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Howling Diablos
"Live"
Top Dog Records CD 50002-2 TDR

By John Sinclair


They can't be called a blues band by any stretch of the imagination--they don't even play the blues--but the Howling Diablos are deeply rooted in the blues matrix.

Lead vocalist/guitarist/producer/composer Martin "Tino" Gross is one of the finest blues drummers of the modern era; he's backed up everybody from Big Walter Horton and Victoria Spivey to Willie D. Warren, Juanita McCray, and The Butler Twins, and he's hosted the exemplary blues program Big City Blues Cruise on WEMU-FM for more than 15 years.

Tino's long-time partner (they hooked up as members of the Urbations around 1981), saxophonist/co-producer "Showtime" Johnny Evans, has contributed to many local blues ensembles and is an accomplished jazz soloist as well.

And lead guitarist Jeff Grand--who's produced albums by Uncle Jessie White and the Butler Twins--is a stone bluesman with a deep, soulful sound, impeccable taste, and one of the most intense slide guitar attacks you'd ever want to hear.

(In the spirit of full disclosure, it should also be stated that all three have backed up this writer in performance as long-standing members of John Sinclair & the Blues Scholars and are close personal friends to boot.)

But they're here before us as members of the Motor City's hottest modern rock band, the Howling Diablos, performing live  in front of a studio full of fellow music fanatics and frenzied followers of the big beat, laying down a set of their most popular numbers as if their lives depended on just how far over the top they could make it go.

The Howling D's knock out crowd favorites like "Funky Daddy," "Reefer Man," "Nobody in Detroit," "Junkyard Jesus," "Business Man's Legs" and "Ban Lon Stew" with abandon and power, driven by the massive rhythms churned up by bassist Mike Hollis and drummer Jeff Fowlkes. Jeff Grand slashes and burns his industrial-strength rock guitar leads from deep in the heart of the beast, fed back by Johnny Evans' wailing saxophonics, and the band rocks it all with a steady grinding roll.

Martin Gross has been one of this writer's favorite songwriters since his wild improvised lyrics to songs like "Ether Mambo" used to set the Progressive Blues Band on fire at the turn of the 80s, and he continues to come up with some of the sickest, most twisted songs in modern popular music.

Demented sagas with a personal root like "Go Gene Go"--a musical salute to Tino's childhood idol Gene Krupa--and "Record Collection" (of which Tino possesses one of the world's finest in terms of 78s and 45s) deliver a particular kick, while "X-Mas in Jail" takes its place in the pantheon of jailbird anthems like "Angola Bound," "Please Mr. Judge" and Andre Williams' immortal "Pulling Time."

In response to the crowd's chanted demand, the set climaxes with "Babysitter," a throbbing slab of musical menace that raises a cry to "Call the babysitter--this beat is getting bigger and bigger!" And it's just the same with the Howling Diablos: their insane beat keeps on growing in size and thrust, and their following gets larger and more frenetic every day.

The Howlin  D's are filling a serious need for intelligence, wit, and uninhibited fun in pop music today, and they're bound for glory in a big way.


--New Orleans
March 1, 1997


(c) 1997, 2006 John Sinclair. All Rights Reserved.


]]> johnsinclair001@hotmail.com (John) Blues Thu, 09 Feb 2006 08:56:55 +0000 http://localhost/backup/liner-notes/87-new-orleans/812-rockin-jake-full-time-work.html http://localhost/backup/liner-notes/87-new-orleans/812-rockin-jake-full-time-work.html
Rockin  Jake

Full Time Work
Zuluzu Records

By John Sinclair


New Orleans harmonica man Larry Rockin  Jake  Jacobs a musical descendant of the great Marion Little Walter  Jacobs has advanced several major steps since releasing his first CD, Let's Go Get Em, on Rabadash Records in the mid- 90s.

Jake's taken his dance-oriented rockin  blues show on the road and logged thousands of miles of travel throughout the USA, vending many copies of his second album, Badmouth (on his own Zuluzu label), as well as tiny harmonica necklaces, little bottles of Badmouth hot sauce and other imaginative custom products.

The rigors of the road lead to constant changes in personnel, but Jake always fields a hot, hard-rocking ensemble and wisely keeps his virtuostic harp in the forefront of things. He's singing more now and better, too! and he continues crafting his own well-tailored songs out of the raw materials of his life experience.

Full Time Work, Jake's new Zuluzu release, benefits from the deft touch of producer Brian Stoltz, whose over-the-top guitar solo work is also featured prominently throughout. Stoltz collaborates on several of the tunes as well, including the irresistible lead-off cut, Only Love Can Conquer Hate,  with Jake rapping out the lyrics hip-hop stylee.

Other co-writers on the album include Jim McCormick, Sam Price, T.J. Wheeler and Angelo Nocentelli (yes, he's Leo's younger brother). All the members of the recording group Jacobs, Stoltz, keyboardist John Gros, bassist Ron Johnson and drummer Doug Belote contribute to the appropriately mournful instrumental, Blues for N.Y.C. 

Jake's current concerns are laid out in a three-song series of truly heart-felt road songs that are positioned 2-3-4 in the batting order: Full Time Work, Part Time Pay,  Hit the Highway  and Goin  Back to the Big Easy.  One may almost smell the stale beer and cigarette smoke of the roadhouse in the afternoon when the van wheezes up after a 500-mile ride across some remote section of America and the battle-weary band members crawl out into the sunlight to face another night of underpaid and improperly unappreciated musical employment and the immense sense of utter relief one feels as the number of miles home to New Orleans shrinks ever smaller.

Slippin  Away  is a vocal duet between Irene Sage and Theryl Houseman  DeClouet introduced by Jake's eloquent mouth harp; both singers sound terrific, and the band cooks nicely behind them. Jake has a second three-song set of novelty numbers  The Hot Sauce Song,  a tuneful commercial for his own brand of the fiery condiment; a remake of Show Me Your Pretties,  a topical (or maybe topless is the better word) tune that suffers here from the absence of original lead singer Oliver Morgan; and Christmas Morning Blues,  an amusing attempt at ironic humor that perhaps should have been essayed in half the time allotted.

The program ends with a stately reading of Amazing Grace  which spotlights Jake's strength as an eloquently evocative harmonica soloist and the atmospheric keyboards of Papa  John Gros and it's a beautiful way to close this eminently listenable album.


New Orleans
April 3, 2002


(c) 2002, 2006 John Sinclair. All Rights Reserved.


