambient temperature noticeably by something like 10 or more degrees. The wind picked up too. Uh oh. I figured we were just about to make sure that there was rain for this year's Jazz Fest. We got to our chairs, pulled out my folding umbrella, stashed our double-bagged books in our canvas bag and then put the bag under my chair for extra safety, got out the baggies with our plastic ponchos (souvenirs from the Cherokee Nation's sound and light show, "Unto These Hills" from last summer), and made ourselves ready. We had just tucked our ponchos around us when the rain started -- at first gentle pattering, but then settling into a full-fledged downpour. (My precious cannoli was safe inside its plastic bag, until the rain stopped enough for me to bring it out.)
Luckily, it was during the break between Neil Young and the Neville Brothers, so we weren't missing anything. It was great fun watching folks cope or not cope with the downpour -- pulling tarps off the ground to hold over their heads, the wide variety of ponchos, rain coats, rain suits, garbage bags, umbrellas of diverse sizes and diverse stages of repair. Some folks gave up and were just strolling through it, wet to the skin, hats ruined, feet black with sticky mud. Believe it or not, at 5:39 pm, by the watch on the guy next to me (our cell phones were safely bagged in plastic and deep inside the canvas bag), the rain pretty much stopped, except for the occasional drizzle-mizzle. And so, exactly at 5:40 pm, just as scheduled, Quint Davis came to the mike to introduce "The First Family of New Orleans Music" and the Nevilles came out to screams and applause from the die-hard fans standing or sitting on the soggy field in front of the stage.
As The Nevilles began the set with a long medley of Mardi Gras Indian tunes in honor of their uncle Big Chief Jolley (of the now-defunct Wild Tchoupitoulas), the 2 Andrews brothers, James (trumpet) and Troy ("Trombone Shorty") came on stage, with big hugs from the Nevilles, and blew through the Indian tunes with them. Aaron dedicated "Sarah Smile" to his fiancée, and sang "Tell It Like It Is" with every couple in the damp crowd (including us, of course!) swaying romantically, many doing the slow drag despite the misty light rain. Charles played, Cyrille hollered, Artie sang and played keyboards. To our excitement, Jason Neville came out and sang one number with his father Aaron backing him up. It couldn't have been better, and none of us cared about the come-and-go drizzles. We were warm and happy and connected, to one another and to the men on stage, our leaders, our father-figures, our family. We couldn't believe it was time when Quint came back on, introduced everyone on stage, and pronounced us all Nevillized, and Jazz Fest over for its 40th year. Then he said, "Aaron, please take us out with a prayer." And Aaron sang "Amazing Grace" as only he can, and we were all blessed.
As The Nevilles came to the edge of the stage and took bow after bow, Quint grabbed the mike again. "They don't understand us, those people not from here. They didn't think we should have Mardi Gras after Katrina; they didn't think we should have Jazz Fest after the Storm. They don't know us. They don't know why we need these things and why we dance at funerals after our loved ones are laid to rest. We are who we are -- we are the Family of New Orleans, and the Nevilles are like the heads of our family. This is who we are." Oh god, he probably said more, but I was all choked up and had to turn away.
This is who we are. Jazz Fest is another one of our sacred holidays, with its rituals and foods and great moments. And it's over for another year.
It was a heavily overcast day, with the usual and unpredictable "scattered showers" in the forecast. The emotional feeling was ambivalent -- excitement, joy, sadness at the fest ending for the year, and yet a sense of relief that it's over, for who can keep on festing at this rate for more than 7 days? Those mixed emotions gave the day an almost elegiac air, that was aided by all the dark clouds overhead.
We arrived at the fest in time for Allen Toussaint's set at the Acura Stage, which is where we intended to set up. The stage was full, as Allen sat behind a concert grand, with a trumpeter, 2 saxophonists, and Big Sam (of the Funky Nation) on trombone, Renard Poché on guitar, a bassist, and 3 women back-up singers, all in white dresses (one of them was Elaine of ELS, the band that does commercial gigs that Big Man plays with). Allen, smooth and elegant as always in a light yellow jacket, played the piano effortlessly, his hand with their long fingers running swiftly over the keys. In a sense this set also had a somewhat mournful feel, as so many of the old hits that Allen played and sang had been written by him for other singers, now gone from us. When he did "Mother-in-Law," he referenced not only Ernie K-Doe, but paid tribute to Miss Antoinette K-Doe, who died just a few months ago. He blended "Certain Girl" (another K-Doe hit, written under the pseudonym Naomi Neville due to a record contract dispute) with "Fortune Teller" which had been the B-side of "Lipstick Traces" -- also written by "Naomi Neville, this time for the late great Benny Spellman. Of course, Allen also did a bit of "Lipstick" -- the man has so many hits he has to try to touch on them all. And he did "Night People" and "Ride Your Pony" which he wrote for the also late-great Lee Dorsey. Them gone, but Allen still here, to remember and to honor them in songs they made famous.
He reprised his wonderful "Yes We Can Can" which he had done with the New Orleans All-Stars last weekend. He sang a song I had never heard before "What Ever Happened to Rock'n'Roll" and of course he did "Southern Nights". I'm probably forgetting half of what he did, but it was a lovely musical journey through the history of New Orleans R&B and Allen's extensive songbook, with each of the terrific musicians backing Allen up getting chances for solos. Every time it was Big Sam's turn, he just blew the roof off the stage, seemingly spurring the other horn men to greater heights and more funkiness.
We left as Allen started introducing the band members, knowing that meant the end, and we hauled it over to the Economy Hall Tent to hear the New Leviathan Oriental Foxtrot Orchestra. We found 2 seats on the aisle near the front and totally enjoyed the whole NLOFO experience -- the fake-naval uniforms, the top-notch musicianship, the crazy-funny early twentieth century novelty song lyrics, the tongue-in-cheek vocals by their long-time lead singer and banjo player, the off-beat instruments, such as the theremin. We caught at least half of their set, and were as charmed and impressed as everyone else there. It's such a shame that there are few venues suitable for an 18+ piece foxtrot orchestra, because it would be so delicious to be able to hear them more often -- and even to dance to them, like the old Tea Dances at the Hyatt back in the day. (Nice Jazz Fest moment for me: a lady sitting behind me at Economy Hall tapped me on the shoulder and politely asked where I had gotten my hat. It was the new hat, purchased the day before, and I was happy to give her directions to the booth to try to get her own.)
