Tag: Ponderosa Stomp

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Ponderosa Stomp Recap: 24 Hours in NOLA

CREDIT: Alex Greene

Alex Greene

Andria Lisle, Vaneese Thomas, and Carla Thomas

Although Ponderosa Stomp, the New Orleans-based love letter to lesser-known soul, blues, rockabilly, and garage artists, was cut short by the fizzled Hurricane Nate, the festival was hopping last Friday. Many of the performers and audience alike stayed at the Ace Hotel, where the daytime hours were filled with panel discussions and interviews as part of the event’s Music History Conference. While vinyl junkies perused the record bins in a side room, and that evening’s bands rehearsed in a closed space near the lobby, hundreds more filed through the hotel’s main event hall to hear some history.

For those eager to hear personal tales of the music world, it was an embarrassment of riches. An early highlight was the panel dedicated to the late Billy Miller, visionary co-founder of Norton records. The label has released many Memphis treasures, from archival re-issues of rockabilly and Big Star to more recent works by the Reigning Sound. Miller passed away last year at the young age of 62, making this memorial panel an emotional one. His wife and partner, Miriam Linna, said that she was especially proud of his last labor of love, a collection of lost Dion tracks from 1965. The panel was moderated by the unflappable Michael Hurtt, of Royal Pendletons fame, also a musicologist in his own right.

Another Memphis panel featured Reggie Young, guitarist extraordinaire with Hi Records and American Studios. Young was not in the best health, but certainly of sound mind and body as he exchanged comments with moderator Red Kelly on the landmark singles and albums of his career, beginning with his first encounter with Jack Clement and Bill Black at the Memphis “Home for Incurables” in the 1950s. The success of the Bill Black Combo (who were known to wear “BBC” suit coats) led to tours with the Beatles, Kinks, and Yardbirds. When Kelly cued up James Carr’s “The Dark End of the Street,” featuring Young’s guitar work, the crowd gave the record a standing ovation. Similarly, upon hearing just the guitar break in Joe Tex’s “Skinny Legs and All,” the crowd once again rose to applaud. Young also recalled taking a lunch break while recording with King Curtis. At the local diner, Curtis picked up a menu and began riffing on menu items in musical terms, including some “boiling Memphis guitar.” The group loved it so much, they skipped lunch and returned to the studio to cut “Memphis Soul Stew.”

Another fine panel tied to Memphis was Andria Lisle’s discussion with Carla and Vaneese Thomas. They recounted their early love of the Teen Town Singers, and the pride they felt when Dave Clark, being dubbed “The World’s Oldest Teenager” at an award ceremony, turned to kneel before Rufus Thomas as he looked on, saying that honor could only go to him. Carla also recalled writing songs just for fun as a teen, as her father recorded on a home reel-to-reel tape deck. One of these was a little tune called “Gee Whiz (Look at his Eyes),” the recording of which Rufus took down to Stax on a whim, launching her career.

When dusk settled on the Crescent City, festival goers migrated over to the Orpheum to see that evening’s full roster of bands. It all kicked off with Billy Boy Arnold, who delivered a soft-spoken “I Wish You Would,” along with other blues. A swamp pop revue followed, featuring T.K. Hulin and G.G. Shinn, and the latter’s “Harlem Shuffle” was galvanizing. Some fine, funky soul followed with Warren Storm and Willie West, but it was Winfield Parker who really brought the house down with his voice, an under-appreciated treasure of the soul genre.

It should be noted that a perplexing audio mix plagued much of the night, but every performer rose above it with aplomb. Barbara Lynn, a Stomp regular by now, was in fine voice and demonstrated some sublime guitar work. Archie Bell whipped the house into a frenzy, both with his “Tighten Up” and the lesser-known “Strategy,” which had him screaming “I’m soaking wet! I’m soaking wet” at the song’s climactic chorus, perhaps in sympathy with the Gulf Coast being on the receiving end of Hurricane Nate.

