New Orleans Brass Bands S/D

Did you do any busking? How did the NYC shows go?

great! the rest of the shows were well-attended and hittin'. we did busk at dupont circle the day after the chick's show, made some gas money and sold some cds for sure. thanks again for your help.

tbc brass band has a studio album out, on this weird little l.a. label. it's all good, but at least four tracks are straight, unadulterated fire.

So I guess I gotta give in and pay $15.99 plus postage for it. Have not checked to see if cheaper downloads are for sale anywhere.

As far as regional bands go, Primate Fiasco in Western New England do some mean Dixieland, though mixed in as it is with all kinds of country-blues-psychedelia, so it's not for the purists.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rjL44jav7U

(that's keith, not phil btw)

http://www.cnn.com/2009/LIVING/wayoflife/08/06/cnnheroes.derrick.tabb/index.html

I'm gonna miss Rebirth at the State Theatre in Virginia next week when I'm out in Oakland for work. I might go see hornman and Satchmo voice imitator (and cousin of Trombone Shorty) Glenn Andrews and band band do a mostly unpublicized show for free out in suburban Reston, VA Saturday night.

August 16th at the Kennedy Ctr. Millennium Stage for free (and weebcast) -The Marine Corps Band's Dixieland Ensemble performs selections from the Dirty Dozen and Rebirth Brass Bands, New Orleans' street music, and original charts

Interesting

the typo is mine

I keep missing Rebirth. I was up in NYC with my son and they were playing a late show at a club.

Interesting article Ned Sublette forwarded around about the current population in New Orleans. Here's an excerpt from "The changing face -- and faces -- of New Orleans" by Sarah Carr, The Times-Picayune Sunday August 23, 2009, :

Smith laments the loss of a more vibrant Treme, where children as young as 2 were exposed to the city's musical traditions. Four years ago he said he often saw youths on Dumaine Street forming makeshift bands with pots, pans and bottles.

As the children grew, older musicians provided instruments and training.

"You don't see the grouping of kids making the magic of sound as part of play, " Smith said. "You don't have the relationships that produced Louis Armstrong, that produced Trombone Shorty."

Smith said the city "still showcases the big nickel events, like Jazzfest.
But the bottom, where all that comes from, has been very compromised."

Participation in Tambourine and Fan, the youth club Smith formed in 1968 to preserve New Orleans' cultural traditions, has dropped from more than 500 children before Katrina to about 200 now.

He points to his own 17-year-old grandson, who became fascinated with brass-band music before he was big enough to hold some of the instruments, as an example of what might be lost.

Before Katrina, he played in the band at Thurgood Marshall Middle School.
But he's stopped playing, for now.

"When people ask why, he'll say he isn't comfortable, " Smith said. "So much of what he left isn't here anymore."

Even Perry, who moved to New Orleans just a year before Katrina, has experienced a similar feeling. Welcomed to the city in his first months by a friendly, stable community of coffee drinkers at CC's on Esplanade Avenue, he walks in now and sees "so many new faces, I never know where they have settled, or if they've settled, or if they're here for one week."

He believes, however, that an intangible sense of place will continue to define both New Orleans, and those who live here, as it has for centuries.

"There are no clean slates, " Perry said. "As soon as you settle in a place, you hit an air of culture, of history, of politics. That mitigates all your plans. It shapes you."

http://www.nola.com/news/index.ssf/2009/08/the_katrinaimposed_exile_of_ne.html

4 years since Katrina. Harry Shearer is mad Obama is not pledging more money for restoring wetlands and fixing levees --

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/harry-shearer/playing-the-inside-game_b_266746.html
Obama supporters chided me, back in January and February, to "give him some time, he's only been in office for a month/two months/three months." I guess they knew what I didn't, that the presidency gets easier as you go along, that progressively fewer surprises get dumped on your desk as time passes. Obama's remarks about New Orleans during the campaign were anodyne boilerplate, and what he's giving us now is more of the same. He won't even do the obligatory photo-op in the city on 8/29; he told the Times-Picayune he'll come down "before the end of the year". He didn't say which year.

Rebirth Brass Band visiting Hull in 2 weeks. I am totally on it.

Cool.