]]> johnsinclair001@hotmail.com (John) New Orleans Thu, 09 Feb 2006 08:53:10 +0000 http://localhost/backup/liner-notes/87-new-orleans/811-andy-j-forest-letter-from-hell.html http://localhost/backup/liner-notes/87-new-orleans/811-andy-j-forest-letter-from-hell.html
Andy J. Forest
Letter from Hell
Appaloosa Records AP 145-2

By John Sinclair


The enterprising New Orleans-based harmonica man Andy J. Forest has produced a fine series of intriguing albums for the Italian Appaloosa label over the past several years, showcasing his original compositions, lusty singing and virtuoso harp playing in a variety of musical settings.

Andy's new Appaloosa release, Letter from Hell, features an excellent band of Crescent City players--with Marc Adams on keyboards, Jim Markway on bass, Johnny Vidacovich on drums and guitarist Everette Eglin--plus a plethora of special guests in another full program of Forest originals.

But this time there's an extra added attraction: Letter from Hell is billed as the "soundtrack" to Forest's novel of the same name, "the story of five unfortunate musicians [possessed of] a cruel and twisted past with sins ranging from murder to prostitution. They are plunged into an afterlife nightmare when they are killed in an explosion and are sent directly to the Devil's blues club located in a suburb of the second ring of Hell."

Forest has been writing songs almost as long as he's been playing harmonica, but he's taken up fiction only in the past couple of years--initially in response to an invitation to enter a short-story contest. His early stories met with positive response, and he soon embarked on the composition of his first novel, Letter from Hell. The book attracted the attention of Edizioni Pendragon, an Italian publisher, and an American edition was issued this spring to coincide with the U.S. release of the Appaloosa CD.

Irrespective of the merits of Forest's novel--which this reviewer has not yet read--the blues harpist's literary bent is readily apparent in his musical compositions, which range from whimsical little ditties like "I Love You Worse" to Forest's heartfelt memoir of the day Muddy Waters died, "Ode to Muddy." He's philosophical in "Deja Blues" and "Lies Have Long Legs" (both featuring the guitar of Mason Ruffner), roadweary on "Still Hummin'," funny and festive on "Mardi Gras Baby."

"Vacances d'Enfer" is rendered en francais to the accompaniment of Bruce Daigrepont's accordian and Forest's frattoir. "Tongue in Groove" is a hot harmonica instrumental, and organist Davell Crawford and vocalist Jackie Tolbert join Andy and the band on a long, soulful number called "If I Can Help Somebody."

The program ends with a rollicking "Mud Bellied Catfish Medley" and a tag, "Audio liner notes for the visually impaired," wherein Forest speaks to his listeners with National Resophonic guitar backing by Marc Stone.

The title track takes the form of an epistle from the nether regions: "Dear Friends," Forest writes, "It's hot down here, can't get ice water and / the very little beer we get is warm and flat. / They say I'm in for eternity, how about that?"

He continues through a hellish catalog of present conditions and concludes: "If I'm bad enough they might make me a devil too. / I'll get a glowing red fork, horns, and a smokin' hair doo / So hurry up and die! / Burnin' the Blues forever, we're gonna have fun. / P.S. And here no one...carries a gun."

On Letter from Hell Andy Forest has extended the reach of the blues a step beyond its customary earthly concerns to send back an imaginary report from the afterlife, and guess what? It's not such a different experience at all: "It's dark, cruel, scary and I keep getting stabbed by a fork / kind of reminds me of a neighborhood where / I used to live in New York."

With his first novel and accompanying "soundtrack" CD, Forest has achieved something distinctly out of the ordinary. We can only hope that his next project takes him to a little better place--maybe all the way to Blues Heaven.


--New Orleans
May 9, 1999


(c) 1999, 2006 John Sinclair. All Rights Reserved.


]]> johnsinclair001@hotmail.com (John) New Orleans Thu, 09 Feb 2006 08:27:32 +0000 http://localhost/backup/liner-notes/83-blues/810-bernard-allison-keepin-the-blues-alive.html http://localhost/backup/liner-notes/83-blues/810-bernard-allison-keepin-the-blues-alive.html
Bernard Allison
Keepin' the Blues Alive
Cannonball Records CBD 29101

By John Sinclair


The cruelly untimely demise of the great Luther Allison only two years following his remarkable and long-awaited ascension to the top of the contemporary blues world has left Luther's legion of fans and friends pitifully bereft.

But the guitarist's living legacy extends beyond his recordings and our memories of his thrilling stage performances to include the music being made by his son Bernard, now a recording artist in his own right and author of a fine new album for Cannonball Records.

Keepin' the Blues Alive presents the 32-year-old guitarist and singer with stripped-down, hard-driving support from Greg Rzab (bass), Ray "Killer" Allison (drums), Will Crosby (rhythm guitar) and the always sympathetic keyboards of producer Ron Levy.

A veteran of Koko Taylor's Blues Machine and Willie Dixon's All Stars as well as his father's loving tutelage, Bernard steps forward here to lead this taut ensemble through a stirring program of original material and carefully chosen covers, showcasing his fluent guitar, convincing vocals, vigorous drive and consistent good taste to impressive effect.

Allison's guitar shines brightest on the obscure Freddy King instrumental, "In the Open," where emotional abandon is registered with admirable restraint over the relentessly pumping rhythm section to produce an impeccably rendered performance.

Bernard pays tribute to his father with an impassioned reading of Luther's hopeful composition "A Change Must Come," and offers an entirely distinctive treatment of the Jackie Brenston chestnut "Rocket 88." "Home Goin'" is an equally unique adaptation of an old-style gospel anthem, marred only somewhat by Levy's over-the-top Hammond organ interlude, while both Allison and composer Aron Burton are poorly served by the ill-conceived closing selection, "Garbage Man."

Of the Bernard Allison originals, "Baby Chile" and "Young Boy's Blues" seem to date to an earlier period in the artist's development and lose considerable potency in the hands of a man over 30; repeated listening deprives them of even more power, leaving a very thin vein of interest indeed. Everyone plays well, however, and the leader takes plenty of well-spent solo space.

Allison's incoherent lyrics to "Tell Me Why" are redeemed by a pair of blazing guitar solos which, characteristically, generate great heat and light but never flame out of control. "Walkin'" moves at a brisk pace with more inspired guitar from Allison, while "You Gave Me the Blues" and "When I'm Lonely" are well-made and -played pop blues numbers that remind of Little Milton, Tyrone Davis, Walter "Wolfman" Washington or Guitar Slim Jr.

Bernard Allison has weighed in as a welcome blues force to be reckoned with, now and in years to come. As he points out himself, Bernard's no Muddy Waters or B.B. King, but he can play the hell out of the guitar at the same level of passion and virtuosity attained by his late lamented father--and that's definitely good news for the blues.


--New Orleans
October 30, 1997


(c) 1997, 2006 John Sinclair. All Rights Reserved.