Roy Head carried on over the full horn section rave up during “Treat Her Right,” another Stomp favorite. And then came the abrupt shift to cajun stomping music with Doug Kershaw, who was a little out of it, but sang with gusto every word of his hit that he could recall. “He’s got Muskrat hides hanging by the dozens/ Even got a lady Mink, a Muskrat’s cousin/ Got ‘em out drying in the hot, hot sun/ Tomorrow papa’s gonna turn ‘em into money.” It had the floor shaking with knee-slapping joy, and Kershaw’s freestyle fiddling over the chord changes made the band sound almost psychedelic.

But the psychedelia was just beginning. Roky Erickson, who’s reprise of 13th Floor Elevators cuts has been known to be spotty at other festivals, was completely on point this night, and the band supported him mightily. The chemistry in this band led “Dr. Ike,” festival organizer Ira Padnos, to exclaim that it was the closest thing he could imagine to seeing the Elevators themselves.

Finally, show closers the Gories hit the stage fast and furious, building a glorious wall of noise with minimalist, primitivist swagger. Again, the ferocious music rose above the sound mix and the house was gyrating to Mick Collins’ blasts of noise guitar, soaring over the wiry groove of guitarist Dan Kroha and drummer Peggy O’Neill. For those Memphians who have long adulated this stunning band, it was a fine, gritty apotheosis to the night and the perfect melding of R&B, blues, punk, and unclassifiable parts and grease off the garage floor.

Alas, though Nate was a fizzle in the Big Easy the next day, a city curfew forced the cancellation of the second night’s show. Although there was an impromptu concert in the Ace Hotel on Saturday afternoon, this did not include performances by Don Bryant or the Thomas sisters. Indeed, the Bo-Keys, crack soul band of the current era in Memphis music, didn’t even make it to New Orleans due to bad weather or the threat of it.

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Food & Wine Food & Drink

Drinkin’ NOLA

It takes a certain mindset to drive into New Orleans 48 hours before a hurricane is expected to make landfall. I left Memphis after work last Thursday, wavering a few times before gassing up and heading south. My destination was the 13th Ponderosa Stomp. South-bound traffic was nonexistent, and five hours later, I was parking my car on Carondelet Street, the lyrics to Louis Armstrong’s “Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans” ricocheting through my head.

Ace Hotel bar

I settled into the Ace Hotel’s Lobby Bar and ordered a Sazerac. I’m not normally a whisky drinker, but the complicated cocktail — allegedly America’s first, created by Antoine Peychaud in a French Quarter watering hole in 1838 — seemed appropriate. Spicy yet slightly sweet, it was the perfect sipping drink.

I slept in on Friday and failed to make it to Frenchman Street to visit Old New Orleans Rum. The distillery, in business since 1995, produces the highest-rated rum on this continent. Their Cajun Spice Rum, which is steeped with cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, cloves, ginger, vanilla, chicory, and cayenne, provides my favorite base for a Dark and Stormy. God only knows why it’s not currently available on liquor store shelves in Memphis, but whenever I’m in New Orleans, I try to buy a few bottles to import into Tennessee.

I stayed at the Ace, where I was due to moderate a panel discussion with Carla and Vaneese Thomas on Friday afternoon. Beforehand, I guzzled a Tanqueray and tonic, served in a go-cup at Josephine Estelle, Andy Ticer and Michael Hudman’s southernmost outpost.

That evening, I walked around the block for drinks and dinner at Herbsaint, Donald Link’s restaurant, audaciously named for the anise-flavored liqueur, another New Orleans creation. I was meeting friends and I made sure to arrive early to enjoy a drink in the restaurant’s small but elegant bar. Truth be told, due to the impending storm, the bar had more diners than drinkers, and within seconds of my arrival, I was sipping a cucumber-garnished Pimm’s Cup.

Pimm’s was an excellent choice — it paid homage to my dining companions, guitarist and roots music concert organizer Rupert Orton, author and music critic Andy Perry, and Harry Grafton, a bona fide English duke and Orton’s partner in the annual Red Rooster Festival. All three hail from the United Kingdom, as does the original Pimm’s Cup. Yet it was a bartender at the Napoleon House, a New Orleans establishment located approximately one mile north of Herbsaint, who popularized the drink in the American South.

