JOE LASTIE JR. – Preserving N.O. Music and All That Jazz
7th August 2017 · 0 Comments
By C.C. Campbell-Rock
Contributing Writer
As the 12th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina approaches, Joe Frank Lastie Jr. is ramping up his mission to preserve New Orleans’ traditional music, a.k.a, Jazz. Lastie, a master drummer, is a member of one of New Orleans’ beloved musical families, the Lasties, whose musical legacy includes original compositions and performances of New Orleans traditional music, rhythm & blues, and gospel music. Today, Lastie preserves the music and keeps his mission alive with his band, Joe Lastie’s New Orleans Sound.
Lastie was born in New Orleans, the birthplace of Jazz, America’s first indigenous music. His familial roots led him to not only love and play New Orleans’ sounds, but also to preserve the music for future generations.
JOE LASTIE JR.
“I’ve been on the road with the Preservation Hall Jazz Band for 27 years, my band plays at Preservation Hall and I’m a member of the Preservation Hall Foundation, which is dedicated to the education of music and outreach at schools and all over the world,” says Lastie.
While New Orleans is credited with being the birthplace of Jazz, most New Orleans musicians refer to the genre as “traditional music.” Known for creating New Orleans’ modern jazz, pianist and music professor Ellis Marsalis once said, “We don’t call it jazz, we call it traditional music.”
Lastie’s desire to preserve New Orleans’ traditional music comes at a critical time, when upcoming New Orleans musicians are fusing traditional and contemporary sounds; creating new genres of music like jazz-funk, jazz/r&b, jazz-rap, and other music forms.
“When people come to hear my band, Joe Lastie’s New Orleans Sound, they say ‘That’s the sound we’ve come here to hear,’” he says of the thousands of tourists who come to the music mecca of American music.
“When you hear that beat, New Orleans you’ll greet,” Lastie says laughing softy about his favorite song, “When the Saints Go Marching In.” “I love that song because we used to play that in church,” Lastie explains. The song is bittersweet for him because his uncle Walter “Popee” Lastie died while they played that song on Royal Street.
Lastie new release Jazz Corner of the World, an 11-track CD by Joe Lastie’s New Orleans Sound. “This CD is dedicated to the preservation of our own Jazz traditions,” Lastie explains. “I wanted to keep my music as traditional as possible.”
The CD features seminal New Orleans traditional music, including jazz, gospel, and Mardi Gras Indian chants. Among the songs are “Just A Closer Walk with Thee,” “What a Wonderful World,” and “When the Saints Go March In,” and a special tribute to his love for New Orleans, post- Hurricane Katrina, “New Orleans in Me.”
New Orleanians and many around the world remember where they were on August 29, 2005, the day Hurricane Katrina, a 100-year storm, broke levees, flooded the city, killed thousands, and created a flashpoint in humanity that will never be forgotten. Lastie was in Atlanta celebrating his birthday when Katrina hit. He lost a cousin and an uncle in the storm.
“The New Orleans in Me,” a Lastie original, features Big Chief David Peters Montana of the Washitaw Nation, a Mardi Gras Indian group that preserves the centuries-old union between Louisiana’s first nation tribes and Africans, who escaped slavery to live in safety with American’s indigenous people. The song is Lastie’s love letter to New Orleans and speaks to the survival of the city, in spite of Hurricane Katrina. “Twelve years gone and it’s a better day,” Lastie sings on “The New Orleans in Me” track.
“My beloved Lower 9 was gone. I was sad but I went through Hurricane Betsy in 1965. I was in the attic as a child but I survived Betsy,” says Lastie, a lifelong Lower 9 resident.
“It was always in my mind that we’ll come back after Katrina,” he continues. Two weeks after Hurricane Katrina, Preservation Hall reached out to Lastie in Atlanta and asked him to play in New York for a Preservation Hall Foundation fundraiser. After traveling back and forth to New Orleans, Lastie moved back home in 2007.
The Lastie family includes many well-known musicians who played several music genres, including Lastie’s uncles, drummer Walter “Popee” Lastie; David Lastie, Sr. saxophonist; Melvin Lastie, trumpeter, Betty Lastie Williams played organ and piano in the church; cousin Herlin Riley is a drummer, who performed with Wynton Marsalis for nearly two decades before forming his own band, cousin Arian Macklin, tuba player; and singer Jessie Hill, grandfather to James Andrews, trumpeter and Troy “Trombone Shorty” Andrews.
At age 7, Joe Lastie Jr. begin playing drums at the Israelite Spiritual Church. In 1969, Lastie and his parents moved to Long Island, New York. While others went to the local library to check out books, Lastie borrowed the albums of New Orleans’ greats, including the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, Louis Armstrong, Pete Fountain, Al Hirt, Allen Toussaint, and others. Later in life, he would play with those iconic musicians, including Louis Armstrong on a Preservation Hall recording where the band played along to a filmed performance by Armstrong. He also took drumming lessons from Clyde Harrison, a New York-based jazz drummer.
“There were doors open in New York (to advance musically) but I wanted my New Orleans experience. I wanted to be with the creators,” Lastie explains. Carrying only a brown paper bag; just before his senior year in high school, he returned to New Orleans and moved in with grandparents, Alice & Frank Lastie.
At Carver High School, Lastie studied music under Yvonne Bush. He recalls going to her house and playing jam sessions with Professor Longhair and his uncle Jessie Hill. He played at Tipitina’s nightclub with them. He also attended the Academy of Black Arts run by famed jazz pianist Willie Metcalf, who appeared in the movie Ray as the young pianist’s mentor.
This article originally published in the August 7, 2017 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
