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Chuck Carbo / Eddie Bo / Deacon John: Unsung Heroes of New Orleans R&B |
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Saturday, 04 February 2006 09:43 |
Eddie Bo / Chuck Carbo / Deacon John
Unsung Heroes of New Orleans Rhythm & Blues
By John Sinclair
Everybody knows Fats Domino. Dr. John, the Neville Brothers, Wynton and Branford Marsalis enjoy major-label recording contracts and tour the world as musical ambassadors of the sound of New Orleans. Johnny Adams, Irma Thomas, the Dirty Dozen, Walter Wolfman Washington, the Re-Birth Brass Band, Earl King, Snooks Eaglin and Tommy Ridgley--to make just a short list--record regularly and are widely recognized as modern-day giants of Crescent City music.
But three of the brightest musical stars residing in our fair city--men whose professional careers go back to the early 1950s and who continue to thrill listeners with their masterful performances today--remain unheralded and (mostly) unheard outside of New Orleans. Even here their full talents remain criminally under-utilized, although it is usually possible to see and hear them on-stage at the Fairgrounds and other local venues during JazzFest.
Chuck Carbo, Eddie Bo, and Deacon John Moore have learned to thrive and grow artistically despite the absence of an appropriate response from the listening public. In fact, each is at the top of his game right now, playing and performing more brilliantly than ever before.
Chuck Carbo's new release on Rounder Records, The Barber's Blues, and his great Drawers Trouble CD from 1993 are two of the finest local products to be heard in the 1990s. They ve helped resuscitate a distinguished career which began when Chuck joined the Zion Harmonizers immediately following World War II. He was a member of the fabled Delta Southernaires and lead singer with The Spiders, the New Orleans vocal group that enjoyed national chart success with several singles for Imperial Records in the mid- 50s.
The legendary Eddie Bo can be heard at the piano every Thursday through Sunday evening from 5:00-8:00 pm at Margaritaville on Decatur Street, peeling the ivory off the keys with his dynamic, deeply soulful musical attack. He has just released a new CD on his own Eboville label, following up last year's splendid Eddie Bo & Friends album and a fine solo piano set on Night Train Records.
Eddie's countless singles for Apollo, Ace, Chess, Rip, Ric and other independent labels must be heard to be believed, but the vast majority languish in total obscurity.
Deacon John is the author of one of the greatest singles ever recorded, his magnificent reading of Jimmy Cliff's Many Rivers to Cross on Atlantic Records. He is the most woefully under-recorded major R&B artist in modern history, but a listen to his JazzFest performance of Elmore James Happy Home on WWOZ's Sounds of New Orleans, Volume 3 collection from last year clearly reveals the awesome power and dazzling brilliance of his fully mature guitar artistry.
I met Deacon John and Eddie Bo one Tuesday night in April for dinner at Olivier s, across the street from the House of Blues. I brought my wife Penny and our friend Jerry Brock to share the sumptuous feast hosted by OffBeat publisher Jan Ramsey and assist me with the questioning of our illustrious guests. Our entire party enjoyed the personal attentions of the proprietor, Mr. Olivier, who frequently contributed valuable conversational tid-bits as well.
Chuck Carbo was unable to join us for dinner, but he showed up at WWOZ the next day to talk with me, and--much like making a recording--I mixed his remarks into the tracks cut with Deacon John and Eddie Bo the night before to produce the lively three-way discussion which follows.
We wanted to hear about the glory days of New Orleans rhythm & blues, and--reasonably enough--the conversation kicks off with some fond reminiscences of the one and only Professor Longhair.
Eddie Bo: Fess and I were very, very close. We went out on gigs like you would never believe, in all these little towns--me and Fess and Ernest Chinn, Fess son. Chinn was the doorman. Chinn would knock a man out if he wouldn t pay, and draw his gun--oh yes he would.
See, Fess and Tommy Ridgley were close, and my daddy was a gambler. Fess and Tommy would go and bring all their money to my daddy. He ran games in what they called Shrewsbury that's where Tommy lived--and them two would go play cotch with my daddy. My daddy dealt from the bottom of the deck.
You know, on Saratoga Street, I used to jump the fence and come around to a place in the front, on Jackson Avenue, to see Tommy and Dave Bartholomew--Dave had a great big band, and Tommy was the vocalist. I used to sit--see, I d never saw anything like that. I used to run inside this place and watch this, and when I got to shake Tommy's hand he ll never remember that! I shook Tommy's hand, man, and almost cried.
But anyway, Fess--Fess use to sit in the back of Joe Assunto's One Stop Records, and Fess would play for hours. No money--he was cleaning up and stocking the place. Now here is a man that played so many polyrhythms that nobody's gonna equal it today. They can mimic him to a degree, but man, Fess played so many polyrhythms it was sickening.