We spent some time shopping and browsing around the fest after leaving Economy Hall. We bought some books (naturally, as neither one of us can escape from a bookstore without a purchase), were disappointed that Theresa Anderson's mind-blowing set had not been recorded (damn!), and ate some things we hadn't tried before: dibbi, curry chicken patties, creole stuffed bread. We kept up the search for an African-style shirt or dashiki for Big Man, with no luck. Eventually, we ended up back at our chairs at Acura for part of Neil Young's long set. We heard him do several old hits, to the apparent delight of the devoted fans in the crowd. (Another Jazz Fest moment: a young man screamed at the top of his lungs, "Neil, I want to have your baby!") But we're not really giant Neil Young fans -- in fact, Big Man characterizes Young's singing as "whining" -- so we left to go catch some of Los Lobos, all the way over at Gentilly.
Unfortunately, Los Lobos was a bit late getting going, but we did manage to hear around 3 songs form them, and they were hot. If we had pushed ourselves hard, we might have managed to hear some of Luther Kent and Trickbag in the Blues Tent, but we had a tacit agreement to take things easy, so we missed that set. (Later, we saw Luther in front of the Music Tent, signing CDs for his fans.)
I was feeling the need for something sweet and had originally thought the white chocolate bread pudding would hit the spot, but apparently dozens of other people had the same idea. I'm not about to break my no-line-longer-than-3-people rule on the last day, so I by-passed that crowd and went right up to the counter at Brocato's for a cannoli. They handed me a near-frozen cannoli in a sealed plastic bag, which turned out to be a darn good thing, as you'll see.
As we walked back to our chairs through the large crowd (but NOT as large as it had been the day before for Bon Jovi), dark clouds rolled in overhead, covering the sun and dropping the ambient temperature noticeably by something like 10 or more degrees. The wind picked up too. Uh oh. I figured we were just about to make sure that there was rain for this year's Jazz Fest. We got to our chairs, pulled out my folding umbrella, stashed our double-bagged books in our canvas bag and then put the bag under my chair for extra safety, got out the baggies with our plastic ponchos (souvenirs from the Cherokee Nation's sound and light show, "Unto These Hills" from last summer), and made ourselves ready. We had just tucked our ponchos around us when the rain started -- at first gentle pattering, but then settling into a full-fledged downpour. (My precious cannoli was safe inside its plastic bag, until the rain stopped enough for me to bring it out.)
Luckily, it was during the break between Neil Young and the Neville Brothers, so we weren't missing anything. It was great fun watching folks cope or not cope with the downpour -- pulling tarps off the ground to hold over their heads, the wide variety of ponchos, rain coats, rain suits, garbage bags, umbrellas of diverse sizes and diverse stages of repair. Some folks gave up and were just strolling through it, wet to the skin, hats ruined, feet black with sticky mud. Believe it or not, at 5:39 pm, by the watch on the guy next to me (our cell phones were safely bagged in plastic and deep inside the canvas bag), the rain pretty much stopped, except for the occasional drizzle-mizzle. And so, exactly at 5:40 pm, just as scheduled, Quint Davis came to the mike to introduce "The First Family of New Orleans Music" and the Nevilles came out to screams and applause from the die-hard fans standing or sitting on the soggy field in front of the stage.
As The Nevilles began the set with a long medley of Mardi Gras Indian tunes in honor of their uncle Big Chief Jolley (of the now-defunct Wild Tchoupitoulas), the 2 Andrews brothers, James (trumpet) and Troy ("Trombone Shorty") came on stage, with big hugs from the Nevilles, and blew through the Indian tunes with them. Aaron dedicated "Sarah Smile" to his fiancée, and sang "Tell It Like It Is" with every couple in the damp crowd (including us, of course!) swaying romantically, many doing the slow drag despite the misty light rain. Charles played, Cyrille hollered, Artie sang and played keyboards. To our excitement, Jason Neville came out and sang one number with his father Aaron backing him up. It couldn't have been better, and none of us cared about the come-and-go drizzles. We were warm and happy and connected, to one another and to the men on stage, our leaders, our father-figures, our family. We couldn't believe it was time when Quint came back on, introduced everyone on stage, and pronounced us all Nevillized, and Jazz Fest over for its 40th year. Then he said, "Aaron, please take us out with a prayer." And Aaron sang "Amazing Grace" as only he can, and we were all blessed.
As The Nevilles came to the edge of the stage and took bow after bow, Quint grabbed the mike again. "They don't understand us, those people not from here. They didn't think we should have Mardi Gras after Katrina; they didn't think we should have Jazz Fest after the Storm. They don't know us. They don't know why we need these things and why we dance at funerals after our loved ones are laid to rest. We are who we are -- we are the Family of New Orleans, and the Nevilles are like the heads of our family. This is who we are." Oh god, he probably said more, but I was all choked up and had to turn away.
This is who we are. Jazz Fest is another one of our sacred holidays, with its rituals and foods and great moments. And it's over for another year.
Sunday, May 3, 2009
Jazz Fest 09 -- Day 6 (By Myself)
With Big Man so tired with all that playing and all those crowds day and night, he reluctantly decided not to go to the fest this one day. So I was free to get up and go early, which I really like. I left the house about 10 am, parked at our new Jazz Fest friend Mark's house, and walked onto the Fairgrounds about 11:15 am. I had decided not to try to lug stuff around and around all by myself, so I picked a stage to be my base for the whole day. I chose Acura, and found what I thought was a pretty good spot, about middle of the field, toward the left, only a few feet from the blacktop walkway. (This turned out to be a tactical mistake, as you'll see later.) I was early enough that there was no music playing yet.
I placed the chair and the bag and walked over to Congo Square. When Big Man bought his new hat the other day, there was a beautiful black and white picture hat trimmed with beads and buttons on the band that I had admired but for some reason didn't buy at that moment. I had purposely arrived at the fest with no hat on so that I would HAVE to get a new hat. In what turned out to be my second miscalculation of the day, I had assumed that the vendor would take a credit card, but he insisted on cash or check. I had left my checkbook at home (third miscalculation?), so paid the $32 in cash. Unfortunately, with the $20 for parking, this left me with only $17 for the rest of the day. Geez. I'd have to be really-really careful, like the way Jazz Fest used to be when I was a kid and struggling and poor.
Thinking hard, I got a combination plate at the Jamaican booth -- jama jama (sautéed spinach), fried plantains, and chicken fricassee on a stick. It was a giant plate, and I figured it would *almost* satisfy me all day. I also got a strawberry lemonade. I walked back to my chair, easy to do since it was so close to the walkway (sure, *then*), sat down and ate very slowly. It was delicious and very filling. I was feeling hopeful.
The folks who were set up in front of me were very friendly, and offered to share their giant stash of ice with me, so when my lemonade was done, I added ice to the cup and was able to drink as it melted. A little later on, I walked across the crowd to the drink tent and got another water, which I nursed slowly, with my new friend's ice to help. It pretty much worked, but when I got home, I was STARVING.
