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Tom Morgan Reports from New Orleans
Entry 32 of 40 | show all | print this entry |
From: tom1@jass.com
Date: Monday, May 8, 2006
Hurricane Katrina Update
A few people have e-mailed me and asked how things are going and whether I will send out another update of my log. I finally have time after three weeks of festivals here in New Orleans. Every day during the last two weeks when I went to the Jazz & Heritage Festival, I drove through areas that had four to five feet of water. All I see in those areas now are semi-gutted houses and a trailer or two.
To say that this area in the middle of the city is coming back would be a whopper of a lie at the least. Everywhere I look it is the same: there's still massive destruction and very little recovery. Sure we can hold festivals, the electricity is there and the water is good but are people really coming back? Not yet.
How has life changed in the last few months? We've had more visitors but not enough. I expect that many businesses in the French Quarter will close by the end of the summer. Business is that bad. Even last week when normally people stay over between the first and second weekends of JazzFest, the Quarter was still not even half as busy as it would normally have been Pre-K. The restaurants will make it but the small shops and the ones with the highest rents are hurting bad.
Our electricity in the Marigny is still wonky. We have been able to get through a rain or two without it going out but then had it go out for an hour last Saturday for no reason. Some of the street lights have been replaced but we still have some very funky stop lights and none of the blown-down signs have reappeared. Relatively few businesses in the hood have reopened. My mechanic still hasn't shown up nor have they done any work on the local supermarket.
We've had two neighbors move out, one a young couple that was never really ready for life in the Big Easy and have moved back to Seattle. Other neighbors have moved due to job changes that Katrina forced on them. This is not a isolated incident: more friends will be moving away due to what has happened.
It has gotten more expensive to live in New Orleans as everything including the taxes on our house has gone up. The music is as sweet as ever, which definitely keeps us all sane. Personally other than the highs of the festivals where I hosted many broadcasts, MC'ed Piano Night at the House of Blues and did an interview with singer John Boutte on the Allison Miner stage at JazzFest, stuff is still not going right.
I still have not received an electric and gas bill for 7 months-I have emailed and called numerous times and still no bill. I totally expect them to turn off my power when I am away for not paying a bill they won't send me. My insurance company has still not sent me our settlement despite it being settled 6 months ago. My private adjuster can't even get anyone on the phone. Am I frustrated? Wouldn't you be?
Hild's job is seemingly coming back this summer as the Tulane Medical school re-establishes itself in the city. Dottie the cat loves the warm weather and would like to be outside all of the time except when it rains. We had a wonderful party last Wednesday with 100 lbs of crawfish boiled on premises and a wonderful band. A good time was had by all, though the party cost 50% more than last year's of similar size.
I still have not received any magazines since the storm and just Saturday got a letter with a January 3 post date-talk about late delivery. I have no trust in any government entity anymore. Oh yes, and where have all those billions of dollars earmarked for us gone? Hell if I know.
They're working on the levees but the city is flat broke and may declare bankruptcy. Potholes don't get fixed, stop lights still don't work in areas, the streets are still full of debris in many areas. Yep, and hurricane season starts in less than three weeks. They tell us they are going to evacuate if a Category 3 even shows up on the Gulf Coast. How will anything get better if half the city leaves three times a month for the next four months?
Still no doctor and no dentist, so much so that we are thinking about flying to Virginia just to have our teeth checked by our old dentist and getting Hild a mammogram. Are we frustrated and tired of the way our city is going? Wouldn't you be?
Hild and I don't want to move away, we both have no desire to be anywhere else in the USA. This is good and bad as we are trapped in a situation that is not going to get better for years so we must be happy with what we have-good friends, a wonderful house and amazing music. Hopefully next time I write I will be less frustrated and more hopeful.
-Tom Morgan
913 Elysian Fields Avenue
Jazz Roots @ www.jass.com, www.RadioFreeAmsterdam.com
Listen here: Jazz Roots #26 with Tom Morgan (.mp3)
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Tom Morgan from WWOZ Radio in New Orleans is one of the key independent broadcast producers providing programming to Radio Free Amsterdam in the pilot phase of our radio project. Another key contributor is Dave Chimowitz, producer of the Cosmic Paradigm Shift Show with host Marx Marvelous. Dave has put up seven programs so far, and I'm going to post #6, in which I'm interviewed at length, and the current podcast, Cosmic Paradigm Shift #7, to introduce you to Dave's imaginative conceptual and production work.