Ned Sublette is having book release events for his new effort--"The Year Before the Flood: A Story of New Orleans." Today (Wednesday) at 5:30 p.m. at Garden District Book Shop, 2727 Prytania St.; Thursday at 6:30 p.m. at the Mother-in-Law Lounge, 1500 N. Claiborne Ave. (with live music); and Friday, 5-7 p.m., at the Community Book Center, 2523 Bayou Road. http://www.nola.com/books/index.ssf/2009/09/ned_sublette_remembers_new_orl.html

below is from another blog (oops I forgot the link)
The party will be at the Mother-In-Law Lounge in New Orleans: Thursday, September 24. It's going to be the best party ever: live music, two hours of open bar and yes, there will be gumbo.

We've hear talk from friends in New York that they want to come down for it. We'll have a party in New York too, but we'll only have one party at the Mother-In-Law, and you really don't want to miss it.

The Mother-In-Law Lounge, from which the Soul of New Orleans and the Mardi Gras Indians, Antoinette K-Doe. Godmother of the Baby Dolls -- RIP -- directed all good things for her City.

The Year Before the Flood" is not a "Katrina book," but rather a reminder of what life was like "the last year the city was whole," Sublette said, here in the place he calls the northernmost point of the "Saints and Festivals belt." And when he writes of a post-Katrina second-line, with the crowd chanting "Reee-birth!" he says, "Were they supporting the band, or shouting to their city? It was the same thing."

I wonder who's running things over at Mother-in-Law now that Antoinette's gone (RIP).
Also, who's making the gumbo?

Both good questions.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1MCx1vkOtg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNYGheRf8e0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xyx-PJ6hG54

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HaWqGvv9saU

Those parades (and Rebirth) are awesome.

Now this Ned Sublette hosted event will be pretty cool too (in a different kind of way). I saw Yale prof Robert Farris Thompson do a talk on African and Latin music once that was awesome. He is a showman and an intellectual.

At the invitation of the Jazz and Heritage Foundation, I've organized an event that will take place on the afternoon of Saturday, November 14 in New Orleans. I believe the title we've settled on is "Congo Square: Crossroads of the Afro-Atlantic World." I will give a talk about what the bamboula of Congo Square probably sounded like, with the help of Alex Lasalle on percussion, followed by a talk titled "Kongo with a 'K'" by none other than Master T himself, Robert Farris Thompson, and a panel with Freddi Williams Evans, Connie Zeanah Atkinson, Herreast Harrison, and Luther Gray, and a workshop/party with Alex Lasalle and New Orleans percussionists. This is in association with the J & HF's Congo Square Rhythms Festival, which takes place the following day.

http://wayneandwax.com/?p=2444#comment-11501

That link is in part about hiphop funky New Orleans brass banders influencing balkan style brass groups

fuck "honk!" imo

Yep. And some of that I did not get.

But here's some more interesting news:

Derrick Tabb, Rebirth Brass Band drummer and founder of The Roots of Music education program in New Orleans, is one of 10 nominees for CNN’s Hero of the Year. The Times-Picayune ArchiveDerrick Tabb of the Rebirth Brass drummer and founder of The Roots of Music program heard that he’d be a finalist for CNN's Hero of the Year award via a phone call Wednesday night. Thursday, Anderson Cooper announced the finalists on CNN.
He receives $25,000 for the honor, and will join the other nominees – who include the founder of a mobile soup kitchen in New York, an Indonesian orphanage operator and a Filipino literacy advocate – at “CNN Heroes: An All-Star Tribute,” to be televised at 8 p.m. November 26.

At that event, one of the 10 will be selected CNN Hero of the Year and will be awarded an additional $100,000.

Just curious, why the honk hate? A friend of mine went last year (has connections with Bread and Puppets,) and it seemed interesting to me.

this is my own problem, but i'm a hater when it comes to "wacky" brass bands, especially when they play new orleans brass band tunes. the real bands have such a deep connection to the music and the level of musicianship is so high, it seems really lame and borderline disrespectful when 20 people put on silly hats, pull out their high school instruments, and play shitty & funkless versions of rebirth songs. even though it's fun music, it's something i take seriously, so i don't have time for bands to whom it's a joke.