]]> johnsinclair001@hotmail.com (John) Blues Thu, 09 Feb 2006 08:24:01 +0000 http://localhost/backup/liner-notes/86-rhythm-blues-a-soul/722-aretha-franklin-soul-69.html http://localhost/backup/liner-notes/86-rhythm-blues-a-soul/722-aretha-franklin-soul-69.html
Aretha Franklin
Soul 69
Atlantic / Men With Hats Records LP

By John Sinclair


There have been very, very few singers in the history of American popular music who hit with the power and impact of Ms. Aretha Franklin. Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday, Dinah Washington, Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, Betty Carter: Each achieved an unprecedented level of artistry and personal expression through song and enjoyed the adoration of their legions of followers. But Ms. Ree, the undisputed Queen of Soul from the Motor City, blasted her music straight to the top of the pop charts and ruled the nation's airwaves in the mid-1960s with the unmistakable sound of her voice and her incredibly emotive delivery.

Aretha's series of masterful hit singles for Atlantic Records  I Never Loved a Man,  Do Right Woman,  R-E-S-P-E-C-T,  Chain of Fools,  and a half dozen more  won her millions of devoted fans and a central place in the pantheon of modern soul singers. Brilliantly produced by Atlantic's Jerry Wexler, these recordings brought Ms. Franklin's every budding musical gift to perfect fruition and established Sister Ree as the force to be reckoned with in the field of American popular song.

Aretha Franklin was in no way an overnight success, and her road to the top was a long and relatively rocky climb from its roots in her father's Hastings Street church on the near east side of Detroit. The Reverend C.L. Franklin was an exceptionally dynamic preacher of the Gospel whose message reached far beyond the confines of his pulpit when his sermons were recorded by local record man Joe Von Battle in the early 1950s and released to a national audience by Chess Records in Chicago. Rev. Franklin's 78 rpm Chess singles like The Eagle Stirreth His Nest  were enormously popular with the black record-buying public, and his influence soon spread from the Motor City all across the country.

Aretha grew up singing with the New Bethel Church choir and was recognized as an outstanding soloist while still a small child. Her first recordings, a stirring set of soulful gospel performances, were made in 1954 and also released by Chess, and she toured the country with her father for the rest of the 50s, appearing in countless churches and auditoria from coast to coast as a teenage gospel singing sensation.

Outside of church, however, Aretha proved to be somewhat of a wild teenaged girl and mothered a pair of children before she was 18. She began to feel constricted by the insularity of the gospel music community and longed to follow Sam Cooke and other former gospel stars into the potentially lucrative world of popular music. Finally, at the turn of the 60s, and with her father's reluctant blessing, Aretha landed a contract with John Hammond at Columbia Records to record as a pop artist and jazz singer.

Columbia showcased Aretha in a series of elaborate pop productions which set her versatile voice against the sound of large, glossily arranged orchestras and won her a place on the abbreviated list of emerging jazz vocalists. Although these releases met with moderate success in the marketplace, the company sadly failed to fully recognize  much less realize  the vast musical and commercial potential Ms. Franklin represented.

Aretha labored at Columbia until the mid- 60s, increasingly dissatisfied with her musical direction and lack of popular impact, until Jerry Wexler reached out to bring her into the Atlantic Records fold and carefully crafted a new approach designed to make the most of every one of the singer's latent strengths. First he stripped away the pop-jazz veneer Columbia's production staff had been so intent on applying to her soulful delivery and cut all the way back to her roots in the gospel music of her father's Detroit church. Then he built her a new sound from the ground up, using the simplest of rhythmic configurations  guitar, bass, drums and Aretha's own piano  to adorn the singer's powerful voice.

Then he took Aretha way down south to Muscle Shoals, Alabama, to make her first Atlantic recordings in the company of Fame Studios  deep-fried rhythm team, a bunch of hard-backed white boys whose rough stance and extra-musical attitude seem to have spooked Aretha and her husband/manager Ted White to the extent that they bolted the sessions after only one song had been cut and headed back North.. But the one tune  Aretha's own composition, I Never Loved a Man (The Way That I Love You),  with the singer accompanying herself on piano provided ammunition enough for Wexler to work with, and he went back to Atlantic's New York City headquarters with an acetate of the song that he had pressed up into a batch of promo copies for distribution to several key R&B deejays. Their immediate and wildly enthusiastic response brought Ms. Franklin back into the studio to cut a B side for her first Atlantic Records single, and her time of triumph had truly begun.

Aretha's star began to rise against the soul music firmament studded with such stellar performers as James Brown, Jackie Wilson, Solomon Burke, Wilson Pickett, Otis Redding and a host of other African-American singers who had smashed their way into the pop music charts to dominate the American radio airwaves. Her fellow Detroiters at the burgeoning Motown Records empire  Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, Smokey Robinson & the Miracles, the Temptations, the Four Tops, the Supremes, the Spinners, Martha & the Vandellas  were also riding high in the nation's musical consciousness, and soul music had established itself as the eloquent voice of the current generation. But Aretha's magnificent voice and exuberant, high-spirited delivery took the music to a new level where the nascent Queen of Soul would reign supreme.

Propelled by crack studio ensembles from New York City and the South and supported by a sympathic set of hard-punching back-up singers, Aretha set a torrid pace as each of her next several Atlantic singles charged to the top of the pop charts. She and Wexler meshed into a mighty force of nature, delivering terrific songs with immense vocal power, irresistible rhythmic impact and impeccable arrangements. Beyond her musical import, Ms. Franklin gave unmistakable voice to the universal sentiment of the nation's citizens of African descent when she released her supercharged recording of R-E-S-P-E-C-T,  a compelling demand which could be heard by any American within ten feet of a radio.

Aretha ruled the charts all through 1967 and 1968, establishing herself in the hearts and minds of millions of Americans of every persuasion as the quintessential interpreter of African-American song. She toured America to great acclaim and in the summer of 1968 made her first trip to Europe, where she recorded a live album, Aretha In Paris. Before she left she cut the singles I Say a Little Prayer  and The House That Jack Built  with the Muscle Shoals rhythm section, and at the same time began work on what she and Jerry Wexler called the jazz album   the one that would be released the following January as Soul 69.

By this time Ms. Franklin was so firmly established as the chart-topping Queen of Soul that she and Wexler felt confident in taking the singer back to her jazz roots and making an album that would enable her cash in on the substantial musical investment she d made with her series of Columbia albums. These LPs had garnered approval from the jazz critics but never managed to rack up the kind of sales Aretha's Atlantic singles enjoyed in the pop marketplace, and Wexler was now determined to show off his star's considerable skills as a gospel-jazz stylist her hard-won pop audience.

