This ain’t no duke. No earl. No prince. This is the (once and forever) King of Zydeco.
Clifton Chenier, “I’m A Hog For You,” live, New Orleans (New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival), 1978
More:
Clifton Chenier, “Josephine Par Se Ma Femme”
(Here’s a birthday shout-out to my brother Doug [a fan of this New Orleans festival].)
more New Orleans drumming
Here, following up on Wednesday’s post, are two New Orleans drummers who embrace the Muhammad Ali aesthetic: float like a butterfly (0:56-1:58, etc.), sting like a bee (1:59, etc.).
Dwayne Williams and Jason Slack, live (before a gig), Hudson, New York
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lagniappe
You could always tell a New Orleans drummer the minute you heard him play his bass drum because he’d have that parade beat connotation.—Earl Palmer
*****
From yesterday’s Cubs radio broadcast (during a truly miserable loss—12-3 to Arizona—in a season that’s been full of ’em), here’s Pat Hughes on partner Ron Santo’s career as a base-stealer: “35 stolen bases, 41 times caught stealing: that’s sort of a risky proposition—but I bet the umpires missed a lot of calls.”
With summer giving way to fall, how ’bout a little trip down to Hattiesburg, Mississippi? There, at T-Bone’s Records & Coffee, you’ll find, over in a corner, Johnny Vidacovich, longtime New Orleans drummer—he’s played at every one of the 40 annual New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festivals—playing, singing, chatting, goofing.
Johnny Vidacovich, live, Hattiesburg, Mississippi, 2009
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Most drummers I couldn’t listen to for five minutes. This guy I could listen to all day. Why? Because his playing is relaxed and unshowy. He makes use of space. Instead of trying to bowl you over, he invites you in.
Want more Johnny V? Here.
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lagniappe
This [New Orleans] is a drum city. . . . [A]round here, all the drummers play from the neck down.—Johnny Vidacovich
New Orleans Music Festival/day 3 of 3
Only in New Orleans do the dead dance.
New Orleans Jazz Funeral for tuba player Kerwin James (2007)
New Orleans Music Festival/day 2 of 3
If spirit could be sold, New Orleans would be rich.
Rebirth Brass Band, live, New Orleans, 2009
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lagniappe
“Brass band musicians are a wild bunch. They’re hard to control. The street funk that the Rebirth [Brass Band] plays definitely isn’t traditional—it might be in thirty years time.”—Lajoie “Butch” Gomez (in Mick Burns, Keeping the Beat on the Street: The New Orleans Brass Band Renaissance [2006])
New Orleans Music Festival/day 1 of 3
Here, in the city where concert halls are made of asphalt, is one of the most famous Mardi Gras Indian tribes, the Wild Magnolias.
Wild Magnolias, live, New Orleans, 2008
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lagniappe
“It was this kind of willful, wildly romantic attention to beauty—crumbling and fading beauty needing constant attention—that made this city [New Orleans] so unlike any other and such an unparalleled sort of environment for a builder.”—Dave Eggers, Zeitoun
music clip of the day 