Cosmic Paradigm Shift #6 with Marx Marvelous (.mp3)
Cosmic Paradigm Shift #7 with Marx Marvelous (.mp3)
* * * * *
Finally, I just received my new (Spring 2006) issue of Honest Tune magazine from Oxford, MS with my Blues & Roots column and several CD reviews included. They sounded pretty good when I read them through and I think I'll attach the reviews here and add the column in another post this week:
Dr. John & the Lower 911: Sippiana Hericane (Blue Note)
By John Sinclair
At what most Americans would consider retirement age, Dr. John continues to enjoy an active and endlessly productive career as a composer, performer, recording artist, bandleader and special guest of choice for pop stars of every persuasion. His voice and delivery are so distinctive that you always know when he's in the house, and his vast discography holds countless delights for the contemporary music lover.
But the Doctor was utterly devastated by the flooding and physical destruction of his beloved city when the levees broke in New Orleans. Although it's been quite a few years since he's lived here, the man known in private life as Mac Rebennack was born and raised here, visits frequently and has a large extended family that branches out all over the New Orleans area.
A true son of New Orleans, thoroughly steeped in the music and ancestral culture of this completely unique metropolis and the people of African descent who have made it what it is, the Doctor was moved to compose, assemble and record a special little suite of music inspired by the great flood of 2005. Now Blue Note Records has issued the storm suite as a sort of CD-EP: just about 30 minutes of what the Doctor calls Sippiana Hericane.
With a band named the Lower 911 and his personal history of being befriended and tutored by 9th Ward musical legends like Jesse Hill, Eddie Bo, Professor Longhair and their ilk, Mac's heart seems focused here on the people who suffered total destruction of their homes and neighborhoods in the area below the Industrial Canal called the Lower 9.
The four-part Wade: Hurricane Suite resonates with the spirit of the old neighborhood and pivots on the venerable gospel theme "Wade in the Water," projecting an unshakable aural image of blocks of houses under water and people (Fats Domino!) being rescued from their rooftop refuges by boat and helicopter.
The suite is framed by the Bobby Charles song "Clean Water" and Mac's own soulful anthem "Sweet Home New Orleans." In between the four movements of Wade unfold, from "Storm Warning" (a reference to Mac's classic Rex single from 1959) through "Storm Surge" and "Calm in the Storm" to the "Aftermath," a defiant recapitulation of the "Wade in the Water" theme that peaks with the group chanting:
"Wade in the water
Comin' back-like we oughta
Wade in the water
Comin' back-better than ever"
Sippiana Hericane is a beautiful piece of work that will outlast the city's eventual recovery from catastrophe and continue to evoke the soul and spirit of this great city as long as people have ears to hear with.
Thelonious Monk with John Coltrane: At Carnegie Hall (Blue Note)
It's a sad commentary on the state of jazz and popular music today that the most exciting record released in 2005 was recorded almost 50 years ago, on November 29, 1957, by a pair of musical giants who have long left this earthly sphere. It's even sadder to contemplate the fact that music like this was then the order of the day and existed in great abundance on record and in concert.
For example, the Thelonious Monk Quartet with John Coltrane, one of the most adventurous and widely influential bands of the time, was joined on this Thanksgiving Jazz Concert at Carnegie Hall by Billie Holiday, the Dizzy Gillespie Orchestra, Chet Baker with the Zoot Sims Quartet, "Special Attraction" Ray Charles, and "Introducing In Concert The Brilliant" Sonny Rollins. Tickets were $2.00, $3.00, $3.50 and $3.95, and the proceeds from the two shows that night went to benefit the Morningside Community Center in Harlem.
Still and all, aural evidence of the historic 1957 collaboration between Thelonious Monk-modern jazz pioneer and established master at 40-and the 31-year-old rising tenor saxophone star John Coltrane has been hard to come by. This stellar Monk quartet, with Ahmed Abdul-Malik on bass and Shadow Wilson on drums, lasted only several short months and was documented only sparingly, so the unearthing of the long-buried tape boxes from the Carnegie Hall concert-cleanly and clearly recorded by technicians from the Voice of America radio operation-kicked up a lot of excitement among jazz cognoscenti and the music-loving public.
Here's why: Monk and Coltrane are captured here at the very top of their game, with Coltrane literally blowing new life into the corpus of classic Monk compositions like "Monk's Mood," "Evidence," "Nutty," "Bye-Ya," "Blue Monk" and the pianist's theme song, "Epistrophy." Trane is totally out the box on "Bye-Ya" in opening the second show, and he adds a whole nother dimension to Monk's twisted reading of the pop standard "Sweet & Lovely" with a sensational double-time solo that resolves into the pianist's florid restatement of the theme.
