Beautiful dreamers

The Jazz Fest offers a mess of musical inspirations

by Jon Garelick

NEW ORLEANS -- At times, the idea of drawing spiritual sustenance from this city seems a tourist's delusion based on the availability of cocktails in plastic "go-cups" and the conspicuous consumption of boiled crawfish, fried oysters, and gumbo. The historical charm of the French Quarter is found partly in the wrought iron balconies of Royal Street and partly in the frat-boy shout of "Show us your tits!" on Bourbon Street. This, after all, is a city where full-grown men display their machismo by dressing up in suits of multi-colored beads and feathers. New Orleans scrambles sense and yet somehow holds together. Speaking to a lifelong New Orleans resident and musician some weeks after this year's New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival (the 28th annual), I find him talking about the air, and I know what he means -- that soft New Orleans air that hits you as soon as you step off the plane and seems to bind everything like a finely seasoned roux.

The fest itself this year (April 25-May 5) was bedeviled. The intense rains of the first weekend meant that a few acts missed their shows; the fest didn't open its gates on Saturday until noon. Attendance on a storm-swept Sunday fell to 34,000. The great Malian singer Oumou Sangare got hung up with visa problems, forcing festival organizers to fill in for her daily Congo Square stage shows on the second weekend. New Orleans R&B character Ernie K-Doe ("Mother-in-Law," #1 in 1961) canceled his appearance at the last minute, apparently in a haggle over money.

The music of the fest itself reflected New Orleans culture, where all voices merge, even if nothing quite blends. There were trad-jazz tributes to the centenary of soprano-sax great Sidney Bechet. There was modern jazz, Afro-Cuban jazz, and marching brass bands. There was the New Orleans R&B/soul contingent of Henry "Who Shot the La-La" Morgan, Irma Thomas, and the Dixie Cups (who recorded the first "Iko Iko" as well as "Chapel of Love"). No matter how obscure the artist may be north of Louisiana Route 10, down here he's a hero. Frankie Ford ("Sea Cruise," #14 in 1959) appeared with a full revue, horn section, Hammond B-3 player, and all. Among the bigger names were Dr. John, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Blues Traveler, Santana, and in his first public performance in more than two years, Fats Domino. There were the French-language two-steps and waltzes of accordion-driven Cajun music and its Creole, R&B-inflected cousin, zydeco. And there was gospel, the respite of all heat-damaged festival-goers thanks to the huge sheltering tent it's performed under. The crowd was a heterogeneous mix of yuppies, buppies, homeboys, goth kids, punks, hippies, and non-specific fat tourists.

IN FRONT OF the Congo Square stage, a portly white male tourist danced in place -- replete with baseball cap, gator-decorated Cajun kerchief, a plastic drinking bottle slung around his neck, and wearing a T-shirt that said "Congo Stage 1988 5th Year." On stage, the Seminole Indians ground through one chant after another. This Mardi Gras Indian tribe didn't play the psychedelic blues guitar and funk of the better-known Wild Magnolias -- rather, simple call-and-response delivered over a deep-earth rumble of bass drum, tambourine, and cowbell. Big Chief Keith Jones, in magenta feathers and beads, led his tribe of Eighth Ward African-American men and women in hypnotic, menacing versions of "Hey Pocky Way," "Shoo Fly," and "Hold 'Em Joe." Aside from Big Chief Keith and his second (all in white feathers), the tribe were in white T-shirts with blue lettering. With the beat of the drums and the deathless chants, "Shoo Fly" changed from nursery rhyme to a boast of nonchalant mastery, an assertion of territorial dominance from one "spy boy" to another. One woman of the tribe in wraparound shades and cut-off shorts, gold flashing in her teeth, let out banshee wails. The tourist's head lolled as he swayed and answered along to "Hold 'Em Joe."

"I LIKE TO BE around crazy people," Marc Savoy announced approvingly to the dancing crowd in front of the festival's Fais Do-Do stage. The Savoy-Doucet Band included accordionist Savoy, wife Ann on guitar and vocals, and fiddler Michael Doucet, plus bass and drums. Collectively the trio probably know as much about Cajun culture and music as anyone in the state. Folklorist and fiddler Doucet fronts the world's most famous Cajun band, Beausoleil. Ann Savoy has written the definitive Cajun Music: A Reflection of a People (Bluebird Press, 1984). And the 57-year-old Marc was, by his own estimation, only the second man to make accordions in Louisiana. "The first one was a gentleman from Lake Charles named Sidney Brown," Savoy told the local Offbeat magazine, "and he built his because the only accordions available after World War II were the ones built in Germany by the Hohner Company."

