Here I am sitting in Zihuatanejo thinking about New
Orleans. New Orleans is on my mind
because at the end of April, I will be headed for the New Orleans Jazz and
Heritage Festival. This will be my
fifth or sixth “Jazz Fest,” and it is one of the greatest music festivals on
earth.
When people hear “Jazz and Heritage” they almost always
forget the heritage part and focus on the jazz. After all, this is New Orleans, the birthplace of jazz and unless
you have been to that part of the country, you probably are unaware of the rich
musical gumbo that is always on the stove down on the bayou. Yes, there is plenty of Jazz, in it’s
many forms, but there is also Cajun, bluegrass, rhythm and blues, zydeco, jug
bands, reggae, country, rock and roll, gospel, roots, folk, Latin, blues, and
all kinds of combinations of all of the above. If you can’t find something you like, you don’t like music.
So as I sit here thinking about once more heading for the
Fest, I can’t help but think about some of the many memorable experiences I
have had there. One of those
experiences was the last time I saw Etta James sing.
I started listening to the Blues in the late 60’s when I was
in my late teens. The Beatles and
the British Invasion had eclipsed the Blues, along with soul music and any
other form of popular music that didn’t feature guitars and Beatlesque
elements. Many of the biggest
names in the Blues world suddenly could not make a living playing their
music. Many couldn’t find work
playing music, some pumped gas, and others hung on any way they could. Then something great happened. College age kids discovered the Blues
and suddenly a new market blossomed.
This all happened at a time when the consensus that had held
in the U.S. since the end of WWll, and had built the largest middle class in
the history of the planet, began to unravel. The Vietnam War was a major catalyst. It began the process of shaking the
country to its foundation. Our
leaders were unable to explain why we were fighting and as “the Pentagon
Papers” were published, the lies and distortion became public knowledge. At the same time as the war was shaking
things up, the Civil Rights movement was exposing some of the deep
contradictions embedded in American life and forcing people, especially the
young, to question what they had been taught about the nature of their
country.
The youth of America
became alienated from their parent’s generation and the rather sad saying
“don’t trust anyone over thirty,” became popular among young people. Cesar Chavez began organizing the farm
workers and the Gay Pride and the Woman’s Movements added to the sense that
something was seriously wrong with the status quo and change was needed and
over due. The people who had been
kept outside were demanding to be let in as full participants.
Youth felt betrayed.
Like all youth, our generation was naïve and didn’t understand the
sacrifices and contributions the previous generation had made to build the life
we took for granted. The draft
made the Vietnam War personal and TV had not yet censored itself and nightly
newscasts brought the war home like no other in our history. Hard questions were being asked and
none of the country’s established institutions were providing answers.
It was during this time many of the
young people of America developed a longing for authenticity. And that is where the Blues reentered
the picture.
What ever the Blues was, it was authentic. The music was the story of the millions
of black Americans who had endured brutal conditions in the south and made
their way north in the years surrounding WWll, seeking opportunities that were
opening in the war industries of places like Detroit and Chicago. The Blues chronicled that journey.
A lot of people think the Blues is exclusively a sad music
and it does talk of harsh, back-breaking working conditions, terror,
discrimination, lynching, poverty and all the problems that come with living
under those conditions. But that
is hardly the whole story. The
music also chronicles the humor, yearning, joy, love, and the rhythms of every
day life. To fail to see this side
of the music is to miss an essential part of its make up. You can’t understand the saying, “The
Blues had a baby and they named it Rock and Roll,” unless you embrace the whole
story of the Blues.
So, in the late sixties the yearning met the “real
thing.” It was impossible to sit
and listen to Muddy Waters play and sing and not be aware that, whatever he was
saying, he had lived a life that gave him the authority to say it. This was not like listening to the
second runner up on American Idol as they tour the country’s arenas.
As I came of age, I sought out and attended as many Blues
shows as I could during the 70’s, 80’s, and 90’s. I consider it one of the great joys of my life to have had
the opportunity to hear Muddy Waters, Howling Wolf, Willie Dixon, Buddy Guy and
Junior Wells, and literally dozens of other kings and queens of the Blues. It took me to many strange and
wonderful venues and stretched my perception of American life.
Then starting in the last half of the 90’s, I began to
realize how fleeting these experiences were becoming. Pat and I went to a Blues Festival in Madison WI in the
early 2000’s. Headlining the
festival was Pinetop Perkins, a legendary piano player, whom I had seen several
times when he was an integral part of Muddy Waters’ band. When it came time for Mr. Perkins to
perform, he had to be helped to the stage. He had somehow aged and at 90 was a shadow of what he had
once been at the keyboard. My
image of him was as a younger man who would rock his instrument and the house
as he and Waters’ other sidemen made up one of the best Blues bands on the
planet. As in most things, you can
do them a lot better at 55 than you can at 90.
I came away saddened and decided then and there, I would no
longer go to see the old lions of the blues on stage. The shows had become tribute shows and I preferred to keep
my memories of when these men and women were at the height of their
powers. There is an old saying
that the Blues will never die, and I believe that is true to some extent. But, the masters who created the music
and brought their story north and then to the world, did get old and die. It was a special time, and like I said
before, I feel blessed to have had the opportunity to be a witness.