And you know they didn t pay him. Fess didn t start making a couple of dollars until after Allison [Miner] picked him up [in 1970], and even then it took a long time. And he still didn t make it big--he made enough to survive, and bought a little house, but that was it.
And take Johnny Adams--I think Johnny Adams is one of the greatest singers in the entire universe, period, and he doesn t win the Grammies.
Deacon John: But he wins every year.
Eddie Bo: He doesn t win the Grammies.
Deacon John: Oh, I was talking about the Big Easy Awards. Johnny wins every year--Johnny, Irma and Aaron, they must have won about eight years in a row.
Eddie Bo: Deacon, have you ever been nominated for a Big Easy Award?
Deacon John: I ve never been nominated, and I ve never even been invited to the Big Easy Awards party. That just shows you how much they think of me. I ve played the Jazz Festival 26 years, but they give festivals all over the world and have never invited me to play one of them. How do you explain that?
Chuck Carbo: Man, it's always been this way. The only work The Spiders ever did in New Orleans was in the studio. The Spiders never did get a good gig in New Orleans. As big as we were on the national charts, we never played the big shows in New Orleans. All of our shows were in Washington DC, the Apollo Theater in New York City, big shows all over the country. We would go out and stay five or six months at a time, playing these package tours, and when we d come back to New Orleans, we were not even recognized.
Our record hit on both sides, you know. At #3 in the Billboard and Cashbox was our song I Didn t Wanna Do It, and the #8 song was the flip side, You re The One. When Witchcraft came out, around 1957, it crossed over to pop and went to the top 100. I m Slippin In was on the charts. We had six songs, I think, on the charts, but we were still not recognized in New Orleans.
You notice that all the artists leave New Orleans if they want to make it. They are not going to make it here. But I love New Orleans--I wouldn t live no where else but New Orleans. A lot of people would love to come to New Orleans to hear New Orleans music, but when they get here they notice they have hired bands from Europe, they ve hired bands from Cleveland I m talking about for JazzFest. Well, they took me off of JazzFest. I played it four years, and they say they had to take me off because they re cuttting back.
Deacon John: I m not stupid. I can see. My mother gave us brains. [Laughs] She was valedictorian of the first graduating class at Xavier University, and she was a musician. Her father was a musician, too. I come from a long line of musicians and entertainers. My mother played the piano, and she sang in the church choir. She used to put me in these talent shows. She would play the piano and I would sing. The first talent show I won, I sang Because --I was nine years old.
Eddie Bo: My mother played piano too. Our family [the Bocages] was all through Algiers and the 9th Ward, and we spent a little while in the St. Bernard projects. That Bocage family was very close-knit, and they all came from Algiers. In fact, there's tons of them over there now. My mother's name was Ionia, and she's a heck of a pianist. Her maiden name was Tucker. My father's name was Alvin.
All the Bocage males from five years old had to learn how to build--all of us were carpenters--we all had to learn to be masons. We were all builders, and we had to learn to do that when we got to be old enough to stand up and walk. Believe me, that will keep you eating.
How did Eddie Bocage become Eddie Bo? Because it was easier to pronounce. But whenever I go to France, I use Bocage. I didn t know that name was so big until a German guy sent me some paraphernalia of Peter Bocage, and John Bocage and Joseph. And I ve got some handwritten letters where Sidney Bechet wrote that he didn t want to play without Peter Bocage. Sidney and Peter were very close. I didn t know the man could play like that. I was shocked.
Deacon John: Man, this city is just loaded with aliases and nicknames, characters of all kinds. I ve never seen a city like this. Look at the obituaries in the newspaper--Danny Barker used to collect obits just to make a list of all these nicknames. Everybody in the band had to have one, and all of a sudden somebody named me Deacon John. I didn t pick it.
We had a rehearsal one day and I was wearing this close-cut Ivy League haircut and a little suit like this. The guys say, You look like a deacon. Yeah! Let's name him Deacon. And Al Miller said, You remember Deacon John and Elder Brown? Two of the slickest cats in town.
Everybody fell out laughing. I said, Man, don t name me no shit like that--Deacon John. Everybody say, Yeah, that's your name now. We got a few gigs, and people started advertising it, and I couldn t get rid of it then. They would say, Well, everybody ain t gonna know who's here if we don t use Deacon John.
The funniest thing just happened this year. I was playing at Bugsy's on Lundi Gras and a guy comes up. He said, Deacon, I been wanting to meet you all my life. My name is Deacon too. He showed me his driver's license, and it said Deacon John Guidry. My mama named me after you.