Less than 10 hours later, I was headed back to Memphis. After dinner, I’d listened to — and danced to — one of the most eccentric musical line-ups ever assembled, including Roky Erickson, Archie Bell, Roy Head, the Gories, and Doug Kershaw. But the second night of the Stomp was cancelled, and Mayor Mitch Landrieu had ordered a mandatory curfew for his Crescent City citizens.

I was filled with regret as I drove, lamenting the dozen or more New Orleans watering holes I hadn’t visited: The Parasol Bar, hidden in the Irish Channel. The dimly lit Chart Room, one of the dive-iest places in the French Quarter. The Marigny’s Hi Ho Lounge, Kajun’s Pub, and Siberia, which lie a few hundred feet apart. D.B.A., the Saint, and Lafitte’s Blacksmith Shop. A trip to Martin Wine Cellar on Baronne, which has an excellent deli as well as a full-service liquor store.

Fortunately, for everyone who lives in New Orleans and the rest of us who have had the pleasure of drinking there, Hurricane Nate decided to spare the city that care forgot. The Carousel Bar still turns; Sazeracs and Pimm’s Cups are still poured by bartenders who have seen — and heard — it all. I’ll head back soon, because, as Louis so perfectly put it, “I’m wishin’ I was there.”

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Music Music Features

Crescent City Kinship

This weekend, music aficionados not overly damaged by Gonerfest will be making that breezy drive down to New Orleans, our sister city of soul. They’ll be chasing the sounds of old vinyl brought to life, marveling that one can still see pioneers of soul, R&B, swamp pop, rockabilly, and garage rock who the mass media spotlight has long since neglected. It’s Ponderosa Stomp time, and the threads linking Memphis with the festival, now an institution in the Big Easy, go back to its earliest days.

I still recall Andria Lisle telling me, back in the ’90s, about a wedding she’d attended in New Orleans that featured, instead of the usual party band, a performance by Eric Burdon of the Animals. That was the first I heard of Ponderosa Stomp founder Ira Padnos, the anesthesiologist known as “Dr. Ike”: a man who takes his music very, very seriously.

“The Ponderosa Stomp is like Ira’s record collection coming to life,” says local producer and bandleader Scott Bomar, who’s seen many Stomps over the years. “He’ll have all these obscure records, and he’ll start to wonder, ‘Well, where is so and so? Where’s this obscure swamp-pop artist? Why haven’t they played?’ He’ll go on expeditions to try to find folks. It’s pretty amazing, the research he does. He just gets obsessed with certain artists. And sometimes he can track ’em down and sometimes he can’t, but he’s sorta the master of finding these artists who maybe only cut one record in their entire lives, that maybe 500 copies were ever pressed of. So it’s interesting; he likes to celebrate great unheralded talent.”

Padnos’ wedding party was just the beginning. “He used to do shows at the Circle Bar,” recalls Bomar. “And, kind of like the Ponderosa Stomp is named after a song on Excello Records, he would name these parties after songs. I know he had one called ‘I Got Loaded.’ Those Circle Bar shows were amazing. He would hire me to play bass behind people down there. I remember playing with D.J. Fontana on drums, Paul Burlison on guitar, Alex Chilton on guitar, and we backed up a couple of rockabilly guys.”

The search for obscure genius has often led Padnos to Memphis. As he told OffBeat Magazine in 2011, “I always loved the song ‘Bar-B-Q,’ so we were trying to track down Wendy Rene, but that was hard because nobody knew her real name.” Naturally, he found her, and before long, she was once again singing her ode to pulled pork.

