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Sounds of New Orleans: WWOZ on CD-Volume 1 |
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New Orleans
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Wednesday, 18 January 2006 18:59 |
WWOZ on CD: The Sounds Of New Orleans
Recorded 'Live' at the 1993 New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival
By John Sinclair
Welcome to the wonderful musical world of WWOZ Radio New Orleans, a wildly improbable 24-hour-a-day media outlet for the sounds of the Crescent City and the music and culture of the surrounding region.
Established in 1980 by a pair of brothers from Texas, Walter and Jerry Brock, WWOZ has grown from its most humble origins to serve a steadily increasing listenership with the full spectrum of jazz and heritage music: blues, gospel, New Orleans R&B, cajun music and zydeco, reggae, world music, traditional and modern jazz.
Now licensed to the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Foundation, WWOZ Radio beams out at 90.7 FM from Louis Armstrong Park in the Treme Musical District and boasts a special commitment to the music, both historic and contemporary, of the surrounding community.
WWOZ is where our recording and performing artists invariably bring their new CDs and tapes to be played or come on the air themselves to talk about their life's work or their upcoming engagements.
But why am I telling you? If you've got this CD in your hands, you're already bound to be a listener to WWOZ, since this record is a limited edition pressing made especially for Friends of WWOZ who have committed their pledges of support to our Spring 1994 fund drive. There is no commercial edition of this set in sight, so the holder is in possession of one of only 500 copies of this special collection of "live" music from the 1993 New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival.
JazzFest '93 was a very special occasion for WWOZ: for the first time the station was able to broadcast the Festival 'live' from the Fairgrounds from start to finish. Our live broadcast mixed music from several stages with "ringside" coverage of the passing spectacle, including artist interviews, impromptu on-mike performances by visiting musicians and singers, conversations with passers-by, appearances by many of the station's 75 volunteer program producers, and the unmistakable sounds of the Social Aid & Pleasure Clubs and their brass bands second-lining by the WWOZ Broadcast Booth.
The JazzFest broadcast pushed the station's handful of full-time staff members to every possible limit, but their krewe of volunteers of every description came through in every important respect and the show went on with great aplomb, sending out the sounds of JazzFest to anyone in the Greater New Orleans Area in the proximity of an FM receiver.
What's even better, WWOZ's undauntable team of engineers and sound technicians managed to get large segments of this music down on tape--some 36 hours of music in performance all told, recorded direct to Digital Audio Tape by Mark Bingham and preserved for our edification and delight.
The music presented on this disk was first selected to be used in a special two-hour radio program, the WWOZ Mardi Gras Special, produced by Tim Green and this writer to be distributed nationally during the summer of 1994. Then our general manager and Big Chief, David Freedman, came up with the brilliant idea of making a limited edition CD to be given away as a premium in the station's spring fund drive.
Now it stands by itself as a representative sample of WWOZ's regular broadcast programming--what we call The Sounds of New Orleans. Modern brass band funk on a Jelly Roll Morton theme by the Dirty Dozen Brass Band, swinging contemporary vocal jazz by Ms. Germaine Bazzle with the Alvin 'Red' Tyler Quartet, a capella gospel by First Revolution (featuring WWOZ "Gospel Train" host Bro. Larry Bell), second-line bebop by Charles Neville & Diversity, down-in-the-alley zydeco by new star Beau Jocque & the Zydeco Hi-Rollers, deep Mississippi blues by Robert Lowery & Virgil Thrasher, the Professor-Longhair-plays-Hank-Williams sound of John Mooney & Bluesiana, jazz improvisation on a popular R&B theme by the Fred Kemp Quintet, and a Mardi Gras Indian chant by Big Chief Donald Harrison Sr. and the Guardians of the Flame combine here to draw a brilliant audio portrait of our fiercely idiosyncratic radio programming.
I think I can speak for the entire WWOZ family when I say: thanks for your support, welcome to our ever-growing membership, and we hope you enjoy listening to this music as much as we enjoy playing it for you over the airwaves. And, as always, our special thanks to the musicians of the Crescent City and environs for making it all possible.
Let this be the first of many such special products as we all continue to grow together in the music.
--New Orleans
March 1994
WWOZ ON CD: THE SOUNDS OF NEW ORLEANS
Recorded 'Live' at the 1993 New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival
1 Dirty Dozen Brass Band: "Freakish" (6:30)
2 Germaine Bazzle with the Red Tyler Quartet: "Secret Love" (8:54)
3 First Revolution Singers: "He Really Cares" (2:04)
4 Charles Neville & Diversity: "Blue Monk" (6:03)
5 Beau Jocque & the Zydeco Hi-Rollers: "Beau's Mardi Gras" (2:45)
6 Robert Lowery & Virgil Thrashe: "Baby Please Don't Go (4:14)
7 John Mooney & Bluesiana: "Jambalaya" (5:20)
8 Fred Kemp Quintet: "It Ain't My Fault" (11:43)
9 Guardians of the Flame: "My Gang Is Leaving Now" (1:38)
Produced by Mark Bingham & John Sinclair
for WWOZ Radio New Orleans
Executive Producer: David Freedman
Recorded by Mark Bingham at the 1993 New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival
Except: Charles Neville & Diversity recorded by Mike Montero
First Revolution Gospel Singers recorded at the WWOZ Broadcast Booth by John Sinclair, Damond Jacob and Michael Kline
Assistant Engineers: Tim Stambaugh, Portia Williams, David Kunian, Manny Lander, William Johnson and Athena Kerry
Technical Engineers: Tony Guillory, Ken Devine, and Peter Trosclair
Remote Facility, Edit & Post-Production: The Boiler Room, New Orleans
(c) 1994, 2006 John Sinclair. All Rights Reserved.
3.1.6119 |
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