Still Singing the Blues

A radio documentary about New Orleans and South Louisiana Blues

Return to Louisiana

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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.

Home at Musician’s Village

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Last year, during the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, Tim Duffy slept for several nights on the sofa of New Orleans bluesman Little Freddie King. Duffy runs Music Maker Relief Foundation, an organization that supports and promotes older Southerners who play traditional music and make less than $18,000 a year. King, who lives at Musicians’ Village, a community built after Hurricane Katrina by Habitat for Humanity, is one of the artists Music Maker supports.

“In the mornings we rode bikes around his neighborhood,” Duffy writes. “At lunch we dined on soul food cooked by his fiancée, Babyface, and afterwards we sat around and played guitar. One morning, as we picked up the guitars where they laid from the night before, I set up my recording gear and captured one of Little Freddie’s informal music sessions.”

The result is a CD called At Home in the New Orleans Musicians’ Village, which you can order by clicking here. Those who favor slickly produced music will be disappointed; this is an intimate glimpse of two friends playing and chatting together in a living room. You hear them fussing over speaker levels; discussing the tour buses that roll through Musicians’ Village; and deciding whether to pause for Coca-Colas. The music is unplugged, gritty, and irresistible.