But the Stomp is not just about obscurity. One headliner of this year’s show is Roky Erickson, the famously off-kilter singer for the 13th Floor Elevators who has staged somewhat of a comeback in the past decade. Closer to home, Carla Thomas and her sister Vaneese, daughters of Rufus Thomas, are hardly obscure. With her “B-A-B-Y” featured in the film Baby Driver, Carla is back in the spotlight again. And sister Vaneese, whose “Let’s Talk It Over” single on Geffen was a top 10 hit in the ’80s, has begun turning heads in the blues world recently with a new record this year, The Long Journey Home. “When I put out Blues for My Father in 2014, that was my first foray into the blues. I did that really in honor of daddy, obviously. Because people don’t know that he sang blues all through his career, from the beginning to the end,” Vaneese says. “So, I wanted to dab my toe in that, and I’ve grown to love it. I want to sing more earthy stuff.”

Bomar and his band the Bo-Keys will be backing the Thomas sisters, who only began performing together in 2002. The Bo-Keys will also back Memphis soul singer Don Bryant, who had some now-rare releases in the ’60s before focusing on writing hits for Hi Records into the ’70s. Bryant is hardly obscure either these days, having just played packed houses in New York and Europe this summer. Other Memphis artists on the bill this year include Linda Gail Lewis, Jerry Lee’s talented sister, and legendary session guitarist Reggie Young, who will be featured in a panel discussion at the festival’s Music History Conference.

Ponderosa Stomp performances will be at the Orpheum Theater, New Orleans, October 6th-7th, with a gospel brunch show on Sunday, October 7th. Music History Conference events are hosted at the Ace Hotel, October 5th-6th, as is the Record Show, October 5th-7th. For details, go to www.ponderosastomp.com.

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Music Music Blog

Reggie Young’s “Debut” and Groundbreaking Discography

Though Reggie Young was born in Missouri, history has confirmed that he is as Memphis as they come. Having begun his career in Eddie “Rockin’ Daddy” Bond’s band in the 50s, his guitar acumen helped him to advance quickly. After a spell with Johnny Horton, he became an integral part of Bill Black’s Combo, who worked out of Hi Records’ Royal Studios to produce scores of instrumental hits.

From Hi, he moved to American Studios and once again was part of a hit making machine, this time known as the Memphis Boys, American’s in house band. That’s him on Elvis’ hits of the time, and many others from the late 60s and 70s, including the distinctive electric sitar on B.J. Thomas’ “Hooked on a Feeling.” In the decades beyond, he was associated more with the Highwaymen and Waylon Jennings.

It’s worth recalling his storied history in Memphis now, after the summer release of his album Forever Young. Incredibly, this marks Young’s first album under his own name, as a band leader. Recorded in several studios in Tennessee and Alabama, but primarily at La La Land Studio in Muscle Shoals, it captures the elegant, shimmering fretwork that Young is known for. The result may not set the world on fire. Perhaps it’s polished to a fault, but fans of smooth soul/jazz will enjoy it immensely. To these ears, and aside from its sheer dexterity, it’s chiefly significant as a landmark in a career that has mostly been in the service of other artists.

But the album also drives home a point that is easily forgotten in the revolving door of musical trends: giants still walk among us. Those who have survived this long, after the white hot decades of the 50s-70s, deserve recognition. To this end, it’s significant that Young has received honors from the Country Music Hall of Fame and the Memphis chapter of The Recording Academy in just the past decade. Recognition can be a long time coming.

His role in history is doubly important because, as he lived it, he painstakingly notated every session he participated in from 1964 on. These neatly hand-penned notebooks are a music historian’s dream. And it’s now being made available to the general public, thanks to his collaboration with the Soul Detective website. One can get lost in the hundreds of sessions and releases documented on this site. An ongoing labor of love, it is a work in progress as information for each new year is added. Check it out and take a stroll through one giant’s role in American music.

Young will appear in the panel discussion, Forever Young: An Oral History with Reggie Young, at the Ponderosa Stomp Music History Conference in New Orleans, Oct. 5-6.

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Music Music Features

Stomp Goes Home

On Wednesday, May 2nd, the Ponderosa Stomp staged its triumphant return to New Orleans. This renowned roots-music festival, held in exile in Memphis in 2006, was distilled to just one night at the House of Blues, which is located on Decatur Street in the French Quarter. I arrived in time to catch one of the first acts of the evening, Muscle Shoals, Alabama, songwriter/soul singer Ralph Soul Jackson, storm through a set of rarities that left the DJs and record collectors in the audience smiling with glee and stayed until the wee hours of the morning, after Augie Meyers and a swingin’ Texas band served up the Doug Sahm classic “She’s About a Mover.”

