DaSlobTribute: New Orleans bids farewell to Batiste

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS -- Musicians in white shirts and black pants led a hearse carrying the body of clarinetist Alvin Batiste through the streets of New Orleans on Saturday, and hundreds of mourners attached themselves to the jazz funeral honoring one of the city's most revered musicians.

In the morning, crowds lined up to pay homage to the jazz pioneer, whose body was laid out in Gallier Hall, an elegant Greek Revival building in the heart of the financial district and former City Hall.

A jazz funeral complete with grand marshals twirling umbrellas and marchers then poured out into the street, where traffic backed up for blocks.

Batiste died May 6 shortly before he was due to perform on the last day of the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival with Harry Connick Jr. and Branford Marsalis.

Batiste, born in New Orleans in 1932, was considered one of the founders of the modern jazz scene in New Orleans.

He toured with Ray Charles, Billy Cobham and Cannonball Adderley, among many others. He also recorded with Branford Marsalis.

One Track Mind: Funkadelic "Maggot Brain" (1971)

by Pico

Next to Sly and the Family Stone and James Brown there might not be another act as influential to funk music than P-Funk, the shorthand name for George Clinton's twin ensembles Parliament (horns) and Funkadelic (no horns). In fact, they were cited in my last OTM as an influence to Jamiroquai, but they're likely to have directly or indirectly inspired most every funk-inclined outfit who followed them.

While One Nation Under a Groove from 1978 is often pimped as the high water mark for Funkadelic, I like the early stuff better. Not just because it's the more organic kind of funk with more rock thrown in, but it's got a lot more of Eddie Hazel in it.

Hazel was part of a group of talented guitarists from Duane Allman to Robin Trower who were tagged "the next Hendrix" in the wake of Jimi's death. Like those others, Eddie started with solid foundation in the blues, but injected a funk element to it; he might have been the first true funk guitarist. And nowhere was his wizardry on display better than on "Maggot Brain."

The title track that kicks off Funkadelic's 1971 classic third album begins with one of Clinton's characteristic apocalyptic voice declaring that "Mother Earth is pregnant for the third time, for y'all have knocked her up," but after about thirty seconds of his proclamations, he gives way to Hazel.

The music that follows is nothing more than a four-chord blues and there's the most minimal of backup instrumentation: drums, bass, and a barely-noticeable rhythm guitar---and all low in the mix. Clinton originally planned for more, but reportedly opted to give Hazel as much space as possible. But his most important move to enhance the song is the instructions he gave Hazel: "play like your momma had just died."

The next nine and a half minutes is a showcase for some of the most soulful, lonely, inspired psychedelic electric guitar playing ever laid to wax. It may not be so gently, but his guitar weeps. This tour de force might rank as the all time best solo for only a few, but as a eulogy expressed on a guitar, it's unsurpassed.

Barely 21 at the time he crafted his signature performance, Hazel seemed to be poised for greater heights. But like Hendrix, drug abuse cut him off at the pass. He did live on for another 21 years but couldn't stick in Clinton's band long enough to make much of an impact anymore; Clinton was forced to use other guitarists full time, although Hazel performed and even recorded again with the band here and there.

But his mark was already made, and what a mark it was. It's hard to imagine what Hazel might have coaxed out of his axe that day had his momma died for real.

Listen: Funkadelic "Maggot Brain"

Purchase: Funkadelic Maggot Brain



"One Track Mind" is a more-or-less weekly drool over a single song selected on a whim and a short thesis on why you should be drooling over it, too.

Robin Eubanks & EB3, Live, Vol. 1 (2007)

by Pico

Since the mid-sixties, jazz musicians have sought to combine electronic instruments with jazz to create something new and fresh sounding. The most obvious result of this mix is called fusion, but others have managed to do it taking different approaches that uses these instruments to actually expand their musicianship, instead of watering it down. The latest to take such an alternative approach to combining jazz and technology is trombonist Robin Eubanks.

I might as well get it out of the way right now and note that Robin Eubanks is the older brother of The Tonight Show's guitarist and bandleader Kevin Eubanks. A highly advanced trombonist of the J.J. Johnson variety (which 'bone player worth his salt isn't?), he's played in bands led by Sun Ra, Jimmy McGriff and McCoy Tyner.

He's been putting out records on and off under his own name since the late eighties, but my own exposure to his work came primarily from his extensive tenure as a member of The Dave Holland Quintet. I've enjoyed his contributions to Holland's band so much for so long, I've gotten to view Kevin as that guy who is Robin's brother, not the other way around. (Tangent Alert: Kevin, incidentally, had guested on a Holland release, Extensions, years before Robin joined the band, and acquitted himself quite nicely on it.)

After a six year layoff from recording as a leader, Eubanks assembled a most unusual trio consisting of fellow Philadelphia native Orrin Evans on keyboards and Kenwood Dennard on drums.

Evans was a pianist in the Mingus Big Band but also quite familiar with electronic keyboards and how to get grooves, textures and melodies from it. Dennard has played for Dizzy Gillespie, Jaco Pastorius and Maceo Parker, so you know the guy can both swing and groove with the best of them.

But what makes this getup so unusual is not just being a trombone-led trio; all of these guys supplement their main instruments with more high-tech ones to give the band a bigger sound than what is normally suggested by a trio. Eubanks plays trombone, of course, but he sometimes adds percussion pads and loops both. Other times he's playing a pretty wigged-out sounding electric trombone. And the bass? It's a keyboard bass supplied by either Evans or Dennard. Yes, that's right; Dennard is playing the synth bass while drumming.

Eubanks calls the whole concept "1 + 1 + 1 = 4, and more." But by having no more than three players do all the work, Eubanks gets a leaner, meaner group that is better able to integrate together and glide through the tricky change-ups with greater ease. Adding to the freshness and spontaneity, the whole CD we're discussing here was recorded live. No later overdubs or other studio trickery that might have diluted the energy and integrity of their music. They're putting it all out on the line.

As you can imagine, such a setting must be seen as well as heard, and Eubanks recognized that as well. Which is why the CD comes with a DVD showing the actual concert footage for five of the CD's nine tracks. It is a treat to behold.

The music itself oftentimes recalls the Holland Quintet with its odd meters, tight interplay, complex-but-melodic song structures, and of course, the trombone. But Eubanks brings in additional influences beyond bop, which I'll expound on in a minute.

The live set kicks off with just Eubanks and his trombone, providing some sharp soloing for a minute before settling into a line that he repeats. With the subtle flick of a foot pedal, that line is looped in and Robin plays the same line as a different note of the same chord and loops that as well, creating a two-man trombone chart. He adds the third line "live" as the improvision line, or sometimes changes the chord. Then he approaches the percussion pad and locks in some of the thwacking he does there in three layers.

Each layer is very simple and anyone could do it, but it take some imagination to put together the simple pieces into something more substantial and meaningful (and downright funky). To be honest, I didn't really care for what sounded like Eighties-ish programmed Sonar drums when I first heard it, but watching him put it together in a live setting earned my appreciation of what he was trying to accomplish.

Eubanks gets back on trombone and rides on his repeating trombone chart some more before abruptly cutting off all the loops and ends the piece just as he started: solo trombone.

That piece, "Me, Myself and I," serves as an extended introduction and the ending unaccompanied trombone ends as a segue into the next selection, "Mojo Jojo," where the remaining two players of the band join in. This is a uptempo piece with an unusual beat and some nifty chord changes, and features some melodic keyboard playing from Evans. But this is Dennard's turn to shine.

What sounds to the mere listener as a competently funky bass player is in reality the drummer playing keyboard bass with his left hand while locking down the groove with his remaining three limbs. At one point he's kicking out a drum solo while still maintaining the bass line, until Evans relieves him of bass duties mid-solo so we can see what Dennard can do on the kit when he's totally freed up.

"Solo Latin" might be Eubanks' most amazing track of this collection. As in "Me, Myself", it's just him armed with a trombone, percussion pad and loops. He starts on the pad to layer in Cuban-style rhythms (about 4 or 5 layers deep), looping in each layer one at a time until it sounds like a large percussion session is playing.