Another sweet person, another row ahead, noticed I was using my folding umbrella as a sunshade and offered me the use of her small beach umbrella with a pointy bottom. This worked out VERY nicely, keeping me in the shade for the rest of the day. God bless that nice young woman!
The first band up was ¡Otra!, a local Afro-Cuban group with lots of percussion and great horns. They were great, and touchingly happy to have "graduated" to the Acura Stage. I loved the trumpeter, and wished Big Man were there to enjoy it with me. When they were done, they introduced all the players and I was surprised to hear the name of Michael Skinkus, a percussionist who apparently plays with just about *everybody*.
Next up was the great Zachary Richard, Cajun guitarist extraordinaire. What a set! His guitar playing was masterful, and he sang in both English and French, old hits and new songs. One song was sad and angry, a song that Richard said he wished he hadn't written, and was of course about Katrina. He was everything you want in a Jazz Fest set -- danceable tunes, stuff to make you think, some sad songs, ending on an upbeat note. He bade us good-bye in English and French ("Bonne aprés-midi!" "Good afternoon!") and we were all happy.
Richard was followed by a gigantic Zydeco review, with Buckwheat Zydeco, Boozoo Chavis, Rockin' Dopsie Jr. and a host of others. There must have been 4 or 5 squeezeboxes, and 3 or 4 Cajun washboards. What an amazing set! Even when they promised from the stage that they were gonna "slow it down" they just couldn't bring themselves to do it -- everything was fast-paced, high energy, almost frenetic. Folks were dancing and jumping and waving their arms in the air. It was wild. It was over before we knew it.
Next up was the good doctor, Mack Rebenack, otherwise known as Dr. John. A huge group of great musicians, including Charlie Miller on trumpet, filled the stage to back him up, and began the set with a Mardi Gras beat. Dr. John walked out slowly, leaning on a large decorated cane. He sat down between a piano and an organ (so he could play both, almost at the same time) and swung right into "Iko Iko." He did "Right Place, Wrong Time" with the crowd supplying the "Ooohs" right on cue. Old tunes, new tunes, all in Mack's inimitable style. He did his "Save the Wetlands" and then went into one of the pissed-off tunes from his latest post-Katrina album. (In one of the lyrics, he told "Miss Billie Holiday" that the new "strange fruit" was bodies, not hanging from trees, but lying on the ground, victims of flood waters from lousy levees). He was wonderful and powerful and even the angry songs had an agreeable, "Dr. John" beat. The 65 minutes flew by.
By now, after Dr. John and before Bon Jovi, the crowd had swelled amazingly. The walkway was no longer passable -- it was wall to wall people who had apparently decided that in the absence of any place better, they would just stay right there. To get to a Portalet, I had to quite literally push my way through. I headed to what I supposed would be the back of the crowd so I could cut over to the track where the Portalets were. But there was no back to the crowd -- the Acura-minded multitudes filled the entire field all the way to the Jamaican food booth. I finally was able to cross over near the Congo Square Stage (!), but all the Portalets there were terribly crowded. I walked back to the next group and they were packed too. I kept on going, moving closer to the Acura Stage, and was eventually able to get into a line of only 3 people (I keep to my rule even on the last 2 days of the fest).
Afterwards, I went to the crossover bridge that is the closest to Acura, and began making my way through the crowd, along the white line in front of the chairs. It was relatively easy, as people had left a kind of neutral space between the standees and the chair people. Then, I came to where there had been a gap over the orange track covering the sound cables -- which now was blocked by barricades! There was a small group of young people ahead of me, who also had thought they could cross there, and after a moment's hesitation, the lead boy pulled the barricade out and led his little band over. I hustled to keep up with them.
Unfortunately, on the other side, there was no gap between the people standing and the people sitting -- the standees were practically on top of the feet of the folks in the chairs. It was impossible to move, almost impossible to breathe. A frustrated security guy was there, trapped himself, hollering furiously, "There is NO passageway! You have to go through the chairs!!" I turned and faced the chairs and tried to see a way through. There didn't seem to be any. Finally, with lots of "'Scuse me's" I just tiptoed and pushed and stepped on tarps, keeping the pole with the red flag in front of the row in front of my chair always in sight. I reached an impasse with a wall of chairs and headed back to the packed walkway. Good grief! Some people had actually set up circles of chairs in the middle of what was supposed to be a walkway, and then THEY acted aggravated when folks tried to get by! Incredible! (Taught me a lesson for the next day -- DO NOT set up near a walkway, but near the track.)
Whew! Relieved, I sank into my chair and took a good long pull of my ice water. A few minutes later, the Rebirth Brass Band marched onto the stage, playing a loud and raucous version of "The Saints," leading the Bon Jovi band onto the stage. The crowd roared as Rebirth marched off, still playing as for a parade. Jon Bon Jovi came out, looking, as he does, younger than his years, in a sleeveless back T and camo cargo pants. (Bon Jovi has for some years cut his hair to a more appropriate length for his age and the calendar year, but the other members of the band have apparently not got the word and sported long, straggly, '80's hair.)
The crowd belonged to Bon Jovi, knowing almost every song by heart, screaming cheers at the first bars, and singing along word for word. Jon seemed in a tremendous good mood (which must be easy to do, when you can see a multitude of people, almost as far as the eye can see, all there for YOU). He said how great it was to be back in New Orleans, and told us about how deeply affected he had been by Katrina, and how he and the band had come down to Houma afterwards and built something like 20 houses for folks, some of whom were his guests today. He said how happy it made him to see New Orleans and Louisiana getting better and stronger, and dedicated the next song to "all of you, and all you're doing here." The song was "I Love This Town."
He did all the crowd favorites: "My Life," "Bad Medicine," "Dead or Alive." He did "Who Says You Can't Go Home" with its chorus that back when I was preparing to leave Jersey and come home here always made tear up: "Who says you can't home?/The only place they call me one of their own./Who says you can't go back?/I've been around the world and a matter of fact/It's the one place left I want to be--Who says you can't go home?" Of course I teared up again.
He told us it felt like summer and ran through songs redolent of summer at the Jersey Shore: "First Kiss," for one and others not associated with him but that he did well. In the one small sour note, he shut the set down at only an hour (the schedule said 2 hours). The crowd hollered and screamed for more, and the band came back and did 2 more songs, but still, the set ended a good 30 minutes early. I wondered about it, but it was just as well. I was really hungry and wanted to get home to see Big Man before he had to leave for Bourbon Street.
A good day, but it would've been better had my sweetheart been able to be with me.
