Remembering the Legacy of Danny Barker and celebrating the brilliant Germaine Bazzle

7th January 2019   ·   0 Comments

By Geraldine Wyckoff
Contributing Writer

Anybody who had the privilege of meeting guitarist, banjoist, composer, vocalist, author and raconteur Danny Barker can tell you he was not only a talented musician but a special man. Fortunately, there are those of us who shared his space as he told his often hilarious stories and luckier still are the musicians who came up under his insightful visions with the Fairview Baptist Church Brass Band and eventually joined him on bandstands across the city. Some of those “privileged characters” will be on hand to perform and speak at the 5th annual Danny Barker Banjo and Guitar Festival that is being held at various locations from Tuesday, January 8 through Sunday, January 13.

It’s also auspicious that Barker, who passed away on March 13, 1994 at the age of 85, kept his pen busy not only composing songs, like the hit “Don’t You Feel My Leg” that his beautiful and talented wife, Blue Lu Barker, sang but also by authoring several books including his brilliant autobiography “A Life in Jazz” that was published in 1986 and again in 2016. Because Barker wrote in the first person, his personality and humor shine through the pages that gives his story a certain intimacy especially as he introduces characters that he met along the paths of his life. He animatedly wrote, usually in script on pads filled through the decades, much like how he spoke.

Barker, an observer of human nature, told his tales succinctly and intelligently with flashes of political statements wrapped in humor and wit. The narrative tells of discrimination against African Americans and how they overcame the many obstacles it imposed on their lives and careers. The quick-witted Barker often employed humor to get around tight spots. Once he was asked whether it was dangerous for a young Black boy to be walking around the French Quarter. His answer was: “No, I just carried a watermelon and everybody thought I was tame.” That quote is typical Barker: politically telling yet sure to get a laugh.

To have read Barker’s book before or after attending any of the festival’s events would certainly bring greater insight into the experience.

The fest’s schedule, which primarily centers at the New Orleans Jazz Museum at the Old U.S. Mint, includes by admission performances at venues around the city, free clinics at schools and a second line that stops at Barker’s childhood home on Chartres Street in the French Quarter. For more information, go to www.dannybarkerfestival.com.

Germaine Bazzle Reunites with Ellis Marsalis Again

To kick off a series that celebrates this city’s talented women vocalists dubbed “Now She Sings Songbirds of New Orleans,” the Ellis Marsalis Center for Music presents Germaine Bazzle on Tuesday, January 8. Notably, the New Orleans First Lady of Jazz will be accompanied by the Center’s namesake, her long-time associate and friend, pianist Ellis Marsalis. Bazzle began her formal musical training at age 12 when her mother enrolled her in the Xavier Junior School of Music located on the Xavier University campus. “That’s where I met Ellis Marsalis and {bassist} Richard Payne,” Bazzle once remembered.

Through the decades, the two master musicians have played at now-defunct jazz institutions like N. Rampart Street’s Lu & Charlie’s and Magazine Street’s Tyler’s Beer Garden, though in more recent times they’ve been headliners leading their own bands. In late December, much appropriate ado was made of the two reuniting for a performance with the Lula Elzy New Orleans Dance Theatre in the Jefferson Parish Arts Center.

Yet, here we have them right in New Orleans’ upper Ninth Ward for a show with the admission of an unbelievably low $3 (reserved seating $25) that begins at the very accessible hour of 6:30 p.m. The Ellis Marsalis Quintet, that plays every Friday night at Snug Harbor, will be in the house with saxophonist Dereck Douget, bassist Jason Stewart, drummer Gerald Watkins and trumpeter Ashlin Parker.

It has often been said that Bazzle, who began her musical journey playing piano and then bass, could have furthered her career as a world renowned jazz vocalist – she has the chops. Instead, she chose to stay in New Orleans and teach.

“Teaching was what I was supposed to do – the (music) gigs are what I could do,” she’s emphatically explained. “As far as I was concerned, I had the best of both worlds.”

When Bazzle steps on a stage to sing, she doesn’t simply front a band but becomes an instrumental element in its interactions. As a highly educated musician she boasts a deep understanding of the music’s fundamentals of melody, harmony and rhythm. The members in any given combo, many of whom she’s performed with for decades, know and trust her instincts.

Germaine Bazzle and Ellis Marsalis are contemporaries who have spent and shared their lives in music both as jazz artists and educators. They are both hugely talented and “big-eared” musicians who know the importance and joy of swinging. For these two, the melody is the heart, improvising is its unique beat. Together it’s almost as if one can listen to them listening to each other. Tuesday is sure to be a special night.

This article originally published in the January 7, 2019 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.