For these initial Soul 69 sessions in April 1958, Wexler brought the Muscle Shoals rhythm section  Spooner Oldham (organ), Jimmy Johnson (guitar), Jerry Jemmott (bass), Tommy Cogbill (electric bass) and Roger Hawkins (drums)  to Atlantic's studios in New York City and added three percussionists to the mix. Abetted by Aretha's soulful piano, they recorded Smokey Robinson's Tracks of My Tears  and one of Ms. Franklin's long-time favorites, Today I Sing the Blues,  a Helen Humes number from 1948 which had been the singer's first Columbia single back in 1960.

After Aretha returned from Europe, she and Wexler returned to the Atlantic studios for a five-day session to complete the album Wexler thought of as Aretha's Jazz Album.  With engineer Tom Dowd as co-producer and the slick, skillful arrangements of Arif Mardin, Wexler fashioned a program of jazz-drenched pop tunes and R&B standards that showcased Ms. Franklin's trademark gospel-jazz style and musically sophisticated delivery to exceptional effect.

The band assembled for these dates was first-class in every respect. The rhythm section comprised pianist Junior Mance, guitarist Kenny Burrell, bassist Ron Carter, and drummers Bruno Carr and Grady Tate, aided by Latin percussion and backing singers on the pop chestnuts Crazy He Calls Me,  Elusive Butterfly  and John Hartford's Gentle on My Mind.  The horn ensemble interpreting Mardin's charts included top New York players on every instrument: saxophonists Frank Wess, George Dorsey, David Fathead  Newman, King Curtis, Seldon Powell and Pepper Adams; Joe Newman, Ernie Royal, Richard Williams, Bernie Glow and Snookie Young on trumpets; and trombonists Jimmy Cleveland, Benny Powell, Urbie Greene and Thomas Mitchell.

The inspired repertoire included a set of four R&B classics arranged for Aretha and jazz orchestra, including a pair of songs associated with Big Maybelle ( Ramblin   and Pitiful ), Percy Mayfield's exquisite River's Invitation,  and Bring It on Home to Me,  a masterpiece by Sam Cooke, who was one of Ms. Franklin's central influences and a dear friend from back in her gospel music days. Also receiving the full Arif Mardin treatment were the venerable pop chestnuts If You Gotta Make a Fool of Somebody,  I ll Never Be Free  and the Russ Morgan theme So Long. 

Punctuated by the expressive trumpet of Joe Newman and the telling tenor solos of King Curtis ( Pitiful ) and David Fathead  Newman (all others), and beautifully borne on the flying carpet of sound laid down by the large ensemble, Aretha's performance throughout is a tour-de-force of soul and intelligent presentation. Her voice soars to its accustomed heights and drops down into a sea of pure feeling, delineating the disparate material with supreme grace and power and illuminating Mardin's masterful jazz arrangements with all the unleashed force of her distinctive personality.

One listen to this remarkable album is enough to place it irrefutably in the pantheon of Ms. Franklin's finest work. But one listen will never be enough, and you are bound to return to this musical program again and again to marvel at the consummate artistry of Aretha Franklin. She would go on from here to notch additional soul hits for Atlantic, cut powerhouse albums like Live at the Fillmore West and her intense gospel collaboration with the Rev. James Cleveland and his choir, and contribute an entire lifetime's worth of unforgettably great recordings. But Soul 69, Aretha's jazz album for Jerry Wexler, will stand out forever as a high point in her long and incredibly fruitful career.


New Orleans, March 7, 2002/
Los Angeles, March 18, 2002

Note: David Nathan's liner notes for the Rhino/Atlantic CD reissue of Soul 69 were a valuable source of information for these notes.


(c) 2002, 2006 John Sinclair. All Rights Reserved.


]]> johnsinclair001@hotmail.com (John) Rhythm Blues & Soul Fri, 27 Jan 2006 06:10:15 +0000 http://localhost/backup/liner-notes/82-jazz/721-ella-fitzgerald-and-louis-armstrong-ella-and-louis-again.html http://localhost/backup/liner-notes/82-jazz/721-ella-fitzgerald-and-louis-armstrong-ella-and-louis-again.html
Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong
Ella and Louis Again
Verve Records

By John Sinclair


Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong together again: Sounds like a good idea! It's the Summer of 1957, and producer Norman Granz had struck paydirt with his initial pairing of these two giants of jazz in a setting which kept the spotlight tightly focused on their masterful singing of the American popular song. And now, for this welcome sequel, Louis and Ella were ready to work their way through another well-chosen program of pop standards, buoyed and propelled by the incomparably sensitive support of the Oscar Peterson Trio with guitarist Herb Ellis and bassist Ray Brown plus drummer Louis Bellson.

While the heyday of swing had long been eclipsed by the ascendancy of bebop and the birth of the cool, Ella and Louis and their supple ensemble simply ignore the passage of time in these three mid- 50s sessions and swing the music so naturally and effortlessly as to present somewhat of a textbook example of how this music is supposed to sound no matter when or where it's played. Each song the principals sing is gently lifted out of its original context as a Broadway show tune, movie musical number or Tin Pan Alley favorite and firmly re-rooted in the inexhaustibly rich musical soil of the African American cultural experience, bringing additional layers of meaning, feeling, artistry and rhythmic intelligence to even the most improbable material.

Where the rare selections presented for their interpretation have been drawn from the jazz literature  the Benny Goodman features Don t Be That Way  and Stompin  at the Savoy  and the Don Redman-Andy Razaf classic, Gee, Baby, Ain t I Good to You?   the music and performances are beautifully integrated into a fully pleasing entirety that rewards the attentive listener with everything that's good about jazz. Indeed, on Stompin   Ms. Fitzgerald, who was herself a top attraction at the Savoy Ballroom as singer with the fabulous Chick Webb Orchestra early in her career, needs little prodding from Pops to really cut loose with a vocal improvisation that takes the song to a whole new place and propels the performance well beyond the premises of this project. Armstrong contributes a blistering trumpet solo, and everything is really swinging.

On the pop numbers that predominate these sessions, however, there's an almost palpable tension between the singers and the material which provides a compelling subtext to the superlative performances of some of America's best-known songs by two of the most skilled and expressive vocalists our nation has produced. Oscar Peterson and the ensemble offer accompaniment throughout that is always perfectly balanced, exquisitely relaxed, unobtrusive and tasteful. But the singers frequently can be heard struggling to come up with a convincing reading of the often transparently inane lyrics, sounding at times like observers from another planet confronted with the bizarre fantasies of an alien civilization, then shrugging their queer shoulders and digging into the songs with as much professionalism as they can muster.

