Tag: New Orleans

Gabrielle Cavassa – Blues Center Interview #19

Gabi Cavassa drops by PineCohn and D.J. Maraca’s Soul Country show in an amazing crossing of the beams in BCI #19. In footage shot in late 2019 and January of this year, host Ric Stewart leans in on the radio, guitar and camerawork at the Starlight to bring you a portrait of the young artist. We discuss future collaborations, making a debut album and country’s Patsy Cline, Hank Williams, Marty Robbins and Dolly Parton. A blues duo jam highlights the start of something big.

 

#jazz #blues #gabriellecavassa #neworleans #bci #shotatpinecohn

That Spanish Tinge

Jelly Roll Morton at the keys
Ferdinand Joseph LaMothe a.k.a. Jelly Roll Morton

The New Orleans roots of blues and jazz always featured an Afro-Caribbean element. Writer Ashawnta Jackson offers a look back at what Jelly Roll Morton referred to as a “Spanish tinge.” It emerged from a cultural cross wind including Mexico and re-incorporated Cuban and Spanish sounds.

Mexican influence also found its way to New Orleans’s music scene in the late 1800s and early 1900s through groups like La Orquesta Tipica Mexicana and the Mexican Artistic Quintet, Narváez writes. Musicians like pianist and composer Jelly Roll Morton and his future bandmate Lorenzo Tio Jr., a Creole clarinetist who also had Mexican roots, also combined those influences. As Morton told ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax, “[I]f you can’t manage to put tinges of Spanish in your tunes, you will never be able to get the right seasoning, I call it, for jazz.”

read more here:

How Mexican and Cuban Music Influenced the Blues

WWOZ’s Jazz Festing in Place – the next best thing

Gentilly crowd anticipates John Fogerty at the 2019 New Orleans Jazz Festival

While the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival’s annual pilgrimage was missed this year, WWOZ filled the gap with highlights from the last half century. You can still check out some shows at wwoz.org.

WWOZ keeps the last two weeks of radio shows accessible online

George Porter, Jr. – BCI #17

Funky bassist, Runnin’ Pardner and Meterman George Porter, Jr. holds forth on bass, blues, country and how the Meters got their moniker. The early days as Art Neville and the Boys came to an abrupt ending with a game of chance, or perhaps it was all the design of Rock Hall of Fame writer-producer Allen Toussaint. Catch some funky live licks with Mike Lemmler on keyboards and stickman Terrence Houston caught live. They hold down a Monday night residency at the Maple Leaf.

John Fogerty at the New Orleans Jazz Fest 2019

The 50th Jazz Fest is in the books, and boy was it a good ‘un. John Fogerty, Trombone Shorty, Buddy Guy and Herbie Hancock closed out on Sunday the eighth day of the fest!

Highlights from John Fogerty at Gentilly Stage 5/5/19

James Gadson – BCI #14

Soul drumming legend James Gadson graces the Blues Center Interview series with recollections of Ray Charles, The Temptations, Beck and more. He also chimes in on the blues, New Orleans central role in the music and Aaron Neville.

 

Community Partnership

Thanks once again to the New Orleans Jazz Festival & Foundation, Inc for a community partnership grant that will help build the archives of oral histories. These archives are part of the budding exclusive content collection serviced by Save the Blues and the Blues Center, a future interactive museum in downtown New Orleans.
Catch glimpses of the Blues Center in the interview series with founder Ric Stewart at bluescenters.com.

Will Bernard – BCI #11

Will Bernard in BCI #11 details his collaborations with Charlie Hunter, Stanton Moore, John Medeski and Peter Apfelbaum in this jazzy, funky story with a few twists. Indian guitarist Vishwa Mohan Bhatt provided a stimulus for Will’s singular slide guitar sound.

Will has played guitar on 43 albums as a guest artist! Compelling clips from Raw Music and Ric’s 1998 interview provide an exclusive 3 decade window into the work of a string master. Country Funk gets a mention, it’s Ric’s weekly radio show 10-noon fridays on WTUL 91.5 FM.