Finding the postwar plasticized Hohner an inferior product, Savoy went about building his own. A noted curmudgeon, made semi-famous by several of Les Blank's films on Cajun culture, Savoy runs the Savoy Music Center in Eunice with Ann and their three children, tours with the band, and freely offers his pronouncements on the state of Cajun culture. Aphorisms are posted on T-shirts and pieces of paper tacked around the store: "Do not replace family traditions with media-imposed conventions."

On stage, Marc Savoy introduced the Cajun classic "I Made a Big Mistake." He dedicated the tune to D.L. Menard, "the Cajun Hank Williams," who was standing by the side of the stage. "Thirty years ago, when Cajun wasn't cool, I went on the road with D.L., and we drove down a lot of dead ends," Savoy said. With Ann leading the sweet keening vocals, the band leaned into an easy two-step. "Go Doucet, go!", Marc Savoy shouted as the fiddler took off.

NOT EVERY MAJOR EVENT takes place on the festival grounds. WWOZ 90.7 FM presented "Piano Night" at Tipitina's, an annual tribute to the patriarch of modern New Orleans boogie-woogie piano, Professor Longhair, who died in 1980. This year it was a typically hefty New Orleans bunch: Marcia Ball (interpolating an apparently Helfgott-inspired "Flight of the Bumblebee" into her "Hot Tamale Baby"), Henry Butler, Tommy Ridgely, the Englishman John Cleary, young Davell Crawford, and Eddie Bo, who played as if possessed, whipping his arms into a fury as he attacked the keyboard.

The revelation of the evening, though, came from Ed Volker, the 48-year-old pianist/vocalist and songwriter for the 20-year-old New Orleans funk/rock jam band the Radiators. Volker sat at the piano and rolled out a series of mid-tempo blues numbers: his own "Jolly House" and "The Soul of the World," the New Orleans standard "Junco Partner," and Jelly Roll Morton's "Winin' Boy Blues." The last two were especially dramatic -- long stories that Volker delivered in a wine-soaked light baritone over steady rolling chords and striding bass figures, his rhythm impeccable, his left hand metronome-steady throughout, his chord voicings sounding like church bells.

When I caught up with Volker a couple of weeks later on the phone, he said of "Junco Partner": "It's about a drunk stumbling down the road wishing he had a million dollars. It's a fantasy song. I heard Chief Jolly do it years ago. He wasn't on stage -- there was a piano in the corner in the dark at Tipitina's. I just heard him banging away in the corner and it was this very creepy minor-key version of `Junco Partner,' and I just thought, `Wow, is this where it came from? Or is this his little slant on it or something?' I didn't know. Chief Jolly died not long after that. And it was just sort of in the back of my mind that that was a great way to do it. I never thought about doing it myself until, well, people pass away, the years go by, and nobody's doing that. The song's credited to Bob Shad. But I think that it's one of these things that wrote the people, and the people didn't write it."

"Winin' Boy Blues" keeps coming back to the line "I'm the Winin' Boy, don't deny my name." "The `Winin' ' is drinking wine," Volker laughed. "Obviously this is someone who is very languid and sort of untouched by the world and does what he wants. It has a timeless feel . . . It feels like the air here [in New Orleans] to me. You can imagine the air saying, `I'm going to be around for a long time; you can do what you want with the rest of this stuff, but I'm around.' "

Of his playing, Volker said, "I wish I had more technical know-how to kind of weave things together, but I've gotten to a point where I'm happy with the tools I have. Some of the things I do I can hear how Mac [Dr. John] or somebody would just take it to another planet, whereas I'm very much on this earth." I wondered what impressions had stayed with him from the festival. "I'm a famous rememberer of my dreams and I'm still dreamin' about the festival. Just as a background to many other adventures. It's still happening somewhere in my psyche. The festival's still going on." n

New Orleans 10-piece Mardi Gras Indian band the Wild Magnolias play the House of Blues in Harvard Square this Sunday, May 25. Call 491-BLUE.