In between, I witnessed a staggering array of legendary performers, all-star musicians, and oft-overlooked composers and songwriters who, together, comprised the most audacious roster in Stomp history.

“Dark End of the Street” and “Do Right Woman” songwriter Dan Penn, a fixture at Memphis’ American Recording Studio in the late 1960s, played two stripped-down sets on acoustic guitar, accompanied by keyboardist Bobby Emmons. The effect was dazzling, and it left the audience — which included a rapt Bobby Patterson, who recorded at American with Penn so long ago — primed for another acoustic set featuring bluesmen Kenny Brown and Bobby Rush.

Equally astonishing was the hour-and-a-half-plus performance staged by Wardell Quezergue and his New Orleans Rhythm and Blues Revue, a 14-man band handpicked by the blind arranger, known as the key architect of the city’s famed in-the-pocket groove sound. Star after star took the spotlight, including trumpeter Dave Bartholomew, who sang “The Monkey” and “Who Drank My Beer While I Was in the Rear”; Robert Parker, who crooned “Barefootin'”; and Jean Knight, whose song “Mr. Big Stuff” was a huge hit for Stax.

Rockabilly singer Jay Chevalier, blues pianist Henry Gray, Lazy Lester (the Stomp’s signature performer), and vocalists Al “Carnival Time” Johnson and Rockie Charles made multiple appearances inside the House of Blues and on its more intimate outdoor patio stage, while indoors, backing groups such as Lil’ Buck Sinegal & the Top Cats and Deke Dickerson & the Eccofonics worked overtime with front men who ran the gamut — from Little Jimmy Scott, Ernie Vincent, and Dennis Coffey to Joe Clay, Matt Lucas, and Willie Tee. Also lurking onstage: Alex Chilton, who wielded a guitar with the Memphis-meets-New Orleans group the Early Times.

Most of the 1,500 people who packed the House of Blues were waiting for the midnight hour, when reclusive psych star Roky Erickson took over the main stage with his band The Explosives for a mind-numbing, ear-shattering set that included musical firepower like “You’re Gonna Miss Me,” “Starry Eyes,” and “I Walked with a Zombie.” It was well worth the wait, although fellow Texan Roy Head threatened to upstage Erickson with his propulsive, over-the-top set, which included two show-stopping renditions of “Treat Her Right” and choreography that would put a stripper to shame.

Judging by his face-splitting grin, Ira “Dr. Ike” Padnos, the anesthesiologist/music fan who, when May rolls around, trades in his doctor’s coat for a fez, realized that the sixth annual Ponderosa Stomp — his baby — was a raging success before the final stragglers wandered back onto Decatur Street. Alternately describing various acts as “unbelievable,” “perfect,” and “killer,” Padnos, who was heard on NPR earlier in the week highlighting the efforts of his nonprofit Mystic Knights of the Mau-Mau, preferred to let the music speak for itself.

“I think every New Orleans musician who was off tonight showed up,” he finally said, nodding to people such as pianists Allen Toussaint and Jon Cleary, who joined the massive throng paying homage to Quezergue. Also spotted in the crowd: producer/performer Ben Vaughn and Ira Kaplan and Georgia Hubley of indie-rockers Yo La Tengo.

Reflecting on the Ponderosa Stomp’s Big Easy homecoming, Padnos said, “We loved coming to Memphis last year. It was a unique experience. Hurricane Katrina gave us a chance to stage the Stomp in one of the greatest American music cities. But being able to pull it off at home is pretty special, too.”

That said, Padnos didn’t rule out the Mystic Knights’ return to Memphis. “We would like to do something there next fall,” he mused. “It could be a big festival or a smaller show — just what, I don’t know yet.”

For more info about the Mystic Knights of the Mau-Mau and the Ponderosa Stomp, go to PonderosaStomp.com.