Posts Tagged ‘New Orleans’

Jazz Don’t Hurt: Five Recent CDs For New Listeners

Recently, the fine folks over at NPR’s A Blog Supreme have started asking young jazz aficionados to recommend five recordings from recent years that they would give to someone who was just getting into jazz. I’m much, much too old to have been asked to be a part of the series (clocking in at an ancient 36), but here are my contributions anyway.

Vijay Iyer: Historicity (ACT, 2009)

There are a lot of things I like about pianist and renaissance man Vijay Iyer, but perhaps my favorite of his qualities is his unswerving commitment to speak the truth. That comes across when you listen to him speak, but it also shines through when you hear him play. Iyer is always in pursuit, always moving forward, always absorbing and reconfiguring improvised music. Oh, and his current trio kicks ass, if I may use a technical term. Start with the track “Galang” on his new record, Historicity. And turn it up loud. (more…)

Mojo’s Cold Shot: James Booker

If Mojo don’t love you baby, then grits ain’t groceries, eggs ain’t poultries, an Mona Lisa was a man. Yeah, that’s right, that’s what my man the late James Booker used to sing in “All Around The World” while wearing that sexy eye patch with the star on it.

It just stuns me that more people don’t appreciate this New Orleans great, he’s a footnote, an afterthought in the hall of fame of American pianists (not just blues or jazz players, I mean all-time greats). Heck, he’d weave classical motifs into his blues, like in “Gitanarias” and the “Black Minute Waltz.” From the sounds of things, he took these musical side streets just for the sport of it.

And of course early in his career he played a little B-3 and did the James Brown thang on cuts like “Beale Street Popeye.”

But he was at his best playing cuts like “Something You Got” and “Lawdy Miss Clawdy” in the classic New Orleans doctor-professor impresario style. His complex left hand rhythms complemented the furious, ornate melodies coming out of the right, making most other blues cats look like ham-fisted piano-beaters. Dig yourself some live “Tico Tico/Papa Was a Rascal” and listen to the interplay between his steady left and deadly right. (more…)

Caught on Tape: New Orleans, Van Halen Style

Eddie-Van-Halen[1]

The weekend began on a deceptively subdued note, but this would change.

My alarm clock performed its temporal duty, jolting me a deep slumber at the unearthly hour of 5:30 A.M. A shower washed the crunchy crystals of sleep from the corners of my eyes, and two 16-ounce mugs of coffee helped me keep them open. I phoned Edward to let him know I was on the way. No answer. Mild panic. Did he already leave? Had he changed his mind about taking me with him? Those were just a couple of the thoughts scurrying through my brain, accelerated and exacerbated by the caffeine coursing through my veins.

A day earlier, Edward Van Halen had invited me to accompany him to the NAMM Show (National Association of Music Merchants) in New Orleans. This is an annual convention where retailers, manufacturers, et al, get together to preview their new lines of guitars, amplifiers, drums, and any other musically-related gadgets and gewgaws. More than anything, though, it’s a chance to drink yourself unconscious on someone else’s dime. (more…)