In fact, what impresses most throughout this collection of pop chestnuts is the persistent artistry and unfailing good humor of the musical protagonists as they work their way through set after set of improbable lyrics composed by pop tunesmiths with a completely different cast of characters in mind. Makin  Whoopee,  They All Laughed,  I Won t Dance,  Comes Love,  Autumn in New York,  Let's Call the Whole Thing Off,  These Foolish Things (Remind Me of You),  I ve Got My Love to Keep Me Warm,  I m Puttin  All My Eggs in One Basket,  A Fine Romance,  I Get a Kick Out of You   every one of these numbers seems to have been written to be sung by some dewy-eyed alabaster ingenue or clean-cut white guy with a severely limited experience of life outside his particular social class. Here, instead, the songs and their insipid scenarios are delivered by a pair of mature, worldly-wise African American refugees from the ghetto who have come by their musical mastery and their experience of American life from an entirely different perspective.

The juxtaposition of the distinctly African American identity of these two titans of the jazz idiom with such studiously contrived lyrics coming from the heart of the popular music mainstream makes for a particularly provocative listening experience. To hear, for example, the extremely worldly Louis Armstrong, a product of the most licentious precincts of turn-of-the-20th-century New Orleans whose own mother is reputed to have worked as a prostitute, as he bravely negotiates the cutesy double-entendres of Cole Porter's Let's Do It  requires more than merely the customary suspension of disbelief. From his warbling of the goofy introductory verse through his tortured grappling with the main text of the song, Pops is clearly trying to make the best of a bad situation. Other passages, like Pops asserting that Autumn in New York transforms the slums into Mayfair,  are almost startling in their incongruity.

But Ella and Louis, still functioning at the time of these sessions at the sustained peak of their artistic powers, consistently overcome such textual obstacles with the sheer power and grace of their consummate sense of swing, They approach every piece with dignity and charm, enhancing the texts with the full force of their personalities and bending the music to their will, and Armstrong further brightens the proceedings from time to time with a chorus or two of his shining trumpet. They swing everything from within, at whatever tempo, with warmth and precision, turning each song into a shapely gem of considerable musical beauty.

It's hard to believe in the world of today, but America was once a very swinging place. Fifty, sixty, seventy-five years ago, from the beginning of the Jazz Age in the 20s to the end of the Second World War, swing music ruled America from bottom to top. The Prophet of Swing and its very embodiment, Mr. Louis Daniel Armstrong of New Orleans, Chicago and New York City, not only established the relaxed, elastic, rhythmically intelligent approach to making music that would be characterized as swing, but his brilliant recordings and compelling performances propelled swing music beyond its wellsprings in the African American communities of the South and straight into the mainstream of American popular music.

Indeed, during the period of Armstrong's greatest ascendancy in the 1930s, swing was America's popular music, and the supple rhythms of swing insinuated themselves into every aspect of American life. Even the squares were swinging to the music of Armstrong, Benny Goodman, Count Basie, Cab Calloway, the Dorsey brothers and other popular purveyors of the danceable sound. The rhythmic powerhouses led by Earl Fatha  Hines, Jimmie Lunceford, Benny Carter, Lionel Hampton and Chick Webb lit up the urban bastions of racial segregation where the nation's African American citizenry was forced to dwell, and their recordings dominated the neighborhood jukeboxes and the race records charts as a result.

Louis Armstrong had been swinging from the jump, first as a teen-aged trumpet man in the streets of the Crescent City and on the Mississippi River steamboats during the years of the First World War and then in the nightclubs and theatres of the South Side of Chicago, where he had been summoned by his mentor, Joe King  Oliver, to join Oliver's Creole Jazz Band in 1922. It was Armstrong's example as a soloist and improviser with driving rhythm and a head full of ideas that inspired a whole generation of jazz players of every sort and helped turn on America to the concept and practice of swing as a way of life.

Armstrong established himself so firmly in the 20s with his recordings  first with Oliver, then his own Hot 5 and Hot 7 sides, his accompaniments to a wide variety of singers and his early big-band sessions  and with his warm, effusive personality that he was one of the few jazz artists of the decade to survive the dark years of the Great Depression with his popularity intact. When the good times started to come around again in the mid- 30s, Louis was a bigger star than ever, and swinging his big band with his trumpet and vocals like never before. His mature style was now well set, and he would wield his hard-won mastery of the music with greater and greater success for the rest of his long career.

By the time of his duets with Ella, Louis had played a prominent role in the progression and popular acceptance of jazz and swing in America and around the world for more than 30 years. Easily the best-known name (and face) in all of jazz, Armstrong enjoyed wide acclaim with mid-century audiences by virtue of his all-star sextet, frequent television appearances and State Department-sponsored tours of foreign lands, in honor of which he had become known to millions of Americans as Ambassador Satch.  By no means a modernist, Pops had kept pace with the changing times in his own sweet way and was never moved from his central place in the mainstream of American popular entertainment.

Ella Fitzgerald, who could quite properly be titled the Queen of Swing (although such a designation seems not to have been utilized), was every bit as much at the top of her game as her singing partner. A generation younger than Mr. Armstrong, Ms. Fitzgerald had been discovered  as an Amateur Night contest-winner at the Apollo Theatre and came to prominence as featured vocalist with the hard-hitting Chick Webb Orchestra, the house band at the world-famous Savoy Ballroom in Harlem. After Webb's untimely demise, Ella took over the band and made a string of hit singles that served to establish her preeminence.

A pure product of the Swing Era, Ms. Fitzgerald embraced the musical innovations of the modern jazz movement of the 40s and enriched her vocal palette with the sophisticated harmonies and rhythmic advances developed by the bebop pioneers. She played Carnegie Hall with the Dizzy Gillespie Orchestra, toured with Norman Granz's Jazz at the Philharmonic troupe and rose to the top of the jazz world in the 50s with her own impeccable trio and a series of well-focused albums dedicated to exploring the works of popular American songwriters. Like Armstrong, she was also known for her wildly imaginative scat singing and her unfailing ability to swing any set of notes she got her fabulous pipes around.

So here they are, Ella and Louis again, blending and contrasting their matchless voices and marvelously relaxed approach to the music, slow-dancing and romping their way through a few more well-worn pages from the pop songbook and putting their stamp on everything they sing. There's no hurry, no worry, nothing but beautifully swinging music sung and played with perfect taste from start to finish. Louis goes it alone on Makin  Whoopee,  Let's Do It,  Willow Weep for Me  and I Get a Kick Out of You ; Ella has Comes Love,  These Foolish Things  and Ill Wind  to herself; and they work in tandem on all the others, while Pops brings his trumpet to bear on Autumn in New York,  Willow Weep for Me,  Love Is Here to Stay,  Learnin  the Blues,  and the utterly delightful Stompin  at the Savoy  and Gee, Baby, Ain t I Good to You? 