These thoughts were in my head as I laid on my bed in our
hotel room in New Orleans looking at the next day’s Festival schedule. Pat and I agreed we wanted to see Etta
James at 4:00 o’clock and felt it best we camp out at the tent she would be
playing in starting at around 2:00pm.
It wasn’t any hardship because there were other noteworthy artists
scheduled at that venue earlier in the afternoon.
Etta James was born in 1938 in southern California. Some people consider her a jazz singer
and others looked at her as an early rhythm and blues or rock artist. Cases can be made for those points of
view, but for my money, Etta James was the consummate Blues singer.
Pat and I first saw Ms. James live in the early 80s at
Wilebski’s Blues saloon in the Frogtown section of Saint Paul. Wilbeski’s was an old hall upstairs
from a Polish pizza parlor. The
place was a mess. The tables were an assortment of old kitchen tables (the kind
with linoleum tops) and mismatched red plastic covered chairs. It was sticky and smelled of stale
beer. What it lacked in atmosphere it made up for by booking great music almost
every week. Teddy Wilebski dressed
like a 1930’s gangster and was responsible for bringing a lot of great music to
the Twin Cities. The IRS shut him
down a few years later. I would
have given him a medal instead.
The night we saw Etta James there, she was absolutely
captivating. She was sexy, sassy,
and packed more emotion into one song than many of today’s divas manage in a
career. When Etta James sang she would rather go blind then see a former lover
with another woman, you knew she had been there and you believed her. She prowled the stage like a big cat
and every eye in the place was glued to her. It was the first of a number of memorable appearances I
would witness over the next 15 to 20 years.
As the afternoon wore on we worked our way to about 20 rows
from the stage, dead center. Just
about ten to four, a Festival official took the stage and demonstrated one of
the great differences between Minnesota and New Orleans. He announced to the crowd that around
1:00pm the National Weather Service had notified them that severe weather was
moving into the New Orleans area.
They just wanted to let us know in case we wanted to head for protection
but the show was going to start on time.
Minnesota officials would have, more than likely, taken a look at the
several hundred people sitting in a tent and sent us home to weather the
storm. In New Orleans, you let the
good times roll.
After the announcement, I glanced out the open sides of the
tent and noticed the sky had taken on a rather purple hew. Pat and I thought about it for about a
minute and decided to stay.
At 4:00 The Roots took the stage. They were, I hate to say backing up, so I will just say they were accompanying James for this show. This was before their fame had spread very far and long
before they became the house band for Jimmy Fallon’s late night talk show. They warmed up the crowd with a tune or
two and then James made her way to the stage. She had become grossly over weight and needed to be helped
up on stage. Instead of standing
she half sat and half stood on a tall stool.
One of the reasons I had wanted to see her was that I heard
she had been seriously ill. She
was getting on in years and had lived a difficult life and I feared it might be
now or never. As she settled in up
on stage I wondered was I going to see a shadow of a once great star.
My worries disappeared the minute she began to sing. She no longer was able to prowl the
stage like she once did, but she had lost none of the raw emotion and power to
deliver a song like few have ever done, then or since. The reaction of the crowd was electric
and she seemed to feed off the response.
It’s possible she was thinking she might never again grace the stage at
this great festival and it helped pull a great performance from her. What ever happened, she was great. I savored every song with the knowledge
that this would probably be the last time I would have the privilege of
watching and listening to her perform live. The show ended with a couple of standing ovations and
encores. She didn’t leave the
stage and come back because you knew when she did leave, that would be it.
When the show ended the crowd began to stream out of the
tent. I looked at the sky and it
now was a deep, ominous purple with lightening firing off every couple
seconds. Pat and I got about
twenty feet from the tent when the sky opened up and a deluge of Biblical
proportions hit us. We stopped and
pulled out two Bucky Badger ponchos we had been given when we had visited the
Teacher on parent’s day at the University of Wisconsin. They were made to look like the furry
little beasts complete with ears.
As we walked the quarter mile to the shuttle buses that would take us to
the French Quarter, it rained so hard that the ponchos were inadequate to the
job of keeping anything but maybe 10 square inches of our torsos dry.
We reached the shuttle buses and they took us to the French
Quarter, where we had another half mile walk to our hotel. As we passed through Jackson Square,
where the tarot card readers and fortune tellers set up their tables every day,
I noticed there were a few of them huddled under large umbrellas waiting out
the storm. As we walked by, I
dipped my head under one of the umbrellas and said, “I predict rain.” Nothing, I got nothing, not even a
smile. I guess tarot card readers
and fortune tellers have no sense of humor because they already know the punch
line before it is delivered. As
usual, I was the only one laughing at my jokes.
When we reached our hotel we knocked on the door of our
friend Rich’s room. He opened the
door and before him he saw two very drenched but happy badgers. I’m not too sure he has recovered from
the sight to this day.
It rained 8 inches in 4 hours that day in New Orleans. It turned out to be the last time I saw
Etta James. A little rain could
never dampen that memory. Once the
rain ended, we went to dinner in the Quarter. Did I mention, if you like to eat and drink, you will be
hard pressed to find yourself in a better place than New Orleans. Just remember, if you have a car and
wanted to park in the French Quarter the early bird special ends at 10:00am.