Fair enough. That linked band didn't do much for me, either. I was thinking more along the lines of Minneapolis' Brass Messengers, a group I like a lot, silly hats and all.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N70ghC4mxcY

yeah, they're obviously going for something totally different. i'm not especially interested in that kind of brass band music, but it's cool. i know the clarinet player, he plays in a traditional jazz band in the cities with the sousaphonist from my band.

i could keep linking awful honk! bands but what's the point, when there are so many good second line videos:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XIEXRRDAqBU

Not exactly a New orleans brass band event, but this New Orleans happening is related sorta:

From author/musician Ned Sublette's e-mail:

Leading scholars on African and Caribbean culture, and their impact on New Orleans, will gather on Saturday, Nov. 14, for a symposium entitled “Congo
Square: Crossroads of the Afro-Atlantic World.”

The symposium, which is free and open to the public, takes place at the Jazz & Heritage Center (1225 N. Rampart Street), from 1 p.m. to 6 p.m.

...The day following the symposium, the Jazz & Heritage Foundation will present the third annual Congo Square Rhythms Festival in nearby Armstrong Park. The festival is free and open to the public. It will feature music, food and a large crafts area. Performers include Ensemble Fatien (featuring Ivorian multi-instrumentalist Seguenon Kone, Dr. Michael White, Sunpie Barnes and others), the Kumbuka African Dance Ensemble and many more.

Congo Square: Crossroads of the Afro-Atlantic World” features Ned Sublette, author of “The World That Made New Orleans,” Yale University African culture scholar Robert Farris Thompson, musician Alex LaSalle of the Puerto Rican group Alma Moyó and others in a day-long series of discussions and workshops.

The final hour of the symposium will feature a drum workshop and a cocktail reception.

The schedule of events is as follows:

1:00 p.m. Welcome and Introductions
Presentation by Ned Sublette, “Rocking the City, Cracking the
Code: Bámbula at Congo Square”
2:30 p.m. Presentation by Robert Farris Thompson, “Kongo with a ‘K’”
3:30 p.m. Break
3:45 p.m. Panel Discussion: Perspectives on Congo Square Freddi Williams Evans: “Congo Square Through the Years”
Connie Zeanah Atkinson: “Place Publique: The Historical Congo Square”
Herreast Harrison and Robert Farris Thompson: A Dialogue Luther Gray: “Advocating for Congo Square”
5:00 p.m. Drum Workshop (featuring Alex LaSalle and Luther Gray) and Cocktail Reception

Ballou High School Marching Band represent! This band from one of the poorest neighborhoods in DC has been chosen to appear in the Macy's Parade in NY and to do an outdoor lunchtime appearance at Lincoln Center

http://www.balloumovie.com/trailer.html

There's some nice drumline footage from them on Youtube. Oh, and the Lincoln Center Atrium gig is at night.

The Offbeat Magazine December issue is out and they highlight some of their fave Louisiana albums for the year. But I don't see any brass bands or hiphop.

I can't believe Offbeat thinks that Tom McDermott trad r'n'b piano cd is the best Louisiana album of the year.

Anyone got Rebirth Brass Band's _Rollin'_? Any good? I heard "Shake them titties/Mercy mercy mercy" recently and it made me really want to start looking into this music. Figure I might as well start with the album it's on.
Still, I see Jordan and Vornado praising _Hot Venom_, so perhaps I should go for that. (Greed will probably win out and I'll get BOTH, if I can!)

Been playing _25th Anniversary_ on Spotify and digging it. Wtf @ me not knowing any brass music beyond, uh, Fanfare Ciocarlia. Love the enthusiasm in this thread!

imo rollin' is the best of their old-school albums, the one where second line funk (or whatever you want to call it) sound is really getting defined. the first three tracks are fire, but i prefer the albums after kabuki (trumpet) got in the band, like 'the main event: live at the maple leaf' and 'hot venom'.

also highly recommend new birth brass band's 'd-boy' as an intro.

Jordan, is the TBC Brass Band's '09 effort your fave new Orleans release of '09? Or at least fave studio release? Or is it by someone else? Or have none of this year's studio efforts matched up to live things you've heard?

well, nothing really lives up to live stuff when it comes to this music, but 'modern times' is definitely my favorite new orleans release of '09, yeah.

btw my band is having our cd release party next weekend. it should be out digitally by the end of the year.

jordan, give us a top ten of awesome brass band things to look at. pretty please.

ok, i posted it on the brass band blog i started a year ago and never did anything with: http://chickenintheback.wordpress.com/

from Offbeat.com

SAD FAREWELL

On Monday, clarinet player Ralph Johnson died at 71. In addition to (performing with fellow) locals Dr. John, Johnny Adams and Chuck Carbo, Johnson played with Jerry Butler and the Impressions. Services will be held Friday at St. Peter Claver Church (1923 St. Phillip St.). The viewing will take place from 9-11 a.m., and at 11 there will be a Mass.

