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Professor Longhair at the 501 Napoleon Club |
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Reviews
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Saturday, 04 February 2006 13:18 |
Professor Longhair & The Rock of Ages
Plus The Rhapsodizers
at the 501 Napoleon Club, New Orleans
By John Sinclair
Fats Domino got all the action in the '50's, but it's the obscure New Orleans pianist Professor Longhair who has been awarded the undying love and respect of his fellow musicians in the Crescent City, and the 57-year-old "Bach of Rock"--quiet as it's kept--continues to produce some of the most vital, hard-driving rock & roll music to be heard these days.
Born in Bogalusa, Louisiana, in 1918, Roy Byrd came up in the clubs and joints of New Orleans, picking up on the piano lore of men like Sullivan Rock, Robert Bertrand and Kid Stormy Weather. He got his first big break--and his enduring nickname--in 1949, when an impromptu guest set with Dave Bartholomew's band at the Caldonia Inn Ied to a long stay at the club for his own band: Walter "Papoose" Nelson on guitar; Robert Parker, alto saxophone; "Big Slick," and later Al Miller, on drums.
Struck by Byrd's elongated hair and general weirdness, clubowner Mike Tessitore tagged the band "Professor Longhair & the Four Hairs Combo," a name which has stuck to the reclusive pianist ever since.
Longhair staked out his claim to national recording fame in 1949-50 with a series of R&B hits on a number of labels--"She Ain't Got No Hair" (Star Talent), "Bald Head" (Mercury), "Mardi Gras in New Orleans," "Professor Longhair Blues" and "Hey Little Girl" (Atlantic)--and under an equal number of names: Professor Longhair & His Shuffling Hungarians, Roy Byrd & His Blues Jumpers, Roy "Baldhead" Byrd, Professor Longhair & His Blues Scholars, and even "Roland Byrd."
But this professional confusion kept the pianist from consolidating his recording successes, and after his "Gone So Long" for Federal Records in 1951 and "Tipitina" for Atlantic in 1953, Longhair faded into near-total obscurity, broken only by the classics "Go To the Mardi Gras" (Ron, 1959) and "Big Chief" (Watch, 1965) until 1972, when he was hailed by Dr. John as the progenitor of the modern-day music of New Orleans and commemorated by Atlantic Records with an album full of his original recordings for the label titled Professor Longhair: New Orleans Piano.
In the New Orleans piano music of the modern era--the mostly unacknowledged wellspring of rock and roll--one might say that Fats pioneered the rock, while Fess supplied the mighty roll. Both shared the same pool of musicians--Fats rose to glory in Dave Bartholomew's band, and Papoose was Fats' guitar player for years--but Domino enjoyed a long, stable relationship with Imperial Records, a string of smash singles which even came to dominate the pop charts, and a highly profitable touring schedule, while Longhair languished in the tiny nightspots of New Orleans, unable to put together two solid records in a row.
Today Fats commands thousands of dollars a night in the lounges of Las Vegas, and Longhair remains unrecorded by an American company (he does have two LPs out on the French Barclay label), a resident folk legend in the city of his lifelong travail.
All of that is just so much horseshit, however, once you hear his current band, a cooking composite of the city's finest young veteran musicians which rocks and rolls until the walls fall down.
Billed as The Rock of Ages, Longhair and his outfit--Earl Turbinton, alto and soprano saxophones; Alvin "Shine" Robinson, guitar; Julius Farmer, bass; Lon Smith, tenor saxophone; a white guitarist named Billy; and an unidentified drummer--play so hard, but yet so musically, that they put most of the superstars to shame.
In no way a nostalgia trip, nor a reverential re-enactment of music which was once vital and for real, the Professor's 1976 edition is as up-to-date as anything you hear, as full of life as the best music always is, and as easy to get next to as your own dancing feelings, which this music insists must come out.
Working off of the Professor's classical repertoire--"Go To the Mardi Gras," "Big Chief," Tipitina," "Mardi Gras in New Orleans"--and building relentlessly on the energy of the excited crowd at the 501 Napoleon Club, where your reporter caught the band the Saturday night before Mardi Gras, the Rock of Ages provoked continuous wall- to-wall dancing all night, with Longhair leading the charge from his shaky perch at the electric piano.
Earl Turbinton contributed a series of mind-altering saxophone solos, Robinson and Farmer demonstrated why they're the most popular rhythm team in New Orleans, the young Billy's guitar solos smoked like crazy, and Lon Smith threw in an entire tenor's worth of rock and roll saxophone in the grand tradition of Lee Allen, Herb Hardesty and Alvin "Red" Tyler.
For an amateur ethno-musicologist who had gone to dig Longhair as an aging relic who had to be seen before he faded from sight completely, your investigator was totally blown away by this exhilarating rock and roll orchestra and its legendary, up-to-the- minute New Orleans sound.
If someone doesn't sign them up and put them on the road while they're doing it like this, music lovers all over America will be deprived of one of our mightiest national resources, and that's something we just can't afford. Professor Longhair can't live forever, you know--but you can bet his music will!
--Detroit
April 1976/
February 2, 1997
(C) 1976, 1997, 2006 John Sinclair. All Rights Reserved.
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