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Milton Batiste & the Magnificent Sevenths: Bourbon Street Blues |
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Tuesday, 24 January 2006 01:49 |
Bourbon Street Blues
Milton Batiste & the Magnificent Sevenths
Featuring "Big" Al Carson
Mardi Gras Records
By John Sinclair
Bourbon Street between Iberville down to St. Ann is something else. Not so much an entertainment strip as a rollicking carnival midway designed for tourists to debauch themselves in a kind of ratty Disneyland setting operated by weirdos and hustlers of every description, Bourbon Street is perhaps distinguished only by its several music spots offering a nightly variety of blues, R&B, traditional jazz, and straight-out commercial pop.
In fact, the music starts in the afternoon at a number of these joints and continues until the wee hours of the morning, with plenty of blues to be heard in its many incarnations by great performers like Willie Lockett & the Blues Krewe, Gary Brown & Feelings, Bryan Lee & His Jump Street 5, organist Marc Adams, the Rockin' Jake Band, Ironing Board Sam, J. Monque'D and others.
Walk down Bourbon Street just as things get to jumping and you'll hear music blasting out from the bars and nightspots like nowhere else--everything from Motown hits to Billie Holiday, Duke Ellington to Tina Turner, the latest hits to the oldest of blues and jazz standards. The works of blues giants like Freddie King, Smiley Lewis, Albert King, Ray Charles, B.B. King, even Bessie Smith and Lonnie Johnson may be heard all dressed up in contemporary garb and played as if they'd been thought up on the way to the gig.
Milton Batiste & the Magnificent Sevenths have turned their musical attention to this portion of the traditional New Orleans repertoire for their new Mardi Gras Records album, paying their respects to some of the popular blues styles and timeless tunes that have entertained so many people on Bourbon Street--and all over the world--for so many years.
Vocalist Big Al Carson is in the spotlight all the way, leading the Magnificent Sevenths through a 12-course musical feast that features early blues classics like "Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out" and "St. James Infirmary," and swing-era favorites "Things Ain't What They Used to Be" and "God Bless' the Child". He rocks the Ray Charles hit "I Got a Woman" and rolls Memphis Slim's "Every Day I Have the Blues" in grand fashion.
The lead-off cut, "Watermelon Man," sets a nice pace, treating the Herbie Hancock composition that's become a blues standard to a great set of lyrics and Big Al's rollicking delivery. Modern blues hits get a big play too, as the fellows salute Albert King with "Born Under a Bad Sign" and Freddy King with "Big Legged Woman." And for blues ballads there's the well-known "Georgia" and the obscure Smiley Lewis/Dave Bartholomew gem, "I Want To Be With Her."
The band swings along on the genuine New Orleans rhythms laid down by drummer Eneal Wimberly, bassist Harold Scott, guitarists Mario Tio and Harry Sterling and conga man Ken "Afro" Williams, who gets the lead vocal on "Trouble In Mind." Pianist Rickie Monie sparkles throughout, sharing the solo spotlight with leader Milton Batiste on trumpet, the great Fred Kemp on tenor sax, and Dirty Dozen stalwart Roger Lewis on baritone saxophone.
So make your trip to Bourbon Street complete with this musical momento from Milton Batiste and the Magnificent Sevenths. Take home the sounds of Big Al Carson and the band and let them walk you down the Street of Sin again and again to your heart's content, wherever you are.
--New Orleans
January 1997
(c) 1997, 2006 John Sinclair. All Rights Reserved.
3.1.6115 |
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