Once that part is set up, Eubanks switches over to his horn and layers in a phrase to create a front line of trombones, over which he solos on top. At some point, his "live" trombone sounds duplexed, creating an even bigger sound. The song has a second, more somber section, which he loops together three different takes on the same phrase, and solos on top of that (one of the things I love about the trombone is that it can emit such a lonely, bluesy sound).

And it's all done by one man. Truly incredible stuff.

During the introduction for "Blues For Jimi Hendrix", Robin talks about growing up around Kevin, the guitar playing brother, and digging all those guitar-based records with him but only having a trombone to play along with. But technology finally allows the older brother to fulfill his dream; the straight bluesy rock jam of this song features Eubanks on an electrified trombone made to sound a lot like a wah-wah guitar. It's a well-timed break from all the more cerebral songs of the gig.

The final song featured on the DVD, "X-Base," ventures even further into rock territory than the Hendrix tribute, and it's the "jam" track of the set. It starts with a mean bass/drum beat, with Evans and Eubanks throwing in some knarly, dissonant lines in unison before the tempo quickens and Eubanks launches into some fiery bop improvising.

Soon afterwards, he's trading fours with Evans while adding some heavy metal effects to his horn.

And there are still four more tracks on the CD. I won't delve much into those, as the DVD selections covered above should alraedy give you a nice flavor for the CD. But I will say that "Indo" has pretty, soulful melody, while "House Of Jade" is the only non-original--from Wayne Shorter's Juju--and is nothing like you've heard it before.

Records such as this live set from Robin Eubanks and EB3 reinforces my faith in jazz as a living, evolving music form well into the 21st century. Jazz has always been about moving forward and taking chances doing so. Satchmo did it; so did Ellington, Parker and Davis. In taking his cue from those prominent figures, Eubanks is merely following in the real jazz tradition. I can't wait for Volume Two.


Purchase: Robin Eubanks & EB3 - Live, Vol. 1

John Mellencamp, "Freedom's Road" (2007)

NICK DERISO: I understand what John Mellencamp was thinking. He options "Our Country" from this album to Chevrolet, knowing that new songs by mid-career guys don't get much airplay these days.

Chevy reruns the thing every time they play football on TV. All of a sudden, Mellencamp has a hit -- "Freedom's Road" peaked at No. 5, selling 56,000 CDs in its first week to become his highest charting release since "Scarecrow" went to No. 2 -- but Mellencamp also has a problem.

While there's plenty of his rural populism here, the tenor of this record has more to do with that earlier smash hit from the fall of '85 than with the commercial's flag-waving jingoism. The marketing screwed up the message.

See, a rangy activism actually threads through "Freedom's Road," which takes a welcome moment to ruminate on the issues of forgiveness and tolerance.

For instance, on this album's best cut, "Someday," Mellencamp references the verse "blessed are the peacemakers" from the Book of Matthew: "Good fortune will come to those who create peace," Mellencamp surmises, "for those are the ones that will walk in heaven ... someday, someday."

Such weighty themes can't be hinted at in between voice overs detailing the Z71 off-road package and GM's patented Vortec V8 engine.

Mellencamp, with his now-familiar passion and accessibility, recognizes that this is a complicated world, and if he doesn't quite solve its mysteries, at least he is honest enough to admit that -- and to give it a try.

He wants to get there by getting along, joining a pitched battle against (among other things) the veiled racism of the post-Jim Crow landscape and the trumped-up reasons for sending young people into faraway conflict: "You can drop your bombs, you can beat the people senseless, that won't get you anywhere," Mellencamp sings on the title track. "Hide your agenda behind public consensus and say that this world just ain't fair. ... You'll never fool us with all your lying and cheating."

He also offers searing political commentary on "Rodeo Clown," a hidden bonus track.

That's not to say that Mellencamp doesn't sometimes struggle to find purchase on the high ground that he's always sought to share with artists like Guthrie, Dylan and Springsteen. Still, he has never sounded more comfortable in relating the uncertainties that exist inside the reliable traditions of middle America.

Too, Mellencamp's garage-band associates display a gritty toughness that lends instant, urgent credibility to the proceedings.

They give his first original songs since 2001's transitional, oddly unaffecting "Cuttin' Heads" a feel more in keeping with Mellencamp's often brutally honest '03 blues tribute "Trouble No More," providing an infrastructure that gives these tunes real heft.

That's best experienced in "Ghost Towns Along the Highway," one of 10 tunes Mellencamp wrote and produced for this album. It has an open, echoing stillness inside an insistent beat that matches this oh-so lonely lyric: "Our love keeps on movin', to the nearest faraway place ..."

"Our Country," in this context, sounds less like an anthem and more like a moment of celebration after a lament -- like that moment when a jazz funeral goes from sad and solemn to resolutely joyous in the face of such grief.

"Small Town" held the same position as part of "Scarecrow" back in the mid-1980s. Both songs, situated as they are on records with larger, darker concerns, crash through their own preconceived notions.

In fact, not much about "Freedom's Road" is what you think it will be. Mellencamp improves upon the musical achievements of earlier triumphs like "Lonesome Jubilee" and "Big Daddy" -- and, to me, bests those two CDs because (as with "Scarecrow") he is willing to be far more emotionally honest with a lyric.

It takes some time to discover that, and he doesn't always completely succeed. But Mellencamp hasn't, in more than two decades, attempted a better record.

One Track Mind: Jamiroquai, "Just Another Story" (1994)

by Pico

When I was trying to come up with a list of guilty pleasures for my recent confession piece, there were a few more entries I considered adding. But in the end, these acts had just a bit too much integrity in their music to justify such a dubious distinction. One of those is that retro jazz-funk-pop outfit Jamiroquai.

You can point to some, scratch that--most--of their songs and level the claim that they're just ripping off Stevie Wonder and the white jumpsuited Bee Gees. And yeah, with frontman Jason Kay's similarly soulful vocals, Wonder does seem to provide the template for much of his material. But when you're aping classic era Stevie better then Stevie himself did on the disappointing A Time To Love and then throwing in classic Earth, Wind & Fire, Funkadelic, Roy Ayers and early Bobby Caldwell for good measure, is that such a bad thing? I tend to think not.

And while Britain's answer to Lenny Kravitz is almost always mining a Moog'ed groove, Jay Kay could often come up with something interesting in the process. Take "Just Another Story" from 1994's Return Of The Space Cowboy, for instance.

"Just Another Story" might best be described as "prog funk". It's jammin', alright, but it has three movements, lasting nearly nine minutes. The first part has a perky bass and electric piano grooving irresistibly in the pocket mid-tempo and J.K. enters to sing the first verses before the intro section makes way for an even funkier middle section, keyed by a catchy bass/Rhodes riff joined in by drums and some decidedly more contemporary hip-hop scratching---the only hint that this isn't 1975. It's at that point where Kay launches into the extended second verse of the song and then repeats it.

And what is this song's about? A bit of a departure from Jay Kay's usual themes of love, environmental concerns and dancing his booty off, "Just Another Story" is about vigilantism gone too far against kids who deal drugs. It's widely thought that this is somewhat autobiographical, as Jason was at one time living on the streets as a petty criminal:

Nobody make a move
This kid's got you covered,
He was just seventeen
Trying to get on like his dead brother.

The third section, or "outro," is all instrumental and is the same bass riff at a higher key introduces the horn section and a lively flute solo as the brass provides support toward a somewhat climatic, abrupt ending.

Jason Kay's songs have hooks and rhythms galore, but it usually takes more than that to hold my attention for more than a few listens. And sometimes, he goes that extra mile with the arrangement, structure and nuances that elevates his songs beyond the ordinary. Such distinctions make "Just Another Story" not just another dance tune.


Listen: Jamiroquai "Just Another Story"

Purchase: Jamiroquai - The Return of the Space Cowboy


"One Track Mind" is a more-or-less weekly drool over a single song selected on a whim and a short thesis on why you should be drooling over it, too.

George Gershwin, "Gershwin Performs Gershwin: Rare Recordings" (1931-35)

NICK DERISO: Dug up from some old dusty box in brother Ira's attic, this scratchy, other-worldly epiphany issued by BMG is remarkable for its ethereal emotion, ageless grace and surprising reliance on (gasp!) commercialism to push art.

The first 12 tracks are acetates from "Music by Gershwin," 15-minute radio programs recorded in 1934 to help underwrite George Gershwin's signature folk opera "Porgy and Bess." Highlights include Gershwin stiff-fingering the piano for nearly half a minute, only to be stopped by the emcee, who does a plug for Feen-A-Mint, the chewable laxative. ("A laxative does its work most naturally and effectively when it's taken in the form in which it can be chewed," he says.)

That's followed fast and furious by heavenly variations of "I Got Rhythm," an old favorite gussied up with an upside-down scale, and plunked-down notes. The band is hushed, then swirling.

Side two begins by digging deeper, back to 1931 and '32. And the old radio recordings are, incredibly, better preserved. We find George playful and pensive. The Fleishmann Hour show is just that: A show. Gershwin - who died 70 years ago this July 11 - takes a long solo bow, and never lets his rear end hit the stool again.

The rest of this second act is filled with a couple mid-30s bootlegs of "Second Rhapsody" and "Porgy and Bess" rehearsals, maybe the most decrepit you've read of -- but by no means elderly.

Gershwin used these recordings as a rough draft to embellish on and the singers used them for practice runs, but the transcriptions had never been played before. Several original cast members appear, and Gershwin conducts his own work - a rarity on any recording.

A simply breathtaking find.

Forgotten series: Various artists, "Coahoma the Blues" (1990)

NICK DERISO: A trip through the Mississippi Delta this week had me thinking about the old Rooster Blues Records label.

Located from 1988-98 inside the Delta Record Mart on Sunflower Avenue in Clarksdale, Rooser Blues releases can still be found in a riverboat-shaped downtown building called Dela's Stackhouse.

"Coahoma the Blues" (named after the county where Clarksdale is located) was proprietor Jim O'Neal's signature effort from that time. A cassette-only joy featuring 13 local upstart blues dudes, it was recorded with an ear for the live, jooky feel.

Things begin as they should, with clackety, on-the-corner acoustic sides by Wade Walton and those underappreciated geniuses Sam Carr and Frank Frost.

As with most non-electric blues, they offer up their treasures in an offhanded, deceptively thread-bare fashion. Repeated listens, however, reveal not just the depth of emotion, but a steady prowess in tunes that move from country to cutting edge.

Things don't sit still for long. "Gonna Make You Cry," Willie "Rip" Butler's rollicking R&B number, has a pleasant Stax-Volt feel. His encore song, "Lonely (Lonesome) for a Dime," is made just that much better with the addition of some honking background horns.

It's remarkable to me now that Butler -- who so accurately stirs in the old and the new, updating and underscoring what came before -- never became widely known. His vocal delivery, from full-throated yowl to the sweet croon, remains a wonder.

Then you have Wesley "Mississippi Junebug" Jefferson, a dark and powerful artist more inclined to heavy strums and heavier phrasing. It's like Jimmy Reed with a frog in his throat.

Big Jack Johnson's serrated solos on "Baby, Please Don't Go" balance the cat-gut plucking convulations of Walton's take on "Leaving 4th Street" -- which then offset James "Super Chikan" Johnson's lazy, loping "Big Bad Jimmy." (And yes, that's the way James spells 'chicken.')

"Coahoma the Blues" is, then, both groovy and challenging. The music dodges and moves, sniffs out a trail then slip-knots on a verse. Along the way, O'Neal clearly illustrates that new blues voices -- even in the Delta, the left ventricle of blues mythology -- still exist.

(This cassette was a fundraiser for the then-new Delta Blues Museum, still located at 411 Delta Ave., Clarksdale, Miss., 38614. Go to www.deltabluesmuseum.org. O'Neal, a founding editor of Living Blues Magazine, now runs Stackhouse Records -- whose first release was "Keep It to Yourself: Arkansas Blues, Vol. I: Solo Performances," originally issued on Rooster Blues in 1983.)