“You can never have too much New Orleans piano”
The Monday night between the two New Orleans Jazzfest weekends is typically “Piano Night”. This event, an annual fundraiser for the excellent radio station WWOZ, has been going for 32 years and lately is hosted at the House of Blues. All the pianists performed from their homes this year.
The live stream was very well produced and we thoroughly enjoyed the 2 plus hours of New Orleans inspired piano. You can watch the replay here for some amount of time:
https://www.wwoz.org/pianonight
We both commented on the difference between the highly technical pianists and those that really had a “feel” for the New Orleans beats and styles. We’ve seen Joe Krown play at all kinds of venues around New Orleans and he can make any beat up, old upright piano sound amazing. 
He’s one of the folks that has a tremendous feel for the music, coupled with ridiculous dexterity. I get exhausted just watching how hard his left hand is working. Joe started with “Classified” by the legendary New Orleans player James Booker. It sounds and looks to me like an incredibly difficult piece to play well. The credits at the end of the show indicated that Joe had a large part in organizing and producing the show.
Jon Cleary, an Englishman who plays piano like he’s a 3rd generation New Orleanian, is another one with a great feel for the music. Jojo Herman, of the jam band Widespread Panic, was a revelation – he clearly has spent a huge amount of time listening to James Booker and Professor Longhair. He had spent some time learning from Dr. John, who passed away earlier this year, and shared a personal video of Mac performing “Tipitina” at the end of the show. “What is a tipitina?”, asked Jojo of the Dr. “Fess (Professor Longhair) told me it was some kind of bird, but I never heard of such a thing.”
The show finished up with my all time favourite, Long Tall Marcia Ball. Excellent as always with a rare performance on a grand piano – we typically see her with her electric keyboard, legs kicking in time to her beat.
Thanks to WWOZ for producing such a great evening of music.
A loud thunderstorm woke us early at 4:30am Tuesday morning. We were fortunate to miss the brunt of the storm, which treated South Dallas to ping pong ball sized hail and very strong winds. We were up and ready in plenty of time for the window washer/pressure washer guy (Vincente) making his annual visit to clean things up for outside living weather. This excellent Van Morrison tune just popped into my head:
I forgot to talk about these murals when I was mentioning Dr. John earlier. Denny and Anne ventured out around town to take pictures of some of the musician murals that have been popping up. Here we have Dr. John, Professor Longhair, and Jimi Hendrix. I think these are really well done – the artists really took some time on the details.
Penelope needed some repair work done and was ready to be picked up from Auto Hans on Tuesday afternoon. Diana drove me down there at 5pm and we were amazed at the “rush hour” traffic on the Dallas North Tollway. Easy to drive 80 mph on a route that would typically average 15 mph at that time of the day. I’m not looking forward to everyone getting back on the roads again.
The remains of the yummy Rye rib-eye tacos and elote made for a very pleasant Tuesday dinner. Team Robertson was like a machine in the kitchen putting it all together. Maybe there’s a taco food truck by a sandy beach in 
our future. We attempted to finish watching “Ford versus Ferrari” after dinner. One of us finished and the other only made it for a few minutes. I really enjoyed this movie and found Christian Bale and Matt Damon to be excellent – particularly Damon as Carroll Shelby – quite different than some of his more typical roles. The tug of war between the GM “suits” and the entrepreneurial and freewheeling Shelby/Ken Miles collaboration was well depicted. What beautiful cars Shelby made.
Tuesday night brought more severe thunderstorms overnight. We both slept through them with the only visible signs of their presence being some mulch and leaves strewn about the patio.
Wednesday morning brought one of the work activities that I find the least exciting and inspiring – the quarterly meeting of our Board of Directors Audit Committee. Three solid hours of hearing about inspections of our operations to point out everything that could be done better. Much more positive than it has been in the past, but still a bit of a chore. Oh well, it still earns a paycheck, and I should be very grateful for that right now.
I received this article on Wednesday evening. “Irvine’s super grandad who beat coronavirus with one lung celebrates birthday.” Interesting sentence structure from the Daily Record – maybe “with one lung” is better positioned right after “grandad” to avoid any confusion? This is my Uncle Scott’s younger brother – what an incredible fighter.
https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/ayrshire/irvines-super-grandad-who-beat-21947296
Thursday was the full Board of Directors meeting at work and I had to give a brief update. This was a bit more fun than the Audit Committee but still dragged on for more than 3 hours. Diana laughed when she came to make sure I was doing well, to find me playing the piano in the office. “Don’t you have the Board meeting now?” “Yes, I’m on the call”.
This was the day that I should have been attending Jazzfest and enjoying what we’ve taken to calling “Dad’s day” – the day when the Dads get to enjoy the smaller crowd. I also noticed Friday lunch at Commander’s Palace on my calendar – very sorry to miss that.
I finally had an X-ray taken of my left hip and pelvis to see what’s causing the pain when I walk. Nothing showed, so we’re assuming it’s muscle or tendon related and will schedule an MRI for next week.