So my wife said, Your parents must have went out and heard Deacon one night and went home and you.... He said, That's exactly what happened. So I find out, 30 years later, they got another Deacon John!
Chuck Carbo: Man, going back, when I came out the service--World War II--I came back to New Orleans, and my brother Chick and I joined the Zion Harmonizers. We stayed with the Zion Harmonizers a couple years, then we switched our name to the Delta Southernaires. We had a radio show on Sunday morning with Jack the Cat on WWEZ, and we would go and do our gospel show, a half hour every Sunday.
Well, one particular Sunday we had to go somewhere to sing, and we taped the show. We told Jack the Cat, Whatever you do, man, do not tell our fans that we are the Spiders. You re The One and I Didn t Wanna Do It had just broke for us, and in those days the Baptist Church was real strict on you.
As we were driving down Highway 90 we tuned into WWEZ and the gospel show came on. Jack the Cat played the tape and he said, You won t believe this, but this group the Spiders is our own Delta Southernaires--the same group. Then he caught himself and said, Oh my goodness, I really let the cat out the bag. And we were shaking in the automobile--we had to come back and face our church members, and the pastor, you know. At that time we belonged to the Historic Second Baptist Church.
Deacon John: I started singing when I was 5 years old. When I was in the 7th grade, 8th grade, I was singing in a band, and I realized I would get more gigs if I played an instrument. I was a stock clerk for a grocery store, and I used to deliver groceries on Saturday for $2.25 a day plus tips. At night I used to deliver prescription drugs for a drugstore five days a week after school for $9.00 a week.
I went to Abe's Pawn Shop on Canal Street and bought a Supro guitar for something like $50. I had saved up my money in a coffee can, saving up my pennies to get me an electric guitar and amp. I didn t even know how to play--that was in 1954-55.
I would play with little pick-up bands at first. I started coming to the Dew Drop around the late 50s-early 60s. I had a hot band, and we used to go around all the clubs sittin in. That was a big thing then--everybody was sittin in. Cats would bring their whole band in they re in uniforms--to sit in. [Laughs] Trying to get a gig.
Eddie Bo: Musicians used to come from all over the city and gather in one place and, you know, they would all take turns. I m next!
Deacon John: Just sitting in....
Eddie Bo: The Dew Drop was one of the places....
Chuck Carbo: The Dew Drop used to be my second home. Ray Charles, Guitar Slim be at the Dew Drop, Brook Benton....
Deacon John: Yeah, and the High Hat....
Eddie Bo:....The Tijuana, the Caledonia. Deac, remember when we used to go across the river to that place in Marrero and play for sausages? [Laughs]
Deacon John: Go by Jessie s, the El Grotto, the Bright Star Hall, Lincoln High, The Forest Inn. On the West Bank, Happy s, the Pepper Pot in Algiers. I remember when they used to have them Friday and Saturday night fish fries down on Pauger. I used to play some of them yard parties--that was one of my first gigs. We got like a dollar apiece....
Eddie Bo: ....and a fish sandwich, right. Lincoln Beach, now that was a place you go to every weekend, man--everybody from all over. That whole area was woods--that was the swamps. It was way out around Hayne Blvd.
Deacon John: They had gigs out there on the midway--you had to be out there all day, and you had different shows at different times of the day. You had to do a show at like 12:00 o clock, another one at 3:00, another one at 5:00. You would do about an hour set, then you go walk around the beach and spend the money because they wouldn t give you nothing to eat.
I used to listen to Art Neville--I would go to dances with my older sister as a chaperone, and they always had Art Neville and the Turquinettes and the Flamingos, all the hot groups from that period. Snooks was on the scene--you would get mesmerized listening to Snooks. Snooks was in the Flamingos. I would go to see Art and Aaron and Izzycoo Gordon, and they had Leo Morris [now Idrees Muhammad] playing drums.
When Snook would play on a gig, he could play the bass line on his guitar and play lead at the same time, and sing too. I used to see Snooks when I was too young to get in the joints. I would sneak in the back and all that.
Snooks was a one-man band. He would go around to all the clubs--he had a different night for every club. A certain night he would be here, a certain night he would be there. He would be all over the city. He used to play the Top of the Town out in Kenner. He had a joint down in the 6th Ward he used to play, on the corner of Pauger and Robertson--might still be there.
He used to come in my neighborhood--they had a little tavern in the neighborhood, and he would come in with just him and his guitar and beat on the floor with his foot and just rock the joint out. That just blew me away. I was in the corner, you know--I was too young to be in the place--and I would be hiding behind the beer cases, just looking and peeping at him.