I placed the chair and the bag and walked over to Congo Square. When Big Man bought his new hat the other day, there was a beautiful black and white picture hat trimmed with beads and buttons on the band that I had admired but for some reason didn't buy at that moment. I had purposely arrived at the fest with no hat on so that I would HAVE to get a new hat. In what turned out to be my second miscalculation of the day, I had assumed that the vendor would take a credit card, but he insisted on cash or check. I had left my checkbook at home (third miscalculation?), so paid the $32 in cash. Unfortunately, with the $20 for parking, this left me with only $17 for the rest of the day. Geez. I'd have to be really-really careful, like the way Jazz Fest used to be when I was a kid and struggling and poor.
Thinking hard, I got a combination plate at the Jamaican booth -- jama jama (sautéed spinach), fried plantains, and chicken fricassee on a stick. It was a giant plate, and I figured it would *almost* satisfy me all day. I also got a strawberry lemonade. I walked back to my chair, easy to do since it was so close to the walkway (sure, *then*), sat down and ate very slowly. It was delicious and very filling. I was feeling hopeful.
The folks who were set up in front of me were very friendly, and offered to share their giant stash of ice with me, so when my lemonade was done, I added ice to the cup and was able to drink as it melted. A little later on, I walked across the crowd to the drink tent and got another water, which I nursed slowly, with my new friend's ice to help. It pretty much worked, but when I got home, I was STARVING.
Another sweet person, another row ahead, noticed I was using my folding umbrella as a sunshade and offered me the use of her small beach umbrella with a pointy bottom. This worked out VERY nicely, keeping me in the shade for the rest of the day. God bless that nice young woman!
The first band up was ¡Otra!, a local Afro-Cuban group with lots of percussion and great horns. They were great, and touchingly happy to have "graduated" to the Acura Stage. I loved the trumpeter, and wished Big Man were there to enjoy it with me. When they were done, they introduced all the players and I was surprised to hear the name of Michael Skinkus, a percussionist who apparently plays with just about *everybody*.
Next up was the great Zachary Richard, Cajun guitarist extraordinaire. What a set! His guitar playing was masterful, and he sang in both English and French, old hits and new songs. One song was sad and angry, a song that Richard said he wished he hadn't written, and was of course about Katrina. He was everything you want in a Jazz Fest set -- danceable tunes, stuff to make you think, some sad songs, ending on an upbeat note. He bade us good-bye in English and French ("Bonne aprés-midi!" "Good afternoon!") and we were all happy.
Richard was followed by a gigantic Zydeco review, with Buckwheat Zydeco, Boozoo Chavis, Rockin' Dopsie Jr. and a host of others. There must have been 4 or 5 squeezeboxes, and 3 or 4 Cajun washboards. What an amazing set! Even when they promised from the stage that they were gonna "slow it down" they just couldn't bring themselves to do it -- everything was fast-paced, high energy, almost frenetic. Folks were dancing and jumping and waving their arms in the air. It was wild. It was over before we knew it.
Next up was the good doctor, Mack Rebenack, otherwise known as Dr. John. A huge group of great musicians, including Charlie Miller on trumpet, filled the stage to back him up, and began the set with a Mardi Gras beat. Dr. John walked out slowly, leaning on a large decorated cane. He sat down between a piano and an organ (so he could play both, almost at the same time) and swung right into "Iko Iko." He did "Right Place, Wrong Time" with the crowd supplying the "Ooohs" right on cue. Old tunes, new tunes, all in Mack's inimitable style. He did his "Save the Wetlands" and then went into one of the pissed-off tunes from his latest post-Katrina album. (In one of the lyrics, he told "Miss Billie Holiday" that the new "strange fruit" was bodies, not hanging from trees, but lying on the ground, victims of flood waters from lousy levees). He was wonderful and powerful and even the angry songs had an agreeable, "Dr. John" beat. The 65 minutes flew by.
By now, after Dr. John and before Bon Jovi, the crowd had swelled amazingly. The walkway was no longer passable -- it was wall to wall people who had apparently decided that in the absence of any place better, they would just stay right there. To get to a Portalet, I had to quite literally push my way through. I headed to what I supposed would be the back of the crowd so I could cut over to the track where the Portalets were. But there was no back to the crowd -- the Acura-minded multitudes filled the entire field all the way to the Jamaican food booth. I finally was able to cross over near the Congo Square Stage (!), but all the Portalets there were terribly crowded. I walked back to the next group and they were packed too. I kept on going, moving closer to the Acura Stage, and was eventually able to get into a line of only 3 people (I keep to my rule even on the last 2 days of the fest).
Afterwards, I went to the crossover bridge that is the closest to Acura, and began making my way through the crowd, along the white line in front of the chairs. It was relatively easy, as people had left a kind of neutral space between the standees and the chair people. Then, I came to where there had been a gap over the orange track covering the sound cables -- which now was blocked by barricades! There was a small group of young people ahead of me, who also had thought they could cross there, and after a moment's hesitation, the lead boy pulled the barricade out and led his little band over. I hustled to keep up with them.
Unfortunately, on the other side, there was no gap between the people standing and the people sitting -- the standees were practically on top of the feet of the folks in the chairs. It was impossible to move, almost impossible to breathe. A frustrated security guy was there, trapped himself, hollering furiously, "There is NO passageway! You have to go through the chairs!!" I turned and faced the chairs and tried to see a way through. There didn't seem to be any. Finally, with lots of "'Scuse me's" I just tiptoed and pushed and stepped on tarps, keeping the pole with the red flag in front of the row in front of my chair always in sight. I reached an impasse with a wall of chairs and headed back to the packed walkway. Good grief! Some people had actually set up circles of chairs in the middle of what was supposed to be a walkway, and then THEY acted aggravated when folks tried to get by! Incredible! (Taught me a lesson for the next day -- DO NOT set up near a walkway, but near the track.)
Whew! Relieved, I sank into my chair and took a good long pull of my ice water. A few minutes later, the Rebirth Brass Band marched onto the stage, playing a loud and raucous version of "The Saints," leading the Bon Jovi band onto the stage. The crowd roared as Rebirth marched off, still playing as for a parade. Jon Bon Jovi came out, looking, as he does, younger than his years, in a sleeveless back T and camo cargo pants. (Bon Jovi has for some years cut his hair to a more appropriate length for his age and the calendar year, but the other members of the band have apparently not got the word and sported long, straggly, '80's hair.)
The crowd belonged to Bon Jovi, knowing almost every song by heart, screaming cheers at the first bars, and singing along word for word. Jon seemed in a tremendous good mood (which must be easy to do, when you can see a multitude of people, almost as far as the eye can see, all there for YOU). He said how great it was to be back in New Orleans, and told us about how deeply affected he had been by Katrina, and how he and the band had come down to Houma afterwards and built something like 20 houses for folks, some of whom were his guests today. He said how happy it made him to see New Orleans and Louisiana getting better and stronger, and dedicated the next song to "all of you, and all you're doing here." The song was "I Love This Town."