Well. One could go on and on in praise of this rare quartet and its stunning performance at Carnegie Hall that night in 1957, but space here permits only one more encomium: Don't spend another day without acquiring this recording and listening repeatedly until you have enjoyed and absorbed every miraculous note! When it comes to modern jazz, this is as good as it gets.
Tail Dragger: My Head Is Bald (Delmark Records CD & DVD)
Recorded 'Live' at Vern's Friendly Lounge, Chicago, July 16, 2005
The Tail Dragger, born James Yancey Jones in Arkansas in 1940, has terrorized the west side of Chicago for the past 40 years with his menacing Howlin' Wolf-styled singing and equally rough personality. But, man, nothing has diminished the Tail Dragger, and he shows up bolder and stronger than ever in this matched pair of CD and DVD recorded by Delmark Records at Vern's Friendly Lounge in Chicago last summer.
Tail Dragger has a really fine band for this date, with Billy Branch on harmonica, Lurrie Bell and Kevin Shanahan on guitars, the irreplaceable Bob Stroger on bass and Kenny Smith at the drums. The great Jimmy Dawkins comes in on the title track for a guest shot on guitar, and old-school blues saxophonist Willie Young joins the ensemble for the last few numbers.
Tail Dragger sports a voice that's as close to Howlin' Wolf in sound, texture and delivery as we will ever hear today, and his material-here titled "Sitting Here Singing My Blues," "Tend to Your Business," "Prison Blues," "So Ezee," "My Woman Is Gone," "My Head Is Bald," "You Gotta Go" and "Jump For Joy"--is pretty much pieced together from fragments of the works of the Wolf, Sonny Boy Williamson, Eddie "Cleanhead" Vinson, Muddy Waters and other of the Tail Dragger's blues forebears. His demented between-song raps are liberally included for our edification and delight, and the whole show is a thrilling throwback to the glorious days of blue yore.
The DVD is even more joyous as the cameras take us deep within the warmly flexible confines of Vern's Friendly Lounge on the West Side of Chicago on an air-conditioned July night and we meet face-to-face with the fans and patrons gathered there to have their fun. The leader provides endless bandstand kicks-well, it's not really a bandstand, they're right there on the floor, and he's Tail Dragging through the crowd-and the contrasting styles, both musical and visual, of guitarists Lurrie Bell and Kevin Shanahan add considerable additional interest.
Everything is wrapped up tight here-the music is swinging, the singer is singing his ass off, the crowd is having a ball and everything is just all right with the world for one sweet night. And hey, that's what the blues is all about.
Higher Ground: Hurricane Relief Benefit Concert (Blue Note)
Featuring Wynton Marsalis & the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra with Shirley Caesar, Terrance Blanchard, Aaron & Art Neville, Diana Krall, James Taylor, Dianne Reeves, Marcus Roberts Trio, Norah Jones, Buckwheat Zydeco, Bette Midler, Irvin Mayfield, Marlon Jordan & Family, Joe Lovano, Cassandra Wilson and Mark O'Conner.
The benefit concert that produced Higher Ground was pulled together in a hurry by Executive Producer Wynton Marsalis and his Jazz at Lincoln Center krewe. Mounted at Frederick Rose Hall in the Lincoln Center jazz complex last September 17th, not even three weeks after the levees broke, the all star cast put on a hell of a show and raised a nice taste of cash for the Hurricane Relief effort.
The musical highlights here range from the exuberant gospel offering by Shirley Caesar that opens the program through the Aaron & Art Neville romp on "Go to the Mardi Gras," a raging reading of King Oliver's "Dippermouth Blues" by the Wynton Marsalis Hot Seven, Irvin Mayfield's heartfelt embrace of the ancient spiritual "Just a Closer Walk with Thee" and Joe Lovano's provocative tenor saxophone essay on [Ed] "Blackwell's Message."
Diana Krall and the band have a pretty good time with "Basin Street Blues," but these little gems are sadly offset by lackluster selections from singers James Taylor, Dianne Reeves, Norah Jones, Bette Midler and Stephanie Jordan, fairly pedestrian outings by Buckwheat Zydeco and Marcus Roberts, a turgid ballad from trumpeter Terrance Blanchard and the moribund performance of Duke Ellington's "Come Sunday" by Cassandra Wilson which closes the CD.