Now there's nothing left to do but sit back, slip this disk into your player, prepare your favorite libation and enjoy the sound of two of the greatest, most distinctive jazz voices of all time having a ball with each other, their superlative rhythm section and a set of well-crafted, time-tested musical material. It doesn t come any better than this.


New Orleans
October 25, 2002


(c) 2002, 2006 John Sinclair. All Rights Reserved.


]]> johnsinclair001@hotmail.com (John) Jazz Fri, 27 Jan 2006 06:01:00 +0000 http://localhost/backup/liner-notes/83-blues/720-willie-king-a-the-liberators-living-in-a-new-world.html http://localhost/backup/liner-notes/83-blues/720-willie-king-a-the-liberators-living-in-a-new-world.html
Willie King & The Liberators
Living in a New World
Rooster Blues R 2647


The Secret History of the Blues

By John Sinclair


You talk about terror 
I been terrorized all my days & 

Willie King, Terrorized 


The blues has never been about what's on the surface. It cuts deep below the crust of everyday life and reaches straight into the heart of things, from where all feeling lives and never lies. It speaks of bad luck and trouble, desperate love and abandonment, good times and bad times and every emotional shade in between.

But at the very bottom of the blues is the terrible sadness people feel when they are unjustly and mercilessly beaten down every day of all the years of their lives by the people over them.

The brutal harshness of life as a landless, cruelly exploited or either jobless and discarded American of African descent is what the blues is all about, and the things people do to make a life for themselves within this crushing social framework so that they may enjoy some small measure of happiness as relief from the constant battering.

But, in the long American experience of the blues people, there is and always has been great danger in speaking forthrightly where the white people might hear you and take offense, because their response to what they do not want to hear has never been nothing nice.

So the blues has always talked about everything but the oppressor in the second person  it's addressed to the mean woman, or to the neighbor who's taken your mate, or to the gods of chance and fate.

Rarely, rarely has the blues been about the wicked master who steals your labor, takes your woman or wants to end your life  the upstanding citizens upon whom the fates have smiled by making them your social superiors in every goddamned way.

This point is drawn very finely in a remarkable conversation between folklorist Alan Lomax and three Mississippi bluesmen who came up in the 20s and 30s, Big Bill Broonzy, Memphis Slim and John Lee Williamson, recorded in the mid-1940s but never released under their own names until a dozen years ago or so, when all three men had passed on to their greater reward.

After the bluesmen describe the hopelessly severe social conditions under which they were raised in the Deep South, they are taken aback when Lomax suggests releasing the recording: Oh, no, we still got people down there. 

In the modern world, where life in America's vast urban ghettos is even more brutally oppressive than the years of slavery and then of sharecropping in the South, where even children may be heavily armed and human life is at no premium whatsoever, it is commonplace to hear the rap artists talk about anything they want to, including their intentions toward the people who keep them down.

But in the blues, which continue to be sung and played by people who cling for their lives to an earlier aesthetic, the subject of the blues remains masked under the rubric of interpersonal relationships or the vagaries of fate.

It is simple to conclude that this misdirection is what lends the blues its poetic force, and this writer would be the last to argue that point. The blues is powerful in its rootedness in the circumstances of daily life in America, and the general absence in its lyrics of the oppressor who is always present in real life adds another layer of poetic depth to the idiom. That's as true for the great bluesmen and women of today as it was for Bessie Smith, Charley Patton, Memphis Minnie, Son House, Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters.

But when you hear a blues singer say it right out, like Willie King does on this album of northwestern Alabama blues direct from the 21st century, it raises the power of the blues to an even higher level, and you might even say to yourself, Oh, yeah, so that's what they were talking about. 

It sounds so natural, to hear Willie King talk about all the places he's worked and how little he has to show for it, or how working in the rural environment seems not really to have changed since the days of slavery, even though it's almost a century and a half later now. It sounds so natural, because that's what you were hearing all along, as a subtext to the lyrics of the blues.

Willie King brings it all down front, as they say, and in his songs reveals the secret history of the blues. Born in Prairie Point, Mississippi, in 1943, Willie was raised by his grandparents and has lived and struggled in the Deep South for most of his life. He's worked in the fields plowing mules, in the sawmills, as a travelling salesman of shoes, cologne and notions, but he's never been resigned to accepting his mandated lot in life.

Thus he's been a civil rights activist for more than 30 years now and a student of the techniques of community organizing in the rural setting as taught by the professional agitators at the Highlander Folk Center in Tennessee where Pete Seeger, Guy Carawan and other important folk artists have been active for well over half a century.

A musician since he was a youth  he was playing a one-string guitar at the age of nine  by the late 70s Willie had started playing the blues in rustic local nightclubs and juke joints as a way to bring the struggling songs  he was writing to the people of his community, hoping to inspire them to join the movement to gain more control over the terms of their lives.

He made music at night and by day he organized the Rural Members Association, sponsoring classes in music, woodworking, food preservation and African American cultural traditions and providing transportation, legal assistance and other much-needed services to the RMA's constituency.

Described as a field hand turned Field Marshal,  King has combined his musical mission with his community organizing activities to give voice to the deepest feelings of his listeners and make a significant impact on their lives.

Willie's songs are remarkable: Never harsh nor doctrinaire, they state the realities of real life in the ordinary language of the blues, matter-of-factly telling the truth about the way things really are and tempering the songs of social criticism that call for serious change with tender pleas for love and compassion  remembering, in the phrase of Che Guevara, that a true revolutionary is guided by great feelings of love.

Willie's music is wholly rooted in the blues tradition, and he utilizes the forms, rhythms and grooves endemic to northern Mississippi and Alabama which are familiar to his listeners through the works of Howlin  Wolf, John Lee Hooker, R.L. Burnside and other bluesmen native to the area.

The band of musicians he has recruited to play his music is beautifully united around the vision of its leader and supports King's voice, songs and guitar with a warmth and empathy that is almost palpable. Willie's long-time partner and closest comrade is second vocalist Willie Lee Halbert, who echoes and underlines King's phrases in a manner which seems to be unique in the blues idiom to this particular ensemble.

Guitarist Aaron Hardhead  Hodge and drummer Willie James Williams are fellow veterans of countless Sunday night stomp-downs at Betty Jean's jukehouse and other favorite local venues, sticking with King and Halbert through every sort of thick and thin. Keyboard man Henry Smith and bassist Robert Corbett  at 19 he is 20 years younger than anyone else in the band  are fairly recent additions, and alto saxophonist Kevin Hayes, a truck driver from Louisville, Mississippi, joins them when he can.

