A ‘Blues and BBQ’ Fest, New Orleans-style

10th October 2011   ·   0 Comments

By Geraldine Wyckoff
Contributing Writer

Blues and barbeque both boast a myriad of flavors. Cities and regions of the country all celebrate their particular take on how it’s done right. The musicians from the hill country of Mississippi play their blues with straight-ahead drive — no detours there. Many Texan barbeque connoisseurs swear by the dry rub method of preparing ribs. This year’s Cres­cent City Blues & BBQ Festival, held at Lafayette Square on Frid­ay, October 14, through Sun­day, Oct­ober 16, offers a taste of smokin’ music and grillin’ from folks in the know.

By the way, in case anyone confuses this festival with the many others that have been taking place at Lafayette Square, the Blues & BBQ event is the one distinguished by the phrase, “Okay, turn around!” What that means is that immediately following a performance on one of two stages — the St. Charles Avenue or the Camp Street bandstand — the other one kicks in. No waiting around — genius.

The Friday evening shows, which are a new addition to the fest, bow down to the uniqueness of New Or­leans’ approach to the blues. Piano and vocal master Henry Butler opens the free, three-day festivities at 5:30 p.m. followed by the always-intriguing and soulful guitar­ist/vocalist Walter “Wolfman” Washington. Can’t ask for much more than that as representing what the Big Easy’s blues is all about.

Butler, who now shares time between New York, Colorado and his hometown of New Orleans, stands as a good introduction to the festival as he has and does play any style of blues on the planet and beyond. “I do all of it that I’ve heard,” says the pianist, “boogie woogie, stride-style blues, blues ballads, two or three different kinds of shuffles, jump blues, country blues. I don’t think I’ve missed playing any style of blues.”

So what differentiates the blues originating here from that laid down by musicians from other parts of the country?

“One thing I say about New Orleans music and New Orleans blues is that it’s got more rhythm and more syncopation in it,” Butler states. “There are people who say ‘blues’ and ‘rhythm and blues’ but especially with New Orleans music I like to say ‘rhythm in blues.’

“New Orleans allowed the African influence to take a greater hold on its music,” he explains. “That’s partly based on the festivals (gatherings) that didn’t end in Place Congo (Congo Square) until some people say in the mid-1880s. It wasn’t very long after that that small ensembles — some people called jass — started.

Butler points out that there wasn’t much separation between the African music heard in Congo Square and the development of jazz and other musics influenced by the rhythms of the African continent.

“I certainly think that was one of the benefits of having a long-lasting festival like that,” says Butler of the continuation of African traditions such as drumming, singing and dancing that uniquely occurred in New Orleans.

“You have such a rich history of all kinds of music taking place in New Orleans that it’s no wonder that the culture, despite what the politicians have done and are still doing, sustained itself.”

Though Butler and Wolfman, with whom he will share Friday night at the Blues & BBQ Fest, play different instruments and deliver their music with different instrumental configurations, he understands that they utilize the same rhythmic devices. “We both come from a lot of the same musical background,” Butler notes. “Walter has horns and they’re doing a lot of things you might not hear horns doing in a Chicago blues band. The rhythm section creates a different foundation in New Orleans blues than might be created in Chicago, Oakland or Kansas City type of blues.”

Though there’s plenty of blues played daily in New Orleans, it’s really not considered as having a blues scene. “People don’t think of New Orleans music as pure blues although the blues form is always there. They see New Orleans as a little bit beyond blues because it probably is. New Orleans musicians like Fess, Champion Jack Dupree, Tuts Washington, Huey “Piano” Smith, Allen Toussaint and James Booker all understood and took rhythms from the Caribbean and, indirectly, rhythms from Africa and used them in their music.”

The different shades of blues will be evidenced this coming weekend from a wide variety of sources, including the soul style of Texan Mel Waiters, whose “Hit It & Quit It” caught the attention of fans of the smoother style. He closes the Camp Street Stage at 5:45 on Saturday. That smaller of the two venues invites the country style aboard at 1:15 p.m. that day with acoustic guitarist/singer Jimmy “Duck” Holmes, who is also the owner of one of the oldest juke joints in Mississippi, The Blue Front Cafe, which his parents opened in 1948.

Another side of the genre is presented with the “sacred steel” sound of the Campbell Brothers coming on, appropriately, on Sunday at 4:30 followed by vocalist Bettye LaVette who closes out the festival on the big stage from 6:45 until 8 p.m. Fans of soul music tinged with blues and even country know LaVette, who grew up in Detroit and garnered her first hit at age 16 with “My Man – He’s a Lovin’ Man.” She’s been crankin’ them out ever since including on notable tunes from labels like Motown and Atlantic. She’s a don’t miss of the fest.

For the complete music schedule and more information on the Crescent City Blues & BBQ Festival go to www.jazzand­heri­tage.org/blues-fest.

This article was originally published in the October 10, 2011 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper