Toby Ash shares some musical sunshine from New Orleans…
Even with my own not insignificant blagging skills, I‘m not going to begin to pretend to have any deep knowledge, and certainly no clever insights, into the world of New Orleans jazz. I would be exposed as a fraud in a second. I am, as it says on the tin, a dabbler.
But, that said, over the last few months my Last.fm and Spotify accounts have been gradually filling up with music from New Orleans. Why? Well, because it just makes me happy. Grey skies? Gloomy news? Who cares when you’re listening to jazz from the Big Easy baby. It’s musical sunshine.
Woody Allen started me on my journey to Louisiana. New Orleans jazz must have something to it if it cheers a man who thinks “life, at its best, is a pretty horrible proposition”. In fact, why don’t we listen to Woody play…
My next musical push to New Orleans came from the American HBO drama Treme (pronounced Tremé). From the makers of The Wire, it’s set in the city in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Only two things make you put up with the snail-like pace of the story line: the brilliant Wendell Pierce and the wonderful music.
If we were to believe Treme, this happens on most streets in New Orleans on most days. Looks good to me.
Now to New Orleans’ most famous musical son – Louis Armstrong. What a story. Born into poverty, he developed his trumpet playing skills in the ‘New Orleans Home for Coloured Waifs’. Despite his tough childhood in a rough neighbourhood of Upper New Orleans, he saw the city as a source of inspiration throughout his life: “Every time I close my eyes blowing that trumpet of mine—I look right in the heart of good old New Orleans…It has given me something to live for.”
Here’s Adio Muchachos from 1959…
For our final piece, let’s head over to the Preservation Hall on 726 St. Peter Street in the French Quarter. Originally built as a private house in 1750, the hall was founded in 1961 to protect and honour New Orleans Jazz. Here’s some wonderful music from one of the numerous Dixie and traditional jazz bands that play there every evening at 8pm. Go on, crank up the volume and have a little jig. Happy Sunday everyone…the sun is shining!
Well Toby, the velour carpet-grey sky is still overhead, but if anything can shift it, it is the sunshine smile of the great Satchel Mouth, in a piece I had never heard and will now treasure – thank you. I get ideas too.
I love the ‘treme’ clip, it has an infectious joy with it’s freewheeling musical celebration, the very essence of jazz, and with the heavy drums seems very african too, and that Armstrong one – verrry nice indeed!
Thanks for this Toby.
My lovely Bristol has its own version of that Treme vibe. There’s a wonderful, tiny old pub called The Old Duke on King Street which is dedicated to live jazz, usually featuring wonderful, tiny old geezers who’ve been playing New Orleans-style stuff for decades. In summer the whole place spills onto the cobbles outside, it’s a joy.
Now I’m convinced, I have to visit New Orleans soon. It’s all down to your Treme streaming. Pure sunshine, Toby!
Whatever you do, don’t sit through the entire series of Treme… just go to New Orleans instead.