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Forgotten Souls Brass Band: Don't Forget 'Em |
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Saturday, 31 December 2005 09:39 |
Don t Forget Em:
The Forgotten Souls Brass Band
By John Sinclair
The contemporary brass band movement in New Orleans goes back more than a quarter-century to the vision of Danny Barker, the legendary guitarist who returned after a long residency in New York City to resettle in his home town in the mid-1960s. To his considerable dismay, Mr. Danny found the traditional brass band music of the Crescent City teetering on the verge of disappearing entirely into history, and he made it his business to pass on the music and its functions to a whole new generation of young African-American musicians.
Working with the Fairview Baptist Church, Danny Barker established a youth ensemble that learned to play the traditional repertoire for street parades, funerals and social functions. The Fairview Baptist Church band, which included many future stars of the modern brass band movement among its members, brought a freshness and exuberance to the established repertoire and, with Mr. Danny's encouragement, began to experiment with ways they could bring the music of their own generation into play within the brass band idiom.
By the late 70s, the advent of the Dirty Dozen Brass Band sent a clear and unmistakable signal that the music would continue to live, grow and develop in the same cultural milieu the streets of New Orleans which had first given it life a century before. Using a stripped-down line-up of two trumpets, trombone, tenor and baritone saxophones, snare drum, bass drum and the incredibly fluid sousaphone of Kirk Joseph, the Dirty Dozen souped up the sound of the brass band and revolutionized the repertoire in the process, fashioning irresistible original songs like Blackbird Special and Feets Can t Fail Me Now and fusing bebop lines by Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie and Thelonious Monk with relentless street rhythms and surging saxophone solos of a decidedly modern bent.
Propelled by Kirk Joseph's innovative bass lines, The Dozen also adapted material from the New Orleans rhythm & blues tradition to the brass band format, breathing new life into perennial favorites by Professor Longhair ( Big Chief, Go to the Mardi Gras ), Dave Fatman Williams ( I Ate Up the Apple Tree ), Eddie Bo ( When I m Walking ) and others. They plundered television themes ( Meet the Flintstones ), pop music ( It's All Over Now ), traditional jazz classics ( Little Liza Jane ) and whatever sources attracted their attention to flesh out their radical new approach to the idiom always remaining firmly rooted in the tradition, and always reaching out to the future.
In the middle of everything from the beginning, sousaphonist Kirk Joseph son of legendary New Orleans trombonist Waldron Frog Joseph blazed a new path for the big horn, inspiring an entire generation of followers, and he's been out in front ever since. He came off the road with the Dirty Dozen several years ago and has continued to work around New Orleans with the Treme Brass Band, Anders Osborn, All That and other outfits, never failing to excite his fellow band members and his many fans in the listening audience.
Now, at the turn of a new century, Kirk has organized the Forgotten Souls Brass Band, an all-star ensemble dedicated to all forgotten souls, living and deceased and comprising players from the leading ensembles of the day, including ex-Dirty Dozen trombonist Revert Peanut Andrews, trumpet men William Smith (Li l Rascals Brass Band) and Kenneth Terry (New Birth Brass Band), saxophonists Roderick Paulin (Re-Birth) and Eric Traub (New Orleans Nightcrawlers, the Dr. John band), and the mighty Re-Birth drum team of Keith Bass Drum Shorty Frazier and Ajay Mallory on snare drum.
Seriously steeped in traditional jazz, the Forgotten Souls is unquestionably modern in its outlook and repertoire, mixing funk and contemporary jazz with R&B classics and lots of original tunes by its members, hitting all the popular tempos and playing all-out whenever the music demands it.
The Forgotten Souls debuted in the Spring of 2000 and made a lot of fans during their introductory round of engagements in New Orleans clubs and dance halls. Working with producer Henry Petras of New Orleans Music Online, the band has quickly recorded and released three albums during its first year, garnering rave reviews in the local press and enjoying protracted airplay on WWOZ Radio.
The band's eponymous debut features four Forgotten Souls originals The First Half, the great new anthem Don't Leave Here Without It, a mournful Doin Time (4 Roddy), dedicated to Big Chief Roddy Lewis of the Black Eagles, and The Second Half, recorded live at the Howlin Wolf plus compositions by William Smith ( Dream On ), Revert Andrews ( Funky Nuts ), and Roderick Paulin ( Be Yourself ), the traditional spiritual Old Rugged Cross and Smokey Johnson's immortal It Ain t My Fault
The follow-up, Don t Forget Em, adds saxophonist Donald Harrison to the band and brings Big Chief Monk Boudreaux of the Golden Eagles into the Forgotten Souls to sing the title track (a moving new variation on the Let's Go Get Em format) and an especially soulful version of Indian Red. There's a bright new song by Kirk Joseph, Harrison, Stanton Moore and Henry Petras called Just Like That, salutes to Professor Longhair ( Big Chief ) and the Meters ( Cissy Strut ), and a trio of selections ( Snowball, a live Blackbird Special and Who Took the Happiness Out? ) associated with the Dirty Dozen.
Their latest release, Gone But Not Forgotten, pays tribute to traditional jazz with numbers like Paul Barbarin's Second Line and Bourbon Street Parade, Danny Barker's Palm Court Strut, such standards as Lady Be Good, Exactly Like You, St. Louis Blues, Smilin and Who's Sorry Now, an update of the Dirty Dozen's arrangement of Li l Liza Jane, a pair of spirituals ( Streets of the City and Gloryland ) and terrific originals by William Smith ( Creeper ) and Revert Andrews ( Ridin with Eldo, dedicated with a spoken introduction to his late lamented younger brother, L il Rascals snare drummer Eldridge Andrews).
With a start like this, the Forgotten Souls Brass Band can look forward to a long and productive musical life. The latest entry in the New Orleans brass band sweepstakes is no flash-in-the-pan affair, and it certainly seems apparent that listeners, dancers and second-liners will be enjoying the sounds of the Forgotten Souls for years to come. Enjoy!
Amsterdam
November 29, 2001
(c) 2001, 2006 John Sinclair. All Rights Reserved.
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