He did all the crowd favorites: "My Life," "Bad Medicine," "Dead or Alive." He did "Who Says You Can't Go Home" with its chorus that back when I was preparing to leave Jersey and come home here always made tear up: "Who says you can't home?/The only place they call me one of their own./Who says you can't go back?/I've been around the world and a matter of fact/It's the one place left I want to be--Who says you can't go home?" Of course I teared up again.
He told us it felt like summer and ran through songs redolent of summer at the Jersey Shore: "First Kiss," for one and others not associated with him but that he did well. In the one small sour note, he shut the set down at only an hour (the schedule said 2 hours). The crowd hollered and screamed for more, and the band came back and did 2 more songs, but still, the set ended a good 30 minutes early. I wondered about it, but it was just as well. I was really hungry and wanted to get home to see Big Man before he had to leave for Bourbon Street.
A good day, but it would've been better had my sweetheart been able to be with me.
Saturday, May 2, 2009
Jazz Fest 09 -- Day 5
We got a really late start on Friday. Big Man had played Howlin' Wolf the night before with the Russell Batiste big band and was exhausted after being at the fest all that day. Big Man said it felt like it was a week full of Saturdays, that every day he woke up it was another Saturday -- sort of like the movie "Groundhog Day" but without any emotional payoff.
So I let him sleep in and we didn't get rolling til around noon. What with one thing and another we ended up at the Fairgrounds around 12:15 pm. We had musicians' tickets, but because of a snafu with Walter "Wolfman" Washington's wife/manager (manager/wife?), we did not get a parking pass. (What a drag!) We went in through the Musicians' Gate and then had to wait for a shuttle, since apparently the parking lot attendants give precedence to musicians arriving in *cars* -- like it was our choice to come on foot like that! Although Big Man's gig was at the Blues Tent, we directed the shuttle to the Gentilly Stage so we could enjoy some music before he had to play. We set up our chairs in a terrific spot, right in front of the white line for chairs, just as Frankie Ford (looking very frail and elderly, although spiffy in an orange blazer) left the stage. Too bad we missed "Sea Cruise."
We were both hungry so we headed to the food booths, and grooved to Marcia Ball at Acura (we had just seen her at the Wednesday at the Square concert and so didn't feel inclined to fight the crowd to get close). After eating, we cruised by Congo Square to hear the Dirty Dozen Glass House Reunion with Rebirth. The first tune we heard was good, straight up funk with a brass band twist; the second was a lame, drawn-out version of the classic "What's Goin' On" so we booked it.
We passed through the Native American area, both so Big Man could get maque choux (he can never get enough) and for me to purchase a gorgeous flower brooch in white and pink with green leaves -- all made out of dyed alligator gar scales! (The nice Houma tribe lady had put it aside for me the day before til I could bring a check.) We watched the Indian circle dance going on and passed on through.
It made sense to go to the Blues Tent, both because of the Wolfman set AND because Doc Watson was scheduled for right before. We did not have our backstage passes yet, but we flashed our musicians' ticket to the security guard and said we needed to go backstage in order to get our backstage pass, and he bought it. So it was that we were able to get into the coveted guest area for Doc Watson in a totally packed house -- every single chair was taken, people were piled up at every opening of the tent, and the security people had allowed folks to stand on the far sides. If a regular "full" Blues Tent can hold maybe 2,000 people, there must have been closer to 3,000 in and around there to see and hear Doc Watson.
Onstage was just 2 men, Doc and a younger man who I guessed might be his son, since when I had last seen Doc in person (at Tipitina's about 20 years ago), he had his son playing with him. He was wonderful -- his playing still nimble, his singing still soulful. Wonderful old mountain blues songs, with something like yodeling in the choruses. It was so clear, listening to him, that rock'n'roll has more than African roots based here in New Orleans, it also has mountain roots in Appalachia. To underscore that point, Doc did a few "rockabilly" numbers, and did them superbly. When he was finally done, the thousands of people in the tent screamed and stomped and clapped, I'm sure, til their hands hurt. I sure felt lucky to be there.
Then Big Man came and got me and brought me to the backstage trailer, where all the musicians and their wives and girlfriends were. The backstage trailers are pretty bare-bones, just fake paneling and some folding chairs and tables, but they are air-conditioned to a fare-thee-well AND they have a flush toilet and sink restroom! Wow -- way better than accommodations at the Gospel Tent! There was an ice chest of cold drinks, water, and beer, and a catering tray of little sandwiches. Not bad, but not great either. (Backstage at Howlin' Wolf, there had been Whole Foods guacamole, chips, salsa, home-style chocolate chip cookies and tiny little cupcake brownies, plus ice chests of cold beers, soft drinks, fruit juice, and vodka.)
Wolfman made a point of apologizing to Big Man about the mix-up over the parking pass, and Big Man kept on down-playing it. I guess they ended up pretty much even and on the best of terms. I went round to the guest area and the musicians took the stage, to big applause. (Of course, the tent was not as full as it had been for Doc Watson, but it was a normally full tent, just about all seats taken.) It was terrific set, with Big Man taking several righteous solos.
A parishioner had found me right before the set started, and since there was no music, security was a little lax. I got her inside the guest area with me and she shared her Trout Baquet with me (yum!). As Big Man played with Wolfman's band, she leaned over and said to me, "You must be pretty happy." I thought about my life now, about living in New Orleans, being close to my sisters and brother, serving the church that ordained me that I have always loved, and having my beloved partner-spouse play trumpet at major New Orleans festivals, like French Quarter Festival and Jazz Fest. And I replied to her, "I have never been so happy, so complete, in my whole life." I meant it with my whole heart.
After the Wolfman set, we gathered in the trailer again, and all the musicians congratulated each other while packing up their instruments. They got paid by Wolfman's wife/manager and then dispersed, either to the next stage they were playing at, or to stages they wanted to hear. Since the pay was more than we had expected, we decided to celebrate and walked to the Grandstand for raw oysters and shrimp cocktail. Since we were celebrating, we EACH got a dozen raw and a cocktail.
While we were enjoying the seafood, a group of men in old-fashioned suits and sporting cowboy boots and Stetson hats came to the backstage area of the little Lagniappe Stage. One man was carrying a dobro and came near to the rail and began a conversation with Big Man. They traded compliments -- Big Man saying he had always admired the dobro and wished he could play it, and the dobro man saying that horn men were cool and he had always admired the trumpet. That being done, he obliged us with some quick playing, his fingers sliding on the metal strings. Very cool. We discovered that the group was Driskill Mountain Boys, and they did absolutely killer blue grass.
After that nice little interlude, we made our way back to Gentilly, where Tony Bennett had already started in with an excellent set of total classics. Bennett, in a wig appropriately thin and grey (take note, Ronnie Kole!) and a dapper tailored double-breasted mustard-colored jacket, sounded way better than he had any right to, at his age. He had lost none of his pacing or timing or phrasing. We were way impressed, and stayed longer than we had meant to. It was great to see the giant crowd, people of all ages, groovin' to Tony Bennett.
In the cooling sunset we walked through the neighborhood to our car, feeling it had been a terrific day.
So I let him sleep in and we didn't get rolling til around noon. What with one thing and another we ended up at the Fairgrounds around 12:15 pm. We had musicians' tickets, but because of a snafu with Walter "Wolfman" Washington's wife/manager (manager/wife?), we did not get a parking pass. (What a drag!) We went in through the Musicians' Gate and then had to wait for a shuttle, since apparently the parking lot attendants give precedence to musicians arriving in *cars* -- like it was our choice to come on foot like that! Although Big Man's gig was at the Blues Tent, we directed the shuttle to the Gentilly Stage so we could enjoy some music before he had to play. We set up our chairs in a terrific spot, right in front of the white line for chairs, just as Frankie Ford (looking very frail and elderly, although spiffy in an orange blazer) left the stage. Too bad we missed "Sea Cruise."
We were both hungry so we headed to the food booths, and grooved to Marcia Ball at Acura (we had just seen her at the Wednesday at the Square concert and so didn't feel inclined to fight the crowd to get close). After eating, we cruised by Congo Square to hear the Dirty Dozen Glass House Reunion with Rebirth. The first tune we heard was good, straight up funk with a brass band twist; the second was a lame, drawn-out version of the classic "What's Goin' On" so we booked it.
We passed through the Native American area, both so Big Man could get maque choux (he can never get enough) and for me to purchase a gorgeous flower brooch in white and pink with green leaves -- all made out of dyed alligator gar scales! (The nice Houma tribe lady had put it aside for me the day before til I could bring a check.) We watched the Indian circle dance going on and passed on through.
It made sense to go to the Blues Tent, both because of the Wolfman set AND because Doc Watson was scheduled for right before. We did not have our backstage passes yet, but we flashed our musicians' ticket to the security guard and said we needed to go backstage in order to get our backstage pass, and he bought it. So it was that we were able to get into the coveted guest area for Doc Watson in a totally packed house -- every single chair was taken, people were piled up at every opening of the tent, and the security people had allowed folks to stand on the far sides. If a regular "full" Blues Tent can hold maybe 2,000 people, there must have been closer to 3,000 in and around there to see and hear Doc Watson.
Onstage was just 2 men, Doc and a younger man who I guessed might be his son, since when I had last seen Doc in person (at Tipitina's about 20 years ago), he had his son playing with him. He was wonderful -- his playing still nimble, his singing still soulful. Wonderful old mountain blues songs, with something like yodeling in the choruses. It was so clear, listening to him, that rock'n'roll has more than African roots based here in New Orleans, it also has mountain roots in Appalachia. To underscore that point, Doc did a few "rockabilly" numbers, and did them superbly. When he was finally done, the thousands of people in the tent screamed and stomped and clapped, I'm sure, til their hands hurt. I sure felt lucky to be there.
Then Big Man came and got me and brought me to the backstage trailer, where all the musicians and their wives and girlfriends were. The backstage trailers are pretty bare-bones, just fake paneling and some folding chairs and tables, but they are air-conditioned to a fare-thee-well AND they have a flush toilet and sink restroom! Wow -- way better than accommodations at the Gospel Tent! There was an ice chest of cold drinks, water, and beer, and a catering tray of little sandwiches. Not bad, but not great either. (Backstage at Howlin' Wolf, there had been Whole Foods guacamole, chips, salsa, home-style chocolate chip cookies and tiny little cupcake brownies, plus ice chests of cold beers, soft drinks, fruit juice, and vodka.)
Wolfman made a point of apologizing to Big Man about the mix-up over the parking pass, and Big Man kept on down-playing it. I guess they ended up pretty much even and on the best of terms. I went round to the guest area and the musicians took the stage, to big applause. (Of course, the tent was not as full as it had been for Doc Watson, but it was a normally full tent, just about all seats taken.) It was terrific set, with Big Man taking several righteous solos.
A parishioner had found me right before the set started, and since there was no music, security was a little lax. I got her inside the guest area with me and she shared her Trout Baquet with me (yum!). As Big Man played with Wolfman's band, she leaned over and said to me, "You must be pretty happy." I thought about my life now, about living in New Orleans, being close to my sisters and brother, serving the church that ordained me that I have always loved, and having my beloved partner-spouse play trumpet at major New Orleans festivals, like French Quarter Festival and Jazz Fest. And I replied to her, "I have never been so happy, so complete, in my whole life." I meant it with my whole heart.
After the Wolfman set, we gathered in the trailer again, and all the musicians congratulated each other while packing up their instruments. They got paid by Wolfman's wife/manager and then dispersed, either to the next stage they were playing at, or to stages they wanted to hear. Since the pay was more than we had expected, we decided to celebrate and walked to the Grandstand for raw oysters and shrimp cocktail. Since we were celebrating, we EACH got a dozen raw and a cocktail.
While we were enjoying the seafood, a group of men in old-fashioned suits and sporting cowboy boots and Stetson hats came to the backstage area of the little Lagniappe Stage. One man was carrying a dobro and came near to the rail and began a conversation with Big Man. They traded compliments -- Big Man saying he had always admired the dobro and wished he could play it, and the dobro man saying that horn men were cool and he had always admired the trumpet. That being done, he obliged us with some quick playing, his fingers sliding on the metal strings. Very cool. We discovered that the group was Driskill Mountain Boys, and they did absolutely killer blue grass.
After that nice little interlude, we made our way back to Gentilly, where Tony Bennett had already started in with an excellent set of total classics. Bennett, in a wig appropriately thin and grey (take note, Ronnie Kole!) and a dapper tailored double-breasted mustard-colored jacket, sounded way better than he had any right to, at his age. He had lost none of his pacing or timing or phrasing. We were way impressed, and stayed longer than we had meant to. It was great to see the giant crowd, people of all ages, groovin' to Tony Bennett.
In the cooling sunset we walked through the neighborhood to our car, feeling it had been a terrific day.
Friday, May 1, 2009
Jazz Fest 09 --Day 4 (Local Day)
Thursday of Jazz Fest has long been known as "Local Day." It's like we New Orleanians have the fest to ourselves, and the Fairgrounds are filled with elementary school groups in matching colored t-shirts, supervised by vigilant but relaxed teachers, and large groups of folks of all ages from home for the developmentally disabled. Everyone feels loose; no one is stressed out. There are no lines to speak of and there's just this happy, homey feeling. You gotta love the fest on Local Day.