He was one of the most versatile guitar players I ve ever seen in my life. You know, I hung around Papoose [Walter Nelson]--Papoose was more jazz and R&B--but Snooks could play flamenco guitar, anything he heard he could play, and he d pick out the bass line, the chord changes, and the lead all at the same time, then sing on top of that.
Eddie Bo: Yeah, he was a hilarious little fella. We was coming back from a gig, about four o clock in the morning, and we had a flat tire, you know, so everybody got out the car to see if we could fix the flat, and some lights was coming around the curve.
I was under the car and I got out--something just said come out from under there. The man driving the truck was asleep at the wheel. Snooks was sitting in the car, and that truck hit the car and knocked it about 25 feet. When the car stopped we ran to the car and Snooks said, What happened? [Everybody laughs] He was pinned against the dash board.
Deacon John: Talking about guitar players: Roy Montrell! I used to go by his house and just watch him. I used to go over by Papoose and Prince La-La [Lawrence Nelson], who was his brother. I saw Papoose, Prince La-La and his daddy passing the guitar around, drinking that white port and lemon juice, down at Picou's bar.
I was too young to be in there, but I would sneak in there in the daytime and just sit there and be watching them. One would be playing and the other one would grab the guitar and say, No, this is how it goes, or the other one would take the guitar and say, No, you playing that wrong--this is how it go. Justin Adams, I used to go by his house too. Curtis Trevigne, Ernest McLean--we had some bad guitar players.
Eddie Bo: Deacon was playing a hell of a guitar too, because he would go around and watch all of these people and learn the techniques. I ve heard him play, just play music around the span, 360 degrees of the harmonic circle. He can play whatever he wants to play. But the one you called, Roy Montrell, he and McLean were the two best, and then after George Davis came along, that was another monster.
Deacon John: I met George Davis on one of the first gigs I went on playing the guitar--I couldn t have been playing no more than six months or something, and on the gig George is blowing the saxophone. He took a break and he said, Let me see your guitar for a minute, brah. He started playing on my guitar, and I said, Wow!!!
Eddie Bo: Oh yeah, he was a terrible bass player and guitarist....
Deacon John: ....and he wrote Tell It Like It Is, and he also produced my album Singer of Song. He was the best man at my wedding, so we are real close.
Eddie Bo: George Davis called me one day and said, Man, I have to use that title Tell It Like It Is" --that title is just too much. So he collaborated with Lee Diamond--Lee Diamond was Joe Smith's brother.
You know, Lee Diamond had left playing tenor with me about 10 years before that to go join Little Richard. So he told Richard, said Eddie Bo got a song called Slippin and Slidin , and he started humming it to him. Next time I heard it, it was on Specialty Records. That was it for that little Apollo single--Apollo couldn t compete with Specialty.
Deacon John: When I was a teenager I was riding my bike and delivering groceries, with my portable radio, and I would always get Poppa Stoppa, and the first song he would play was I m Wise. I would have that radio up to my ear and ride along.
Eddie Bo: I made I m Wise around 1954. You know how they did back then. Paul Gayten says, Well, I could get somebody to record that, you know--if you give me half. And that's the way it went, man. When we did Check Mr. Popeye, just like we are sitting here, I was sitting at Dick Clark's house waiting to go on that show [American Bandstand] when his firm called and said, Would you give half of the publishing to Dick Clark? Man, I was on the next plane out of there--I didn t even go on the show. The whole thing is nothing but a racket, but if you let that stuff get to you, it will eat you up.
Chuck Carbo: Man, it sure got to me, to the point where I just left the music business altogether. I had a family, and I knew I wasn t going to just wait on somebody to give me a gig. I had already left the Spiders by about 1956, but [Imperial Records President] Lew Chudd called me and asked me if I would do another song with the Spiders, because they were not putting out material like they were when I was with them.
So I came in and made Witchcraft, and that shot up the charts, so I went back to touring for a while, but then I had to go back with my family. I stayed with my family and raised my kids.
I think it was 1983 when WWOZ brought me back out, because the Duke of Paducah asked me to come on his show, and after I did that show, all of a sudden I got that feeling again. Then I started getting a few gigs and started doing some radio, and my friend Lynn Abbott called me about this deal with Mike Dine and 504 Records. I made Meet Me with Your Black Drawers On and Second Line on Monday, and I was on my way back.
Deacon John: Hey, don t forget to mention my Miller commercial, and don t forget about my scholarship. In the commercial I m playing the part of the blues mentor. It's my first commercial, and it's on national television. And they actually have a scholarship named after me, at a school in Denver, Colorado--The Deacon John Scholarship. I forget the name of the school.
--New Orleans
April 1996
C) 1996, 2006 John Sinclair. All Rights Reserved.
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