If you’re anywhere near New Orleans tomorrow night, Aug. 23, come hear the Louisiana Hot Sauce Band play a tribute to trombonist Eddie “Doc” Lewis, who died Aug. 11. You can read more about Lewis here.

The 8 p.m. show will take place at Club Gentilly, 1841 Gentilly Blvd. Proceeds will be used to send Lewis’ body to Georgia.

The Louisiana Hot Sauce Band is made up of the musicians whose music at The Place to Be opened our documentary “Crescent City Blues.”
 

The Mother-in-Law Lounge—which has earned the adjective “iconic” so many times that it as become cliche, yet no other word really fits—is one step closer to resurrection under new owner Kermit Ruffins. This Times-Picayune article details the unanimous vote by the New Orleans City Planning Commission:

http://www.nola.com/entertainment/index.ssf/2012/08/new_orleans_planning_commissio.html

More on the lounge here. More on the fight to save it here.

Eddie “Doc” Lewis, an iconic New Orleans street trombonist, died August 11.

Lewis was a fixture in the French Quarter, where he would sit on stoops, shouting come-ons to passersby and offering to play any tune from any genre. “What do you want to hear?” he’d ask “Anything you like.” He’d play his tunes, tell listeners that he played with James Brown’s band, and encourage tourists to pose with his trombone. He always wore a smile. Even when Hurricane Katrina was approaching, Lewis kept playing. “I’ll be here tomorrow, I’m not leaving,” he told USA Today. “I’ve been through typhoons, monsoons, tornadoes, hurricanes and every other phoon, soon or storm. I’m not worried.”

Lewis’ birthday party (see the photo above) was one of our first New Orleans experiences in researching our Still Singing the Blues series. The October 2009 party, which we detailed in this blog post, was held at a bar called The Place to Be, “located on a non-descript commercial strip on Claiborne Avenue in the city’s Central City neighborhood. An employee unlocked the front door to admit us, and once inside, we were immediately welcomed as if we were old friends in a family rec room. The ceilings were low; Christmas lights hung over the bar; and red light bulbs filled the ceiling-fan sockets. Several women dished out large places of ribs with red beans and rice—free to customers on Saints game days.”

As we described at the time:

In keeping with local tradition, well-wishers pinned dollar bills onto Lewis’ shirt as he got ready to play an electrifying set. He was joined by some top-flight musicians, including blues guitarist John T. Lewis (below, red shirt), who has played with R&B legends like Jean Knight (“Mr. Big Stuff”) and Ernie K-Doe (“Mother-in-Law”); Robert “BJ” Harvey, the bass guitarist for Soul Queen Irma Thomas; keyboard player Jake Francis; and crooner extraordinaire C.P. Love, who has opened for the likes of B.B. King and whose voice filled the room with a tangible charge. When the drummer, Tokyo native Miyumi Shara, was introduced, a table full of women in Saints T-shirts shouted, “Sister!”

This was a bar full of friends celebrating the birthday of one of their own, and the music sizzled with an emotional intensity born of that intimacy. Customers leaned into the musicians to whisper requests; they danced at their tables; they threw their heads back in laughter as Doc Lewis wove this way through the bar playing his trombone in the faces of his loved ones. They traded good-natured banter with the trombonist about how many weeks one properly celebrates a birthday. A bartender recruited several patrons to carry in even more food from a waiting car.

Lewis’ party became the opening scene for Part 2 of our series, “Crescent City Blues,” which you can hear here. His banter, as you’ll hear, is hilarious.

Thanks to John T. Lewis for letting us know this sad news.

With the Olympics on everyone’s mind right now, we re-listened to our interview with Louisiana blues pianist and vocalist Carol Fran—particularly the story of how she and her husband, guitarist Clarence Hollimon, came to perform at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta.

We’ve edited this two-minute audio clip in which Fran recalls that special period in her life before Hollimon’s death in 2000. Separately, Fran and Hollimon were fine musicians. After they got together in the 1980s, they were unstoppable.

Click the arrow on the player below to hear Fran tell the story.

New Orleans blues lovers: It looks like a new Sunday venue is Kajun’s Pub, 2256 St. Claude Ave. (between Marigny and Mandeville) in the Marigny district. Most weeks from 5 to 8 p.m., the bar sponsors event called “Blues, Booze & Seafood.” There are oysters, shrimp, and crawfish for sale, plus a rotation line-up of talented blues musicians. April 29 and May 27: Little Freddie King (who is featured in our doc), Alabama Slim, and Guitar Lightnin’ Lee. May 6: Amedee Frederick (The Creole Man) featuring Amedee Frederick Jr. Other weeks the music starts later. Details: http://kajunpub.com/.

Benny Spellman, the New Orleans R&B singer whose lent his bass vocals to Ernie K-Doe’s famous song “Mother-in-Law,” died last Friday at the age of 79.