It was a cloudy day, with some predictions of scattered local showers, but nothing heavy. It was supposed to be in the high 70s, and windy -- as far as we're concerned, a perfect Jazz Fest day. We arrived around 12 noon, after parking again on Lopez with our new parking pal Mark. Our first stop was the Heritage Stage, where the Paulin Brothers Brass Band (heirs to the Doc Paulin Brass Band) were playing. Big Man has played a lot with "young" Doc Paulin, whose instrument in the family band is trombone. On the stage were Paulins on tuba, trumpet, drums, and sax. We moved close in so we could wave to Doc, who was doing a killer 'bone solo. He saw us as he finished and grinned and waved his 'bone at us. We stayed through the next number, a long medley of trad hymns ("Lawd, Lawd," "I'll Fly Away," "Down by the Riverside") and then waved good-bye to Doc on our way to the Gentilly Stage to set up our chairs.
At Gentilly, we found a good spot as a group we didn't know, Jeff & Vida, were playing. We went craft-looking and food foraging, opting for 2 selections that on other Jazz Fest days had long lines: soft-shell crab po boy and pheasant, quail and andouille gumbo. We shared with each other and ate under one of the food pavillions set up and met some other good folks as we listened to music flowing over us from various stages and watched the people going by.
We grabbed iced teas and a duck po boy on our way back to the Gentilly Stage, to catch the rest of Theresa Anderson's set. We arrived as she was doing "Blue Skies" and doing it very well indeed. We approached from the side and walked down the path to our chairs, so we really didn't get a good look at the stage until after we sat down. It sounded to us like she had a line of women singers harmonizing with her, so you can imagine our surprise when we finally sat down (with just the tiniest mist of a rainfall coming down) and saw that only Theresa was on the stage. She was using a looping device, and was taping her own voice and then harmonizing with herself, operating the mechanism with her (bare) feet. She did an old Allen Toussaint song, "Sun Rise, Sun Set" and gave it this eerie haunting quality, crooning in to the mike, scatting with herself, harmonies piling up in layers. It was amazing, uncanny. She did another number, again, all by herself, and we could hardly keep our mouths closed, instead hanging agape, just gobsmacked.
For the next number she brought out some other musicians, obviously friends of hers, and told a story of taping her last album almost entirely in her kitchen in Algiers Point, and she told us about how some of the percussion on that album was Theresa herself, stomping on her kitchen floor. She pointed to her (bare) feet on stage, and the video camera focussed on the small wooden box she was standing on; she told us this would stand in for her kitchen floor. It was a great number, with Theresa stamping her feet as she sawed away on her fiddle, but when the song was over, the musicians all left, and Theresa was along again on stage.
She told us what a privilege it was to be at Jazz Fest (Big Man heartily agreed) and what a gift to live in New Orleans, her true home, she said. She thanked everyone for coming, told us all about her gig Sunday night at Le Petit. And then she said this, her final song, was dedicated to us, the people who go to Jazz Fest and make it what it is. The she began scatting in different nonsense words, looping it so that that as she went into the lyrics, she was already singing with herself, layer on layer, in perfect harmony. "Mother Earth will swallow you, lay your body down." Her voice was crystalline, pure, cutting through the air like ice and landing on us like a cool blessing. in this gigantic Jazz Fest crowd, you could've heard a pin drop. The hairs on my arm and on the back of my neck stood up, and my eyes filled with tears. I'd never heard anything so wondrous as this young Swedish-New Orleanian, singing along with herself, granting us this benediction. "Find the cost of freedom buried in the ground -- Mother Earth will swallow you, lay your body down." When she finished, there was a moment of silence before the crowd erupted into applause and screams. I wiped my face and turned to Big Man and he needed the handkerchief too. Big Man gasped out, "That's now my Jazz Fest Moment."
We needed an emotional break and walked away while the stage crew set up for the Subdudes. We made our way to the music and book tents to look at what was available and talked about purchasing the recording of Theresa Anderson's set as soon as it came out. We got back as the 'dudes took the stage and did a great job with old favorites and some new tunes. We so enjoyed watching my old friend Johnny Magnie on the squeezebox and vocals, and we always love hearing Tommy Malone's rich and expressive voice. It was hard to leave, but we did want to see The Meter Men, so with reluctance we packed up for the long walk across the whole Fairgrounds.
The Meter Men were doing "People Say" as we reached earshot (unfortunately, we had to pass the Cracklins booth on the way) and ran through some other old Meter hits with polish and funk (if those two don't cancel each other out). We stayed for a while, automatically bumping hips in rhythm, as were practically everyone else in the crowd. Who can NOT dance with the Meters?
We passed through the Acura car tent for shade on our way to the Jazz Tent and sat on the grandstand for the Newport All Stars. We were there almost exclusively so that Big Man and I (well, mostly Big Man) could feast our ears on the trumpet playing of the great Randy Brecker, but it turns out everyone on stage was a great talent -- Esperanza Spaulding on upright bass and vocals, Anat Cohhen on sax and clarinet, the great Jimmy Cobb on drums, and Newport Jazz Fest founder George Wein on piano. It was a terrific set, and Brecker played astoundingly. Big Man wanted to get closer, so we climbed down and headed to the front just as Brecker had stepped back on the stage to make room for the solos of the other players. He happened to look over his shoulder just as Big Man was standing near the front on the side. Randy Brecker looked directly at Big Man and it was as though he knew him, or at the very least recognized another trumpet player. He actually waved to Big Man and Big Man tipped his hat back, feeling mighty pleased at the little gesture. We found recently-vacated chairs near the front and stayed to the very end. Big Man was pretty happy and inspired -- so much so that we plans to hear the one-on-one interview with Randy Brecker as our closing set.
We arrived just as the interview started (we were walking, but of course Randy Brecker got an air conditioned ride in a musicians' shuttle!) and got front-row seats. (Interestingly enough, Brecker winked at Big Man as we sat down.) The interview was fascinating -- an engrossing tale of connections and interconnections in the worlds of jazz and pop and rock in New York City, Europe, and even the Mideast. Famous names fly by, this one and that one, this incredible recording and then that one. What got me was how to Brecker, everything was just luck and coincidence, no reference to his talent and his other-worldly playing ability -- his modesty was very endearing. Big Man got up during the Q&A and told Brecker, "I'm a trumpet player too, but I don't have half of your talent or luck!" and went on to ask about the difference in playing jazz and pop. Brecker answered in a way that might have been surprising: he said to him there was not that big a difference, what mattered was the music.
At one point in the interview, as the interviewer went through his notes, in the quiet, you could just hear Emmylou Harris at Gentilly doing a lovely version of "Say a Little Prayer" but that was all we heard of her set. But we were happy with a Jazz Fest day filled with beautiful musical moments.