Willie calls them The Liberators, and watching the ensemble begin to assemble in the funky little Memphis recording studio where they ve driven from northwestern Alabama to make their new album, it's easy to see that this is not your standard-issue blues band. The core members have been together a long time and their easy camaraderie is readily apparent, while the newer guys are made to feel equally welcome.

They set up around their leader and get right to work, their familiarity with the material through regular performance giving them the kind of confidence needed to make things move along without a hitch, and by the end of their third day at Easley McCain Recording they re ready to pack up and head back home with the whole album safely in the can.

One of the reasons everything is able to proceed so smoothly is the production team, headed by Willie and Rooster Blues founder Jim O Neal and aided and abetted by Rooster staffers Jeff Loh and Brian Factor. Willie met O Neal at a blues festival in Eutaw, Alabama, in 1987 and kept in touch with Jim over the years.

He signed with the label at the turn of the century and cut his first Rooster Blues album, Freedom Creek, which garnered almost unanimous critical acclaim and was named Album of the Year  by Living Blues in 2001. Willie was also named Blues Artist of the Year  in the same poll, and the new album is eagerly awaited by everyone who had the good fortune to hear Freedom Creek

Well, no one will be disappointed here, because Living in a New World builds on the considerable strengths of the live  album  including great songs with a unique focus, soulful playing by a well-seasoned ensemble, and an overwhelming feeling of oneness with the audience  to deliver an impressive program of music that's deeply steeped in the blues tradition yet as fresh as today and tomorrow.

All the songs here are Willie King compositions (his friend Peter O Hare contributed the lyrics to Ain t Gonna Work ), and the lyrics are full of King's trademark topics: the rigors of life as a working man with nothing to call one's own, the stultifying lack of progress toward social and economic justice, the need for oppressed people to unite under the banner of compassion and common purpose. And the band sounds even better in the studio than live  on stage, which is not always so easy to achieve.

Willie King knows the secret history of the blues all too well, and he reveals it here so plainly and so naturally that there's no possible room for doubt. The blues have always been part of me,  he sums up in the monologue that ends the album. I live it every day. And it's about love  sharing, helping each other, caring for one another, that's what the blues life is all about. I m holding on to the blues life, because I found out that it's a good life to live. I just want to keep passing it down. 


New Orleans
March 31, 2002


(c) 2002, 2006 John Sinclair. All Rights Reserved.


]]> johnsinclair001@hotmail.com (John) Blues Fri, 27 Jan 2006 05:53:31 +0000 http://localhost/backup/liner-notes/87-new-orleans/719-les-getrex-plays-the-classics.html http://localhost/backup/liner-notes/87-new-orleans/719-les-getrex-plays-the-classics.html
Les Getrex
Plays the Classics
Sound of New Orleans 1063

By John Sinclair


Les Getrex is one of New Orleans  undiscovered musical treasures. A product of the culturally profuse 6th Ward, Les has backed up many of the Crescent City's most profound heavyweights, from Johnny Adams and Lee Dorsey to Ernie K-Doe, Walter Wolfman  Washington, Barbara George and Marva Wright. He spent eight years in the guitar chair of the mighty Fats Domino orchestra and another five with the late Rockin  Dopsie & his Zydeco Twisters, and he's authored one previous album, 300 Miles, that featured his own compositions and several originals by veteran Motown songwriters Greg Clark and Johnny Maxwell.

For his second outing as a leader, the versatile guitarist and powerfully persuasive singer weighs in with a set of blues, R$B and country standards that could easily be called Les Getrex Plays the Classics. The songs belong to an eye-popping spectrum which ranges from Les's terrific reading of the ancient Mardi Gras Indian anthem Indian Red  to Kermit Ruffin's great 21st-century lament, I Can t Take My Baby Nowhere,  complete with trumpet commentary from the composer and some salacious lyrical changes wrought by Getrex himself.

Les hits a lot of musical stops along the way, swinging stone country tunes like Tennessee Waltz  and Hank Williams  Jambalaya ; pumping up a pair of pop chestnuts with his groovy lounge-favorite arrangement on Misty  and a hot 2nd-line romp on When My Dreamboat Comes Home ; paying devout homage to personal favorites like Bobby Blue  Bland ( Farther On Up the Road ) and Otis Redding ( Mr. Pitiful ); digging deeper into the urban blues with John Lee Hooker's Boom Boom Boom Boom  and I Found A Love  by the Falcons; striking another bawdy note with the irrepressible Chick Willis version of Stoop Down Mama ; and shining brightest on three outstanding selections from the Ray Charles mid-1950s Atlantic Records catalog: A Fool For You,  Hallelujah I Love Her So  and Mary Ann. 

Getrex is in splendid form throughout, breathing new life into these well-established standards while stamping each song with the warmth and potency of his own personality. Les is ably and abundantly abetted by an all-star cast of Crescent City characters anchored by bassists Alonzo Johnson and Vitas Paukstatis and drummers Dwayne Nelson and Ken Thomas. Raymond Fletcher (organ), Bob Andrews and Nick Farkas (piano) and Keith Vinet take care of the keyboards; Earl Skip  Thompson is on percussions; and the stellar horn section of trumpeter Tracy Griffin and saxophonists Tom Fitzpatrick and Jerry Jumonville is joined by Ruffins and trombonist Corey Henry for the final cut.

Thousands of music-seeking tourists have heard Les Getrex and his band play these numbers night after night on their endless Bourbon Street gigs in the French Quarter of New Orleans, but the good news is that the songs have translated so well to disc, The result is this fine recording, produced under the careful hand of Gary Edwards at his sumptuous Sound of New Orleans studios, and it amounts to a perfect showcase for the fully-matured talent and distinctive sound of Les Getrex. Properly introduced, Les's new legion of fans will surely join this writer in eager anticipation of a set of the guitarist's own songs  but until we get it, this collection of classics will certainly provide many hours of well-rewarded listening.


--Boston
October 4, 2003


(c) 2003, 2006 John Sinclair. All Rights Reserved.


]]> johnsinclair001@hotmail.com (John) New Orleans Fri, 27 Jan 2006 05:37:13 +0000 http://localhost/backup/liner-notes/87-new-orleans/718-little-freddie-king-walkin-with-freddie.html http://localhost/backup/liner-notes/87-new-orleans/718-little-freddie-king-walkin-with-freddie.html
Little Freddie King
Walkin  with Freddie
Music Maker Relief Foundation, 2003

By John Sinclair


Little Freddie King is one of New Orleans  great hidden musical treasures and one of the most beautiful cats one will ever meet to boot. A native of McComb, Mississippi  birthplace of Bo Diddley where he took up with the blues at an early age, Freddie's been a persistent presence in the Crescent City ever since before there was even a Jazz & Heritage Festival, because he's played at every one.

