Preserving The House Of A Pioneering Musician — Who We Will Never Hear
On a sunny Thursday afternoon in May, the corner of First Street and LaSalle in New Orleans' Central City neighborhood was lively. Kids tooled around on bikes and grown-up neighbors danced to the sounds of DJ Jubilee and Al Green, spun onstage by DJ Mannie Fresh, the producer whose exceptional skills put Cash Money Records on the map back in the '90s. The party was hosted by PJ Morton — a native New Orleanian and the keyboardist for Maroon 5 — who followed Fresh's set with a long, jammy performance of his song "New Orleans Girl," including both a bounce verse and a trombone solo.
The party took place at a hot locus for New Orleans musical culture, where second line parades roll through and Mardi Gras Indians show off, near the housing projects where the Neville Brothers and Juvenile and Harold Battiste, the modern jazz innovator who worked as Sonny and Cher's musical director, grew up.
And alsoin his youth, popular for the forcefulness of his cornet's sound and his tendency, novel at the time, to improvise on the and ragtime and that were the standard repertoire around the turn of the century. (Also for what would become his theme song, the bawdy "Funky Butt" — or ) As historian Don Marquis wrote in his landmark 1978 biography , he "played all over town... for every conceivable function," at parks, picnics, parades and dances, and on the back of wagons that drove around town to advertise them.