Y'know, I was just spinning Chuck Carbo's Barber's Blues CD recently and wondered what happened to him since. Never heard that he had passed away last year. I don't recall him ever playing Jazzfest when I was down there either.

Apparently in July '08. I was just reading about a Carbo reissue in Offbeat and thinking why don't I have any music of his. I wonder if his old stuff has been reissued--this is the stuff I want to hear (though the subsequent stuff sounds of interest too)--

http://www.wwoz.org/new+orleans+community/chuck+carbo+memoriam

In the early '50s Carbo, his brother Chick and two friends joined the local Zion City Harmonizers, which eventually became the Delta Southernaires.

When they were offered a recording contract by Dave Bartholomew for Imperial Records, they changed their name to the Spiders and eventually became the best known R&B vocal group out of New Orleans. Their initial release of "I Didn't Want to Do It" paired with "You're the One" brought the group national fame. Their biggest hit, "Witchcraft," which came out in 1955, climbed to number five on the R&B charts.

But you probably already know that

Honestly, those might be the ONLY two Spiders songs I know. There's a spendy and typically awesome-looking Bear Family set I probably need.

The two Rounder Carbo CDs are pretty good, and dirt cheap on Amazon. His vocals are a little the worse for wear, but there's a lived-in quality to them that gets me, a bit like Snooks Eaglin. Also in the changer that day, Tommy Ridgley's Since The Blues Began and Johnny Adams' Walkin' On A Tightrope: Songs Of Percy Mayfield.

RIP Ernest Skipper. Here is what Dan Phillips said about this obscure hero at Dan's awesome Home of the Groove blog

http://homeofthegroove.blogspot.com/2008/01/here-come-da-indians.html

Ernest Skipper's "Shot Gun Joe" with Flag & The Boys is a rave-up of a record. There are some whistling synth drum flourishes; and the snare and kick drum may even be electronic, too, as their simple pattern doesn't change much; but there is plenty of percussion in the mix to funkify things nicely. Everybody's rippin' and runnin', especially the Dirty Dozen. That would be Kirk Joseph pushing the bottom on sousaphone; and the tenor sax solo is wicked. If this record came out in 1982 or 1983, it may also be the Dirty Dozen's earliest appearance on record, as their first LP (on Concord Jazz) came out in 1984. Despite it's title, the song bears no resemblance to the Golden Eagles "Shotgun Joe" that appeared on the Lightning and Thunder CD in 1988. Instead the song seems to be a precursor to "Let's Go Get 'Em" as done by Dollis, Boudreaux and the Rebirth on that Super Sunday CD. Papa Mali also used the same groove and riff from the verses on "Early In The Morning", an Indian-inspired track on his CD, Do Your Thing, that came out last year and was featured here.

I still don't know anything about Ernest Skipper* * *. Was he a part of the Yellow Pocahontas? They are an old line Indian gang that operated out of the Treme neighborhood, just West of the French Quarter (and still may - though neighborhoods have changed post-Katrina). If you have any more details, please let me know. Anyway, whoever the heck he is, props to him for making an undeservedly obscure Mardi Gras record that demands spontaneous trance dancing as long as it is possible to remain vertical. Hoombah! Fire by the bayou!

* * *[UPDATE: NolaFunk NYC has infomred me that one Ernie 'Shotgun Joe' Skipper will be DJing on Mardi Gras Day at the Backstreet Cultural Museum in the Historic Treme District. See the Comments to this post for all the details - sounds like a fantabulous holiday with mucho Mardi Gras Indians and other assorted revelers, plus the New Birth Brass Band funkin' it up. Thanks for this huge heads up. I'm on the trail of Mr.Skipper now!]

[12/18/2009 - R.I.P Ernest Skipper, Jr. I was saddened to learn last week in the comments to this post of the passing of Mr. Skipper. According to a notice by Ben Berman at Offbeat, he served as Grand Marshall of the the Young Tuxedo Brass Band and also fronted the Thunder Blues Band. Services are today with a second line to follow. Hope they play "Shotgun Joe". You can still hear that great contribution to Mardi Gras music in rotation at HOTG Radio.