It was a cloudy day, with some predictions of scattered local showers, but nothing heavy. It was supposed to be in the high 70s, and windy -- as far as we're concerned, a perfect Jazz Fest day. We arrived around 12 noon, after parking again on Lopez with our new parking pal Mark. Our first stop was the Heritage Stage, where the Paulin Brothers Brass Band (heirs to the Doc Paulin Brass Band) were playing. Big Man has played a lot with "young" Doc Paulin, whose instrument in the family band is trombone. On the stage were Paulins on tuba, trumpet, drums, and sax. We moved close in so we could wave to Doc, who was doing a killer 'bone solo. He saw us as he finished and grinned and waved his 'bone at us. We stayed through the next number, a long medley of trad hymns ("Lawd, Lawd," "I'll Fly Away," "Down by the Riverside") and then waved good-bye to Doc on our way to the Gentilly Stage to set up our chairs.
At Gentilly, we found a good spot as a group we didn't know, Jeff & Vida, were playing. We went craft-looking and food foraging, opting for 2 selections that on other Jazz Fest days had long lines: soft-shell crab po boy and pheasant, quail and andouille gumbo. We shared with each other and ate under one of the food pavillions set up and met some other good folks as we listened to music flowing over us from various stages and watched the people going by.
We grabbed iced teas and a duck po boy on our way back to the Gentilly Stage, to catch the rest of Theresa Anderson's set. We arrived as she was doing "Blue Skies" and doing it very well indeed. We approached from the side and walked down the path to our chairs, so we really didn't get a good look at the stage until after we sat down. It sounded to us like she had a line of women singers harmonizing with her, so you can imagine our surprise when we finally sat down (with just the tiniest mist of a rainfall coming down) and saw that only Theresa was on the stage. She was using a looping device, and was taping her own voice and then harmonizing with herself, operating the mechanism with her (bare) feet. She did an old Allen Toussaint song, "Sun Rise, Sun Set" and gave it this eerie haunting quality, crooning in to the mike, scatting with herself, harmonies piling up in layers. It was amazing, uncanny. She did another number, again, all by herself, and we could hardly keep our mouths closed, instead hanging agape, just gobsmacked.
For the next number she brought out some other musicians, obviously friends of hers, and told a story of taping her last album almost entirely in her kitchen in Algiers Point, and she told us about how some of the percussion on that album was Theresa herself, stomping on her kitchen floor. She pointed to her (bare) feet on stage, and the video camera focussed on the small wooden box she was standing on; she told us this would stand in for her kitchen floor. It was a great number, with Theresa stamping her feet as she sawed away on her fiddle, but when the song was over, the musicians all left, and Theresa was along again on stage.
She told us what a privilege it was to be at Jazz Fest (Big Man heartily agreed) and what a gift to live in New Orleans, her true home, she said. She thanked everyone for coming, told us all about her gig Sunday night at Le Petit. And then she said this, her final song, was dedicated to us, the people who go to Jazz Fest and make it what it is. The she began scatting in different nonsense words, looping it so that that as she went into the lyrics, she was already singing with herself, layer on layer, in perfect harmony. "Mother Earth will swallow you, lay your body down." Her voice was crystalline, pure, cutting through the air like ice and landing on us like a cool blessing. in this gigantic Jazz Fest crowd, you could've heard a pin drop. The hairs on my arm and on the back of my neck stood up, and my eyes filled with tears. I'd never heard anything so wondrous as this young Swedish-New Orleanian, singing along with herself, granting us this benediction. "Find the cost of freedom buried in the ground -- Mother Earth will swallow you, lay your body down." When she finished, there was a moment of silence before the crowd erupted into applause and screams. I wiped my face and turned to Big Man and he needed the handkerchief too. Big Man gasped out, "That's now my Jazz Fest Moment."
We needed an emotional break and walked away while the stage crew set up for the Subdudes. We made our way to the music and book tents to look at what was available and talked about purchasing the recording of Theresa Anderson's set as soon as it came out. We got back as the 'dudes took the stage and did a great job with old favorites and some new tunes. We so enjoyed watching my old friend Johnny Magnie on the squeezebox and vocals, and we always love hearing Tommy Malone's rich and expressive voice. It was hard to leave, but we did want to see The Meter Men, so with reluctance we packed up for the long walk across the whole Fairgrounds.
The Meter Men were doing "People Say" as we reached earshot (unfortunately, we had to pass the Cracklins booth on the way) and ran through some other old Meter hits with polish and funk (if those two don't cancel each other out). We stayed for a while, automatically bumping hips in rhythm, as were practically everyone else in the crowd. Who can NOT dance with the Meters?
We passed through the Acura car tent for shade on our way to the Jazz Tent and sat on the grandstand for the Newport All Stars. We were there almost exclusively so that Big Man and I (well, mostly Big Man) could feast our ears on the trumpet playing of the great Randy Brecker, but it turns out everyone on stage was a great talent -- Esperanza Spaulding on upright bass and vocals, Anat Cohhen on sax and clarinet, the great Jimmy Cobb on drums, and Newport Jazz Fest founder George Wein on piano. It was a terrific set, and Brecker played astoundingly. Big Man wanted to get closer, so we climbed down and headed to the front just as Brecker had stepped back on the stage to make room for the solos of the other players. He happened to look over his shoulder just as Big Man was standing near the front on the side. Randy Brecker looked directly at Big Man and it was as though he knew him, or at the very least recognized another trumpet player. He actually waved to Big Man and Big Man tipped his hat back, feeling mighty pleased at the little gesture. We found recently-vacated chairs near the front and stayed to the very end. Big Man was pretty happy and inspired -- so much so that we plans to hear the one-on-one interview with Randy Brecker as our closing set.
We arrived just as the interview started (we were walking, but of course Randy Brecker got an air conditioned ride in a musicians' shuttle!) and got front-row seats. (Interestingly enough, Brecker winked at Big Man as we sat down.) The interview was fascinating -- an engrossing tale of connections and interconnections in the worlds of jazz and pop and rock in New York City, Europe, and even the Mideast. Famous names fly by, this one and that one, this incredible recording and then that one. What got me was how to Brecker, everything was just luck and coincidence, no reference to his talent and his other-worldly playing ability -- his modesty was very endearing. Big Man got up during the Q&A and told Brecker, "I'm a trumpet player too, but I don't have half of your talent or luck!" and went on to ask about the difference in playing jazz and pop. Brecker answered in a way that might have been surprising: he said to him there was not that big a difference, what mattered was the music.
At one point in the interview, as the interviewer went through his notes, in the quiet, you could just hear Emmylou Harris at Gentilly doing a lovely version of "Say a Little Prayer" but that was all we heard of her set. But we were happy with a Jazz Fest day filled with beautiful musical moments.
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