Little Freddie's music is just as raw as his Mississippi roots, yet always deeply imbued with the warmth and sparkle of his very personality, and he has a wonderful knack for reworking classic modern blues compositions into completely personal permutations of these familiar themes.

Walkin  with Freddie presents the one and only Little Freddie King in the excellent company of his working ensemble, anchored by the irrepressible Wacko Wade on drums and topped off by the attentive harmonica of Bobby Lewis.

They sway their way through a prototypical Little Freddie program of wry, strictly idiosyncratic originals ( Tough Frog to Swallow,  Bad Bad News ), a couple of skewed instrumentals and a series of subtly twisted tributes to some of Freddie's favorite composers, here including Frankie Lee Sims, Howlin  Wolf, Albert King, Little Willie Littlefield and the great Guitar Slim.

This is the pure D blues from the land where the blues began by way of the Home of the Blues, good musical fun from way down behind the sun. If you ve heard Freddie's albums for Orleans Records, Swamp Boogie and Sing, Sang, Sung, you ll be overjoyed to hear that Walkin  with Freddie is another unpretentious opus of the exact same caliber of excellence and a highly entertaining outing you re bound to enjoy for years and years to come.


Detroit
September 1, 2003


(c) 2003 John Sinclair. All Rights Reserved.


]]> johnsinclair001@hotmail.com (John) New Orleans Fri, 27 Jan 2006 05:27:58 +0000 http://localhost/backup/liner-notes/87-new-orleans/717-michael-ray-a-the-cosmic-krewe-live-at-jimmys.html http://localhost/backup/liner-notes/87-new-orleans/717-michael-ray-a-the-cosmic-krewe-live-at-jimmys.html
Michael Ray & the Cosmic Krewe
Live at Jimmy s
Base Camp Records

By John Sinclair


A live concert is the perfect introduction to Michael Ray & the Cosmic Krewe, and this sweaty set of performances from the big stage at Jimmy's in uptown New Orleans during JazzFest is definitely the next best thing to being there.

Of course we re missing the brilliant neon light projections of Jerry Theriot and the high-charged interpretive dancing of Aussetua Amenkin which take the Cosmic Krewe's stage presentations into a whole nother dimension, but the music shines brightly out of the digital grooves of this compact disc and the Krewe is spontaneously enhanced by the presence in its midst of guitarist Trey Anastasio and drummer Jon Fishman of Phish.

Founded in the very early 1990s after trumpeter Michael Ray migrated from the Sun Ra house in Philadelphia to settle in New Orleans, the Cosmic Krewe has slowly and steadily evolved through countless rehearsals and live performances into the hot, tight, fiercely experimental ensemble heard on this recording.

The Krewe has also evolved into sort of a skewed bi-coastal aggregation of stellar instrumentalists drawn from the rich New Orleans music community  Ray, drummer Eddie Dejan and percussionist Michael Skinkus and the far-flung creative precincts of the Northeast, which have yielded up saxophonist Dave The Truth  Grippo, pianist Adam Klipple, trombonist Don Glasgo, bassist Stacy Starkweather and percussionist Steve Ferraris.

A quick look at Michael Ray's musical resume clearly reveals the roots of the unique fusion of experimental jazz and contemporary dance music that he calls cosmic funk.  Since 1978 the trumpet star has functioned as the intergalactic tone specialist  for the Sun Ra Arkestra while serving simultaneously as a key member of the horn section for the popular R&B group Kool & the Gang.

Splitting his work time between these two prominent ensembles, Ray came upon a way to fuse the disparate idioms into a Jazz Funk of the Future  that could take the music straight down the middle of the rhythmic spectrum and all the way out the realm of free group improvisation.

Settled in New Orleans and convalescing from a serious knee injury sustained in a terrible fall from a slippery stage surface while performing an outdoor concert with the Sun Ra Arkestra in 1991, Ray began to develop the concept of the Cosmic Krewe as a means of realizing his musical ideas.

Ray meditated at length on the twin questions of repertoire and personnel, inviting a small cadre of carefully selected musicians to come over and rehearse some Sun Ra compositions and some of Michael's own original works. The neon sculptor Jerry Theriot was a frequent visitor, and he and Michael explored the possibility of incorporatng Theriot's imaginative creations into the Cosmic Krewe's presentations.

A short residency by Sun Ra & the Arkestra at a college in the Northeast opened the door to a second universe of adventurous players Ray could draft into the Cosmic Krewe. Percussionist Steve Ferrari was named Captain of the Krewe, and trombonist Don Glasgo soon proved one of the Krewe's steadiest members. Dave Grippo, Adam Klipple and Stacy Starkweather came in, and Ray formed a close musical friendship with the guys in Phish while performing with the Krewe in the jam band's home base of Burlington, VT.

Soon Ray started bringing his New England mob down to New Orleans for JazzFest performances and recording sessions and mixing them in with stellar Crescent City musicians like Eddie Dejan, guitarist Carl LeBlanc, saxophonists Tony Dagradi, Tim Green and Clarence Johnston III, and a bevy of percussionists including Kenyatta Simon and fellow Sun Ra alumnus Samurai Celestial.

The fully constituted Krewe soon established its reputation for brilliance, intelligence, excitement and daring by means of a series of legendary performances  like the time they almost tore down the Jazz Tent at the Jazz & Heritage Festival when the capacity audience leaped to its feet and started dancing like crazy.

Michael Ray & the Cosmic Krewe can be heard on CD with their debut album on Evidence Records and their 1998 recording for the New Orleans label Monkey Hill, a potent mixture of Sun Ra compositions and original works by Ray and members of the Krewe titled Funk If I Know The disc under hand is the band's first live  recording, and it shows off the Krewe's distinct identity to great effect. The music on this disc is the product of another legendary evening with the Cosmic Krewe: the night Trey Anastasio and Jon Fishman joined the band on-stage at Jimmy's music club for a romp through the Krewe's characteristic repertoire.

There are four Sun Ra numbers, including the classics Astro Black  and Dancing Shadows,  Ray's rearrangement of Ra's space travelogue Saturn #2,  plus Neverness  and Face the Music.  Adam Klipple contributes his composition Pathology,  Don Glasgo reprises his Crescent City tribute, Beans and Rice,  and Ray weighs in with Champions  (a song originally written for Kool & the Gang), the anthemic Earth Rite  and Red & Green,  a neon work devised in collaboration with Jerry Therio.

A great night, a great band and some really great music: That's the Cosmic Krewe live  at Jimmy's one night during JazzFest. Dig it!


New Orleans
October 30, 2002


(c) 2002, 2006 John Sinclair. All Rights reserved.


]]> johnsinclair001@hotmail.com (John) New Orleans Fri, 27 Jan 2006 05:18:06 +0000