Spellman was probably best known for the song “Lipstick Traces” (click on the video above). We’ve heard songwriter and arranger Allen Toussaint tell this story about the origins of “Lipstick Traces” and its connection to “Mother-in-Law.” The tale is recounted here by blogger DetroitBob:

The session wasn’t coming together. Ernie K-Doe was an artist desperate for a hit and Allen Toussaint was a writer/producer/arranger who was missing one crucial piece to his arrangement for what was to be K-Doe’s third single on the Minit label. The song was almost certainly a bonafide hit (even if K-Doe had supposedly rescued it from Toussaint’s refuse bin) but it was missing something. Present in the studio but not participating was another of Minit’s minor artists who, like K-Doe, hung around making extra money as a backing vocalist. Toussaint called the baritone singer down, and with Benny Spellman’s bellowing of the song title peppered throughout, “Mother-In-Law” skyrocketed to the top of the charts.

Ernie K-Doe would forever be linked to his big hit, vaulted into prominence around the city. Spellman was understandably annoyed with his role in the creation of that hit. For months, he implored Toussaint to write him a song with an equal amount of hit potential. Toussaint acquiesced in a major way as 1962 dawned, giving Spellman a pair of songs destined for longevity, “Lipstick Traces (On A Cigarette)” and “Fortune Teller”. The two songs would make up Minit 644, Spellman’s third single for the label.

The A-side, certainly one of the greatest pleas for a lover to return and never leave again, was deliberately written in a similar structure to “Mother-In-Law”. The dynamite harmonies of Irma Thomas and Willie Harper were as important as the swaying Toussaint arrangement in making the song an instant classic. The B-side, considered an afterthought by its writer, was a straightforward tale of a man told by a fortune teller that he’s in love and though he doesn’t yet realize it, he’ll realize it soon enough. Replete with irresistable piano, bass and percussion, it quickly became the side that disc jockeys started plugging. In spite of its obvious greatness, the single failed to set the charts on fire, peaking at #28 on the R&B chart, #80 on the Hot 100. Ultimately, though, both songs became standards, covered by a plethora of artists. Rarely would such an influential 45 come out of New Orleans for even if the name Benny Spellman is unfamiliar, his songs “Fortune Teller” and “Lipstick Traces” aren’t.

If you want to hear the more-than-passing resemblance between Mother-in-Law and Lipstick Traces, you can listen to the former below.

Special thanks to Dave Tilley for reminding us of this story during his tribute to Spellman tonight on WXDU in Durham, N.C.

Listeners in Central Ohio will be treated to both hours of the Still Singing the Blues series Sunday night, May 29, on WCBE 90.5 FM in Columbus. The shows will air back-to-back from 9-11 p.m. on Maggie Brennan’s “Roots ‘n’ Offshoots” show.

WCBE is an 55-year-old NPR station owned by the Columbus Board of Education. It has an estimated 100,000 listeners each week.

Slewfoot (sitting), Checkpoint Charlie, 2008. Photo by Barry Yeoman.

New Orleans lost one of its best-known street musicians with the death this month of 57-year-old Mickey “Slewfoot” McLaughlin. It was a 2008 jam session involving Slewfoot (which you can read about here) that originally inspired our Still Singing the Blues project; his song Raining in New Orleans remains one of our Crescent City touchstones. He was a talented blues guitarist who, according to his obituary, “played so hard and so often on his corner in the French Quarter that some say the pavement still holds his footprints. ” He was a generous champion of other musicians, particularly those like himself who lived on the margins. But it was no secret that Slewfoot was also deeply troubled—a survivor of heroin addiction, not to mention major medical problems like heart disease.

On WWOZ’s web site is a tribute to Slewfoot. Father Bill Terry of St. Anna’s Episcopal Church writes: “I remember when he booked Little Freddie King and told me. His eyes lighted up and he reminded me of a kid opening a present on Christmas morning. Such was his passion for real music by real people. In an interview with Freddie, Slewfoot talked about the rhythm of horses and carriages going down Royal Street—his music picked up that rhythm. He loved playing, simply playing, and he tried to help folks out in need.”

Folks in our hometown of Durham, N.C. might also remember Slewfoot as a DJ on WXDU.

There will be a memorial for Slewfoot Wednesday at 6 p.m. at St. Anna’s, 1313 Esplanade Ave. in New Orleans. It will be followed by a secondline to the Apple Barrel Lounge on Frenchman Street, where Slewfoot used to play.

"Listen" by Ky Olsen. Licensed through Creative Commons 2.0.

After almost a year of broadcasts on radio stations throughout the country, our series is finally available for online listening at this web site.

Click on this link, then click the “play” buttons to listen to Hour 1 (Still Singing the Blues) or Hour 2 (Crescent City Blues).

The shows are still available to radio stations who want to play them. If your local station has not played them yet, please contact your stations manager. On the same page is information for radio stations that want to download the series through PRX, the Public Radio Exchange. Stations can also contact us for CDs: info@stillsingingtheblues.org.