B.B. King’s ‘Blues’ gets a home in the Big Easy
14th March 2016 · 0 Comments
By Della Hasselle
Contributing Writer
The late King of the Blues was honored in the French Quarter when a veritable who’s who of famous musicians, city officials and religious leaders gathered to celebrate the grand opening of New Orleans’ first B.B. King’s Blues Club.
The two-story club is to be located in the old Margaritaville, a Jimmy Buffet-themed restaurant on Decatur Street across from the French Market. On Wednesday, it was honored in typical New Orleans fashion as Deacon Ronald Guidry blessed the musician’s famous guitar, Lucille, at the St. Louis Cathedral.
From there, Lucille was led in a second-line procession throughout the French Quarter, which ended at a ribboncutting and party at the new club, complete with live music and a buffet of ribs, collard greens and jambalaya pasta.
Tommy Peters, president of Beale Street Blues Company and B.B. King’s Blues Club, said B.B. King had tried for 20 years to open one of his ventures in New Orleans, a “city built upon music.”
“I said where would you want to put another one? And he always said New Orleans, Peters recalled. “We hope we can be a small part of the fabric that’s already here.”
Peters emphasized the connection between Memphis and New Orleans, two cities connected by both the Mississippi River and a deep reverence for music. At the new club, he pointed to a photograph featuring B.B. King playing music with Allen Toussaint, New Orleans’ own revered musician, songwriter, arranger and record producer who proved to be an influential figure in R&B from the 1950s until he died last year.
“The connection between the River Cities, Memphis and NOLA is natural,” Peters said.
Tony Coleman, B.B. King’s former drummer of 30 years, and the music director of the B.B. King’s Blues Club in Nashville, was also on hand throughout the three-part ceremony, and held Lucille as she was blessed with holy water from the church in Jackson Square.
“It feels great. I can feel Mr. King’s presence and spirit,” Coleman said outside the church, while protecting the drops of holy water from being wiped off Lucille from adoring fans.
Coleman then cradled Lucille through the Quarter, at times lifting her high into the air as Mardi Gras Indians and dancers paraded around her, until he brought her up to the stage at the club.
There, Mark Romig, president and CEO of New Orleans Tourism Marketing Corporation and Councilmember Nadine Ramsey were among scores of audience members ready to celebrate. During a short ceremony, both leaders hailed the club’s potential benefits for local economy, and for potential jobs made available to some of the city’s 85,000 people who work in the hospitality industry.
“To honor someone who has such a major impact on blues in this country is exciting,” Ramsey said. “This is going to be a truly wonderful venue for music.”
Kyle Wedberg, the president and CEO of the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts, also praised B.B. King’s Blues Club for its collaboration with the school, pointing to students who attended the even and who faced opportunities to perform onstage.
“This is what this community, what NOCCA, is about. I stand in between the future and the legends, and in that space in between is that transition we have from generation of musician to generation of musician,” Wedberg said. “That’s what we look forward to.”
Audience members were most excited, however, about the presence of Steve Cropper, a famous musician and songwriter who Peters described as “one of the architects of Memphis sound.”
Best known as the guitarist of the Stax Records house band, Booker T. & the M.G.’s, as well as a later member of the Blues Brothers, Cropper’s career catapulted in 1961 with the hit song “Last Night,” a collaboration with frontman Booker T. Jones, drummer Al Jackson and bassist Donald “Duck” Dunn.
During the party, Cropper, who has been part of the B.B. King’s ventures for decades, promised to come down to New Orleans and play shows for the new club.
“I’ll make you dance a little bit and shake your booty,” Cropper said. “That’s what I do most.”
This article originally published in the March 14, 2016 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
