Back to the Music
Day one at Jazzfest:
Thursday was a hot one, with the occasional clouds and wind giving a break. But there was a healthy crowd there for a Thursday and some fine music as well.
Although I walked around and dabbled here and there I ended up spending most of the day at the Gentilly tent. It was a sort of New Orleans greatest hits.
Sammy Ridgely and the Untouchables cooked up a set of Otis Redding and other hits you would recognize but made them his own.
Kermit Ruffins, trumpeter par excellence, is the inheritor of Louis Armstrong's mantle -- he has become one of the favorite interpreters of classic and modern New Orleans music, and he delivered a set that was a love song to New Orleans including Professor Longhair classics.
Then Randy Newman took the stage. Now Newman has got himself to a place where he can make a song out of conversation, and his piano playing is masterful -- so he played some new songs -- about how the world hates us but we're not bad as some others before us -- a song about all the old performers who are still touring ("You're dead, but you don't know it) and some classics.
Newman told the crowd that he was down in New Orleans with a bunch of Disney and Pixar execs (he said Toy story made about $7 Billion and that his song for that movie had made them about $4,378 ) recording songs for a new animated film "The Frog Princess", he played a song that he said they had recorded that afternoon with Dr. John doing the vocals.
So the good Doctor is in the house, doing some Disney work as well. Turns out the good Dr is staying at our hotel here The Monteleone.
Now as I write this Dr John has ambled into the offices WWOZ the legendary New Orleans radio station (that you can listen to online).
I hope they archive it and you can listen to it, because that's it's like eavesdropping -- they just talkin talkin talkin
"Music is the language of New Orleans," is the Mayor's slogan Dr John explained," because nobody here speaks the same way."
Now last night we wandered into a very special happenstance.
The Monteleone's famous carousel bar -- it is literally a bar with a carousel decorations and you sit down at the bar and it moves --it takes 15 minutes and you've made it around.
Anyhow there's a back piano room at the Carousel, and there holding court, and tickling the ivories in a solo performance was none other than Jon Cleary.
It was a treat, he was playing his own songs and then playing requests and playing favorites from Professor Longhair, Earle King.
It was a wonderful treat.
Thursday was a hot one, with the occasional clouds and wind giving a break. But there was a healthy crowd there for a Thursday and some fine music as well.
Although I walked around and dabbled here and there I ended up spending most of the day at the Gentilly tent. It was a sort of New Orleans greatest hits.
Sammy Ridgely and the Untouchables cooked up a set of Otis Redding and other hits you would recognize but made them his own.
Kermit Ruffins, trumpeter par excellence, is the inheritor of Louis Armstrong's mantle -- he has become one of the favorite interpreters of classic and modern New Orleans music, and he delivered a set that was a love song to New Orleans including Professor Longhair classics.
Then Randy Newman took the stage. Now Newman has got himself to a place where he can make a song out of conversation, and his piano playing is masterful -- so he played some new songs -- about how the world hates us but we're not bad as some others before us -- a song about all the old performers who are still touring ("You're dead, but you don't know it) and some classics.
Newman told the crowd that he was down in New Orleans with a bunch of Disney and Pixar execs (he said Toy story made about $7 Billion and that his song for that movie had made them about $4,378 ) recording songs for a new animated film "The Frog Princess", he played a song that he said they had recorded that afternoon with Dr. John doing the vocals.
So the good Doctor is in the house, doing some Disney work as well. Turns out the good Dr is staying at our hotel here The Monteleone.
Now as I write this Dr John has ambled into the offices WWOZ the legendary New Orleans radio station (that you can listen to online).
I hope they archive it and you can listen to it, because that's it's like eavesdropping -- they just talkin talkin talkin
"Music is the language of New Orleans," is the Mayor's slogan Dr John explained," because nobody here speaks the same way."
Now last night we wandered into a very special happenstance.
The Monteleone's famous carousel bar -- it is literally a bar with a carousel decorations and you sit down at the bar and it moves --it takes 15 minutes and you've made it around.
Anyhow there's a back piano room at the Carousel, and there holding court, and tickling the ivories in a solo performance was none other than Jon Cleary.
It was a treat, he was playing his own songs and then playing requests and playing favorites from Professor Longhair, Earle King.
It was a wonderful treat.
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