Brian was the trivia victim for our team Happy Hour in the evening. His Oklahoma raising did generate some entertaining questions, including showing us tools and implements set up as ornaments in his home and asking what they were. One was a hay bail hook that looked like it would have made my work at the Kennedy’s farm much less damaging to my hands. I remember being in agony picking up those bails by the lacerating twine. Where was the “hook” that Brian used back then?
We had a lazy weekend, “Jazzfesting in Place” out by the pool, reading and enjoying the lovely weather. My New Orleans meat pies, crawfish pies, and mini crab pies arrived just in time on Friday night.
Sunday was a great fest day. John Boutte’s version of Randy Newman’s classic “Louisiana” was excellent – had never heard him do that before. The lyrics have been enhanced to show Boutte’s disgust at President Bush’s response to Hurricane Katrina.
And then there was the Bruce Springsteen and the Seeger Sessions band performance from 2006, just 8 months after Katrina and the first ever performance by his new band. This performance is really a completely unique show, catering directly to the New Orleans locals and the pain they’ve endured. I share these two songs from that set:
My first book this week was “Travels with Charley (In Search of America)” by John Steinbeck. I hadn’t heard of this work until it was cited by Stephanie Land as a big reason for her desire to explore Missoula, Montana. I thought maybe the descriptions of that territory may convince McD to give it a try. Or at least that overly optimistic child living inside me thought so.
Steinbeck sets out at the age of fifty eight to find the “real America” on a road-trip across country. Who do you think Charley is? Perhaps a new young girlfriend besotted with the famous author and ready to spend hours on the road in his track and camper top? That may have made an entertaining set of stories, but no, Charley (actual name Charles le Chien) is “an old gentleman poodle.” “He was born on the outskirts of Paris and trained in France, and while he knows a little poodle-English, he responds quickly only to commands in French. Otherwise he has to translate, and that slows him down.” I very much enjoy the way that Steinbeck humanizes Charley throughout. “Now, Charley is a mind-reading dog. There have been many trips in his lifetime, and often he has to be left at home. He knows we are going long before the suitcases come out, and he paces and worries and whines and goes into a state of mild hysteria, old as he is. During the weeks of preparation he was underfoot the whole time and made a damned nuisance of himself. He took to hiding in the truck, creeping in and trying to make himself look small.”
Steinbeck’s descriptions are as on point and original as ever. “At the first lighted roadside restaurant I pulled in and took my seat at a counter. The customers were folder over their coffee cups like ferns.” What an excellent simile.
I enjoyed this commentary on the sameness taking over the country (from back in 1960): “Communications must destroy localness, by a slow, inevitable process. I can remember a time when I could almost pinpoint a man’s place of origin by his speech. That is becoming more difficult now and will in some foreseeable future become impossible. It is a rare house or building that isn’t rigged with spiky combers of the air. Radio and television speech becomes standardized, perhaps better speech than we have ever used. Just as our bread, mixed and baked, packaged and sold without benefit of human frailty, is uniformly good and uniformly tasteless, so will our speech become one speech.” I have to disagree with the “better speech than we have ever used” on television – they don’t know the basic difference between an adjective and an adverb anymore.
The last quote I’ll share is from the section on Montana, and one that I was anxious to share with Diana. I’ve been trying to convince her that this would be a lovely retirement destination, to retorts about too cold in the winter and no beach and ocean. “The next passage in my journey is a love affair. I am in love with Montana. For other states I have admiration, respect, recognition, even some affection, but with Montana it is love, and it’s difficult to analyze love when you’re in it. The scale is huge but not overpowering. The land is rich with grass and colour, and the mountains are the kind that I would create if mountains were ever put on my agenda.”
I highly recommend this book. A really enjoyable read. Has me ready to go back and revisit all those Steinbeck classics set in Central California.
All the time at the pool this weekend allowed me to finish another book – a fast paced mystery set in Paris during World War II. “Three hours in Paris” by Cara Black tells the story of an assassination attempt on Hitler when he pays a quick visit to attend a mass at Sacre Couer in Montmartre. The sniper is actually an American from Oregon who is recruited while living on a UK Army base in Stornoway with her Scottish husband. Her attempt fails but she does kill the leader of the German Navy by accident as Hitler ducks. The cat and mouse pursuit of Kate through various Parisienne neighbourhoods by the German forces is well written and keeps the pages turning fast. I recommend this as a good pool or beach read and a good one for those that have visited Paris to reminisce over.
Let’s finish up with some more New Orleans music. I know I’m probably over doing it for most of you, but I can’t get enough of it. Just stepping off a plane at Louis Armstrong airport and hearing those classic syncopated rhythms brings a smile to my face. First up is some more Joe Krown, this time with the excellent Walter “Wolfman” Washington, and recorded at the iconic Maple Leaf Bar:
Now some of Snooks Eaglin – one of the highlights from “Festing in Place” last week. I recommend anything from this “Rhapsody in Bronze” album.
A little more Joe Krown – I think the best version of “Tipitina” – even better than the original Professor Longhair:
The legendary James Booker, idol of all New Orleans piano players, closes out our music section this week with one of his genre bending offerings:
I leave you this week with some helpful advice on spousal communication during these trying times:
