Still Singing the Blues

A radio documentary about New Orleans and South Louisiana Blues

The national showcase she deserves

When we first interviewed Carol Fran for our Still Singing the Blues documentary, we knew immediately that she was a national treasure. The blues she sings are rooted in Louisiana’s swampy soil, from the throaty emotionality of her 1957 hit Emmitt Lee to the French Creole language she uses in Tou’ les jours c’est pas la meme (Every Day Is Not the Same). Her story of reinvention, particularly after she married her musical partner Clarence Hollimon, is classically American. And she toured with some of the great musicians of the 20th century, including Ray Charles and Jimmy Reed. Like many American musicians, she’s been more appreciated by fans in Europe (and Latin America) than by her own countrymen.

So we were delighted when the National Endowment for the Arts named Fran a 2013 National Heritage Fellow, given to practicing artists who are “worthy of national recognition and have a record of continuing artistic accomplishment.” Each fellow receives a $25,000 honorarium.

Last Friday, Richard Ziglar and I drove to Washington, D.C., to attend a performance featuring all nine 2013 fellows, who included musicians, a sculptor, and two Native American tradition bearers. Carol Fran—accompanied by her godson, “Piano Prince of New Orleans” Davell Crawford—was the final act. She traded some Louisiana-style repartee with host Nick Spitzer before launching into a jazzy version of the standard Anytime, Anyday, Anywhere.  She followed up with Emmitt Lee and Tou’ les jours c’est pas la meme. After the fierce applause died down, all nine winners stormed the stage, along with friends and family, as Fran led them in rousing versions of This Little Light of Mine and When the Saints Go Marching In.

Fran150You can watch her on the above video by fast-forwarding to 1:45:36. But I hope you won’t skip ahead, because the eight artists who proceeded Fran delighted and inspired us, and offered a vision of the United States at its richest. It’s a unique treat to hear Ralph Burns of Nixon, Nevada, tell the creation myth of his tribe, the Pyramid Lake Paiute, and, in the same evening, listen to Nicolae Feraru, an immigrant from Romania, as he plays Gypsy and Romanian tunes at breakneck speeds on the cimbalom (a dulcimer-like string instrument). Not to mention enjoying the ballads of our home state of North Carolina performed by Sheila Kay Adams, of the Sodom community, who threw in a couple of mildly off-color jokes to enliven the evening further. Sacred Harp singing from Alabama; Irish fiddling from Maine; dance from Washington State’s Lummi tribe—this was our country at its most diverse.

It wasn’t a watered-down version, either. Some of the artists discussed the issues they cared about the most. Ramón “Chunky” Sánchez, a guitarist and vocalist who was invited by César Chávez to perform at United Farm Worker rallies and marches, talked and sang about the labor, immigration, and education issues that motivate him. Verónica Castillo, a ceramicist from San Antonio, showed off a sculpture that warned of the perils of global warming.

As the federal government was headed toward a shutdown, I thought about all the divisiveness in Washington, and all the unity inside George Washington University’s Lisner Auditorium. And I thought to myself: If this is what American culture means, I’m in.

– Barry Yeoman

Above photo courtesy of NEA.

Rue Boogaloo

Rue Boogaloo Radio by marty christian

A musical interlude today. The first hour our our series features the extraordinary 77-year-old blues diva Carol Fran of Lafayette. Often accompanying Carol these days are Marty Christian and Andy Cornett, who also have their own band, Rue Boogaloo. They call their music “that Southwest Louisiana sound—full of soulful dance grooves that are drenched in blues.” Here’s a sample.

New Year’s Eve on the border

If you live in the Rio Grande Valley, please be sure to spend New Year’s Eve with us. KMBH 88.9 FM in Harlingen, Texas, along with its sister station KHID 88.1 FM in McAllen, Texas, will broadcast both halves of our series on Dec. 31 from 10 p.m. until midnight. The two stations combined cover a huge swath along the Texas-Mexico border: the entire Rio Grande Valley, where 1.2 million people live.

Like many of the stations that have broadcast our documentaries, KMBH and KHID have a commitment to the blues. Every Saturday at 6 p.m., programming manager Chris Maley hosts the two-hour program On the Roadside, as he has done for 15 years. We notice, to our delight, that Louisiana figures prominently in Maley’s tastes: His “Hot Blues Picks” CDs include “Louisiana Swamp Stomp,” which includes tracks by Carol Fran and Little Freddie King, both featured in “Still Singing the Blues,” along with CDs by Baton Rouge bluesman Larry Garner and Baton Rouge native Buddy Guy.

KMBH and KHID have other great local programming, too, including the Nuevo Tejano Conjunto Show every Saturday morning. But you’ll need to listen locally; the stations don’t broadcast online.

Louisiana Swamp Stomp

The opening minutes of Still Singing the Blues (Hour 1) feature a lively recording session in which Carol Fran sings, in English and French, her song “Everyday is Not the Same.” She was recording that tune (along with “I Need to Be Be’d With”) for Louisiana Swamp Stomp, a CD produced as a benefit for the Northern Louisiana Brain and Spinal Cord Injury Foundation. The foundation is a new non-profit organization dedicated to raising public awareness, raising research funds, and helping patients financially.

The CD was inspired by Carol Fran herself, who suffered a stroke several years ago, and by Shreveport blues-rock musician Buddy Flett, who in 2008, according to blogger Ron Weinstock:

…had a near fatal bout with encephalitis that left him in a medically induced coma. When he awoke, he had lost the ability to walk, talk, and play the guitar but with the help of his family, both kin and the musical community, he was able to play guitar at his own benefit. His own struggle to get back to health inspired the formation of the Northern Louisiana Brain and Spinal Cord Injury Foundation to fund neuroscience research in Louisiana.

The CD is now available, and it is terrific. It features several of the musicians who appear in our documentary (Carol Fran, Little Freddie King) and this web site (Henry Gray, Larry Garner). Also featured are Buddy Flett and soul singer Percy Sledge (best known for his 1966 hit “When a Man Loves a Woman”).

Get this CD, really. Copies are $20. For more information on ordering, go to http://www.brainhelp.org/activities.html.

Return to Louisiana

I’ve been back in Louisiana for the past few weeks, working on a series of articles and audio podcasts for the online edition of OnEarth Magazine, an independent publication of the Natural Resources Defense Council. The series, called “Losing Louisiana,” is about the long-term aftermath of the BP oil spill, as well as 80 years’ worth of environmental assaults on the Gulf Coast. It is going online bit-by-bit and can be read here. Music lovers will appreciate this podcast of Drew Landry, whose performance of “BP Blues” before the national commission investigating the oil spill gained him overnight attention. The podcast features his sequel, about seven clean-up workers who were hospitalized last May.

I’ve also used this trip to visit with some of the musicians featured in our radio documentaries. Blues diva Carol Fran whose 76th birthday party is featured in Hour 1, just turned 77, and she had another party at Cruisers, a small cinder-block bar at the edge of Lafayette with a warm family feel. It took a while for Carol’s friends and family to convince her to sing, but of course she rocked the house when she did. Here’s a video. (And yes, the lighting really was that red.)

In New Orleans, I also visited John T. Lewis, the blues and R&B guitarist who is featured in Hour 2. We spent part of the time with harmonica player J.D. Hill. Here’s a short video of Lewis and Hill jamming inside Hill’s house in New Orleans Musicians’ Village.

Help a great American music survive

Last week, we sent out this message to some of our friends and supporters—part of our effort to raise the last $7,000 we need for this project. If you’ve been enjoying “Still Singing the Blues,” we hope you’ll take the time to read this and make a contribution you can afford.

CLICK HERE TO GO STRAIGHT TO THE DONATIONS PAGE.

Dear friends,

Many of you have followed the making of “Still Singing the Blues,” our two-part, two-hour radio documentary about older blues musicians in New Orleans and South Louisiana. We have been grateful for your support—in the form of financial donations, lodging, and encouragement. We’ve learned this:  It takes a village to make a documentary!

We wanted to send you an update on the series. And—here’s the plot spoiler—we want to tell you about our last unfunded expense, and how you can help ensure this series reaches the audience we think it deserves.

Richard Ziglar interviews Little Freddie King outside New Orleans' Dew Drop Inn. Photo by Barry Yeoman.

Two Hours of Louisiana Stories

Our original funding, from the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities, was designed to cover a one-hour program. This hour, also called Still Singing the Blues, debuted June 4 and has run on 23 stations around the country. It tells the stories of three musicians in their 70s from across Louisiana’s Interstate-10 corridor: Carol Fran, a sassy pianist and vocalist from a French-speaking Creole family in Lafayette; Harvey Knox, a Baton Rouge guitarist who spent his adolescence inside the juke joints of his Louisiana Delta town; and “gutbucket” bluesman Little Freddie King, who as a teenager hopped a freight train from his Mississippi farmtown to New Orleans and never returned.

You can listen to the first hour at http://www.prx.org/pieces/48501-still-singing-the-blues. This is the web site for the Public Radio Exchange (PRX), and you need to register as a member before listening. Registration is free.

Along the way, we realized we had too much good material to stop at one hour. In particular, several musicians and one of our humanities consultants introduced us to a hidden world of corner blues joints in New Orleans, in neighborhoods like Treme, Pigeontown, and Central City. These bars don’t advertise, and most of them are unknown beyond their local customers. They struggle financially—especially since Hurricane Katrina, the recession, and the BP oil spill. But they allow both traditional blues and New Orleans’ unique R&B to survive. We worked without pay, and funded another research trip out of our pockets, to produce a second hour called Crescent City Blues. It debuted last month on four stations in Northern Illinois.

You can also listen to this show on PRX:  http://www.prx.org/pieces/53509-crescent-city-blues.

In addition, we have created a web site, http://stillsingingtheblues.org, with photographs, additional audio clips, and links to web sites for the musicians, their CDs, and non-profit groups working to support Louisiana musicians and preserve their music. We have maintained an extensive blog there, with historical tidbits, news of upcoming concerts, and an up-close look at our reporting process.

Your Opportunity to Rekindle the Blues

We believe it’s important that these documentaries receive widespread airplay. Many of the musicians we interviewed persevere despite poverty, illness, and the impacts of Hurricane Katrina and the oil spill. They are national treasures whose music forms the foundation of much American popular culture. Yet they have not received the attention they deserve. At a time when New Orleans and South Louisiana are struggling, we want to shine a spotlight on these remarkable artists. Per our grant agreement, we are making the shows available at no cost to public and community radio stations. We also donated a CD of Hour 1 to every main parish library in Louisiana.

But here’s the rub: Our grant did not cover the cost of promoting the documentary to radio stations. We believe we can get on 100, 150, or more stations, but this requires the services of a PR professional who specializes in public-radio documentaries and has relationships with stations around the country. The cost of hiring the professional, pressing and mailing CDs, and uploading the shows to the radio repository ContentDepot will cost $5,000. Project direction will cost an additional $2,000.

Would you consider making a tax-deductible donation of $50, $100, $500, or more? Your contribution will ensure that these high-quality documentaries will reach a large audience—calling attention to these under-recognized cultural heroes.

You can make your payment by check, which you can send to Filmmakers Collaborative, a 501(c)3 corporation that provides fiscal sponsorship and financial oversight for our project. Make the check payable to Filmmakers Collaborative and write “Still Singing the Blues” on the subject line. Send the check to:

Filmmakers Collaborative
397 Moody Street
Waltham MA 02453

Alternately, you can pay via PayPal by going to this web site: http://filmmakerscollab.org/films/singing-the-blues/. When you get there, click on “Make a Donation” and you will be directed to Filmmakers Collaborative’s PayPal page.

A Token of Our Appreciation

To show our appreciation, we will make these gifts available:

  • For $50, we will send you a pair of links where you can download MP3s of both programs.
  • For $100, we will send you a CD of Crescent City Blues.
  • For $500, we will list you as a major donor on our web site.

Please feel free to share this with others. And thank you so much in advance. Your support means everything to us.

Sincerely,

Barry Yeoman and Richard Ziglar

Good listenin’ in New Orleans (or anywhere)

Ruthie Foster, New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival 2008. Photo by Barry Yeoman.

Whether or not you’re near New Orleans, here are two opportunities to hear several musicians featured in our documentary series, as well as a host of other talented artists:

  • From WWOZ’s web site: “The New Orleans Voodoo Blues Krewe’s Voodoo Blues Challenge finals are on October 8 at Rock & Bowl—and WWOZ will broadcast the event live on air and online! The two finalists in the ‘band’ category are Ernie Vincent & the Top Notes and Lil Red & Big Bad. They’ll be performing in front of a panel of judges to find out who will move on to the International Blues Challenge in Memphis next February.” Ernie Vincent—who has been playing blues, funk and R&B since the 1960s—is featured featured prominently in Crescent City Blues, the second hour of our series. Also playing that night is Little Freddie King, a Mississippi Delta native who is featured in our first hour. The show starts at 8 p.m., and Rock & Bowl is at 3000 South Carrollton Avenue in Mid-City.
  • The Crescent City Blues & BBQ Festival, a free two-day music romp, will take place Oct. 17-18 in New Orleans’ Lafayette Square. The line-up is exquiste. As well as Little Freddie King (who will both sing and do a live oral history, which promises to be full of great stories), it includes Lafayette blues diva Carol Fran, who kicked off Hour 1 of our documentary. And that’s just the start: Also appearing will be Taj Mahal, the Grammy-winning blues guitarist, banjo and harmonica player, and composer who incorporates world music into his repertoire; Ruthie Foster, a Texan who in 2008 tore up the JazzFest blues tent with her gospel-inflected folk and blues; and Barbara Lynn, a Texan who got her start in New Orleans’ 1960s R&B scene.

The great thing about these two events is that you can listen to them anywhere, as they’ll both be broadcast and webcast on WWOZ. Click here for details on how to listen.

Don’t miss the Stomp

Barbara Lynn at the 2008 Ponderosa Stomp. Photo by Barry Yeoman.

Before you even read this post, take a listen to Barbara Lynn‘s 1962 R&B hit “You’ll Lose a Good Thing.” You can listen by clicking here. This will help you understand why this coming weekend is an exciting one for music lovers in New Orleans.

On Sept. 24 and 25, Ponderosa Stomp will celebrate the unsung heroes of rock’n’roll on three indoor stages. It’s a chance to savor all those musicians who shaped American popular culture without becoming household names.

This year’s line-up includes swamp blues harmonica player Lazy Lester, originally from Torras, Louisiana; Lafayette bandleader Lil’ Buck Sinegal, who played guitar for zydeco legend Clifton Chenier; and Barbara Lynn, a Texan who was recording her “soulful vocals and bluesy guitar licks” at Cosimo Matassa’s famous New Orleans studio almost forty years ago. Also playing is Michael Hurtt and the Haunted Hearts; Hurtt served as a consultant on our documentary project.

There will be a ton of other musicians, from Louisiana and elsewhere, whose obscurity is our loss.

Here’s an article I wrote last year that talks about my own experience at the Stomp.

The music takes place at House of Blues in the French Quarter. Tickets available here.

Accompanying the music will be a two-day music-history conference at the Cabildo in Jackson Square.

Friends in South Louisiana: If you can’t make the Stomp, you can catch some of the same musicians on Monday the 27th at Somewhere’s Else Lounge, 1506 Surry Street in Lafayette. The lounge’s Old School Monday Night Blues Jam starts at 7 p.m. and features Lil’ Buck Sinegal, Lazy Lester, and blues diva Carol Fran. Here the event is posted on Facebook. Note: Soul food and dancing too!

Carol Fran and Harmonica Blues

Carol Fran at a rehearsal in Lafayette. Photo by Barry Yeoman.

Blues diva Carol Fran, a wondrous performer from Lafayette who is featured prominently in Still Singing the Blues, is spending this weekend in Phoenix, performing at the release party of a rollicking new CD.

Release party poster

The album is Harmonica Blues by Bob Corritore. It features an all-star cast of blues musicians from around the country. Corritore, who is 54, learned blues harmonica in Chicago in the 1970s—Muddy Waters played in his high-school gym—and became both a musician and a record producer in that blues-crazy city. He moved to Phoenix in 1981. Now, in addition to playing, he DJs at the public-radio station KJZZ and runs a blues-and-roots club called The Rhythm Room.

Carol Fran—a gutsy vocalist and pianist who has been been performing blues and R&B for more than 60 years—sang her hit I Need to Be Be’d With on Corritore’s CD. Henry Gray—an 85-year-old pianist and vocalist from Baton Rouge and the winner of a National Heritage Fellowship Award by the National Endowment of the Arts—appears on the song 6 Bits in Your Dollar and two others. Both Louisianans will perform at the CD release party this coming Sunday, Sept. 5, at 8 p.m. at The Rhythm Room, 1019 E. Indian School Road in Phoenix.

The next day, Carol Fran will go back into the recording studio. We can’t wait to hear what she releases next.

LA Fête Cultural

Carol Fran, one of the three main musicians profiled in our documentary, will be the featured guest at LA Fête Cultural 2010, described by WWOZ as “a benefit event for workers at various types of cultural institutions who have been affected by the BP oil disaster.”  Fran will perform at a Patron Party Wednesday, Aug. 25, at 6 p.m. Central Time at New Orleans’  Contemporary Arts Center. At 7:30 the main concert begins, featuring (among others) Tab Benoit’s Swampland Jam with Cyril Neville, Anders Osborne, Big Chief Monk Boudreaux, and Jumpin’ Johnny Sansone. Also performing are Terrance Simien & the Zydeco Experience, and Big Sam’s Funky Nation.

Can’t catch it live? The main concert, sponsored by The Louisiana Cultural Economy Foundation, will be broadcast and webcast on WWOZ (90.7 FM).