After buying a bunch of CDs at the French Quarter Festival, I made a list of additional New Orleans ones from reading several local music publications while down there. I took my birthday gift certifcate when I got back and picked up the following. I have listened to all of them now and recommend each one.
Sing Me Back Home is put together by a colelction of new oleans musicians under the name New orleans Social Clib, Here is part of the Amazon review, “Nearly everything on this sumptuous collection of angry, compassionate, patriotic and hopeful sentiments are cover songs. But they are covers like you've never heard before in the hands of Cyrill and Ivan Neville, Marcia Ball in duet with Irma Thomas. Dr. John, Henry Butler, the subdudes and others. While Ivan Neville reworks Credence Clearwater's "Fortunate Son" into an even more sympathetic victim of an alienating bureaucratic system that underscores this democracy's appetite for war and domestic neglect, the Mighty Chariots of Fire let go a joyful gospel challenge to the nation in "991/2 Won't Do." I am listening to it as I write this and agree. In fact, I immediately played it a second time.
Musique by the Pine Leaf Boys is solid Cajun stuff. I heard then at the festivall and was moved to pick up their latest when I got back.
Trace of Time by Steve Riley and The Mamou Playboys is a good addtion to any Cajun collection. We saw them at the Rock N Bowl on our recent trip and they played a good dance beat all night. I already have their Bon Rêve and it is full of Cajun classics.
I first heard Boozoo Chavis in Jacksonville in 1998. He was one of the first zydeco artists and is no longer with us. I was pleased to find one of his CDs, Hey Do Right, at Newbury and it makes you want dance to the driving zydeco beat and the waltzes mixed in. I especially liked What You Gonna Do. I Got A Camel, Mother's Blues, Crying Waltz, and the title cut.
Then there is Rhino’s New Orelans Party Classics, put out in 1992. It includes Dr. John and The Neville Brothers, as well as other locals such as he Wild Tchoupitoulas and The Dirty Dozen Brass Band. It makes a great inroduction to New Orleans music.
In addition, Fats Domino has a new CD out, Alive and Kickin, that funnels all the proceeds to the Tipitina's Foundation, that is giving instruments to New Orleans school music programs to revive the music culture of the city. The fundation site told this story. “In a scene that played out on television screens around the world, on September 1, 2005, the 77-year-old Domino was rescued from the roof of his flooded home in New Orleans' Lower 9th Ward by a Coast Guard helicopter. After spending time in a shelter and apartments in Baton Rouge, the Domino family returned to New Orleans in October to begin rebuilding their home.” I ordered my copy with his picture.
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