It's always a good thing to purchase products like this one which benefit worthy causes in a timely manner. Sometimes one gets full musical value along with the glow of giving, but in this case it'll be the goodness of your heart doing most of the talking.
Watermelon Slim & The Workers (NorthernBlues Records)
Watermelon Slim is a hell of a character, and his band The Workers are a rough bunch as well. I ran into them for the first time when we were on the same bill at the Thacker Mountain Revue radio show in Oxford MS, and then sat in with Slim at his gig in Little Rock AR and he returned the flavor.
Born and raised in the Northeast as Bill Homans, Watermelon Slim got his moniker when he was farming the tasty rotundities, only one of the down-to-earth vocations he pursued until middle age, when he went back to college and secured a master's degree in History from Oklahoma State. But before he could start teaching high school History, he signed on as a long-distance waste-hauling trucker and followed the roads crossing North America until he was struck down by a heart attack in 2002.
Bill's a Vietnam veteran too, and an ex-radical protester, and like I say, a hell of a character to boot. While recovering from his heart attack he decided to drop this other shit and pursue his musical muse at last. What did he have to lose? So he made a demo CD, mailed it around and went out on the road as a solo practitioner. People liked it, so he made another record and put a band of Oklahomans together to back him up on his travels.
Now they've got an album of their own, Watermelon Slim & The Workers, on a real record label, NorthernBlues, they've got professional management and a booking agency, and they're not about to go away, so you might as well give it up and check them out. You'll hear twisted Homans compositions like "Dumpster Blues," "Check Writing Woman," "Frisco Lint," "Ash Tray" and "Mack Truck" along with blues by some of his mentors like Big Joe Williams. You'll meet the "Bad Sinner" and the "Juke Joint Woman," be dealt the "Possum Hand," go through some "Hard Times" at "Hard Labor," ride in the "Devil's Cadillac" and experience the "Folding Monty Blues."
The album closed with a demented blues en francais, "Eau de Boue," where Slim shows off his European savoir faire. The Workers are Ike Lamb on guitars, Cliff Belcher on bass and Michael Newberry on drums, with the Watermelon man on harmonica, guitar and vocals. The album was produced by Chris Wick. What else do we need to know? These guys are gonna be around for a while, and you'll be hearing more from this truck-driving bluesman with a beat-up Little Walter face for some time to come.
Zora Young: Tore Up from the Floor Up (Delmark Records)
There used to be a lot of singers like Zora Young around the country, sturdy blues shouters and well-seasoned nightclub entertainers who would fix their high heels firmly on the floor, stick their hands on their hips and turn the place out all night long. Sometimes they even had their own tunes to sing, but their repertoires surely encompassed the classics of the idiom which they sang with full authority as if they meant them and believed in them without reservation.
Now there's only a handful or two of these great every-night blueswomen still working the stages of ghetto nightspots and juke joints, and the ones that are lucky don't have to work there no more but rather spend their time entertaining white blues fans in college and suburban music venues for substantially better pay.
Zora Young, a native of the north Mississippi hill country who's been in Chicago since she was a child, landed a contract with Delmark Records some years ago and released a fine album called Learned My Lesson that documented her work in the blues. Her new CD, Tore Up from the Floor Up, brings her back for a second scintillating set of 21st-century urban women's blues, and there's no reason for you to miss it.
The lusty-voiced Ms. Young starts out with a warm-up set of the tunes of others--"Love of Mine," "Go Ahead and Take Him," B.B. King's "I'm Gonna Do the Same Thing They Did to Me"- uncorks the three originals titled "Toxic," "Til the Fat Lady Sings" and "Slowly," and then offers an O.V. Wright tune, "Rainy Night in Georgia," her own title track, Buddy Johnson's "Since I Fell for You," the risqué original "Handy Man," and a turgid reading of Muddy Waters' "Two Trains Running" to close the set, with an appended interview extending the disc another four minutes.
This is some rough-and-tumble stuff, to be sure, just the way they used to do it everywhere one went. Get it now, while you can.
-John Sinclair
New Orleans
February 2006
Th-th-th-that's all, folks....
Latest Comments (1)
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great reviews on May 10 '06 (reply)
May 10, 2006 18:54 EST by joebryak
You made some sales, John--gotta rush out and get that lost session of Coltrane, Monk, plus the blues singers you recommend.
I'd add Di Anne Price of Memphis to the list of fabulous blues/jass/ballad singers--and plays mean piano, too. Bangs the keys, man! Check her out next time you're in Memphis. Plays at various Huey's around town and wherever. In her 50s, 60s, has definitely paid em, ... show all
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