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ALL THAT JAZZGetting seduced by the food and the feel, the mystique and the music of the 'Big Easy'BY PHILIP Z. TRUPP |
THE BOYS ARE WINDING DOWN THEIR FIRST SET AT FRITZEL'S European Jazz Pub. Banu, who is
to take the stage with a traditional Dixieland sextet soon, cups her hands around my ear.
"I might wait on that one," she says over the trombone player's sinewy shaping and reshaping of some
classic I'd never heard before. She's referring to the shooter of Jaegermeister, a sweet-smelling concoction
that one of the musicians insists I drink, and it is awfully tempting.
"Motor control," Banu shouts over the music. I guess she's warning me that shooting that sticky liqueur
might mean no sitting in on drums. And that, of course, is what I've come to do-to be in this gumbo of Fritzel's
on Bourbon Street, sweaty palms and all, punching up nerve enough to make my Dixie debut with this young
New Orleans singer on a set of drums older than my great-grandfather.
Banu Gibson's strong, articulate voice has been a major part of the traditional jazz, "tradjazz," scene since
1981, when she formed her New Orleans Hot Jazz band. Audiences love her energy, and players respect her
musical smarts. While many singers use their back-up musicians as anonymous props of their "stardom,"
Banu wisely encourages the band to swing hard, to add drive and individuality to her performance.
This has earned her an enviable musical reputation, and her "pop" performances with major symphony
orchestras add substantially to her cachet. Hanging out with her is a little like being with a movie star.
The crowd presses Banu's small dancer's body tightly against me, and as she speaks (half shouts, really) I
keep staring at the big dingy portraits of General Rommel and Bismarck hanging on the far wall, so
incongruous among the ancient musical instruments and other souvenirs tacked to the grimy, smoke-stained
surfaces. It is, in fact, only Banu's voice that keeps me somewhere this side of the Twilight Zone. It is by now
a familiar voice, warm and soothing as a French Market but sobering in the free-wheeling atmosphere of
Fritzel's.
"I mean, you know what you can handle," she hints. "But...."
But what? From what I can tell, the whole city has been on a three century-long bender, and the
Jaegermeister is but a smear of sticky liqueur. Could it alter so many decades of drumming, of playing every
kind of music, from honky-tonk to classical? After all, I grew up in the joints, I'd paid dues. And now, at last, I
am about to learn what it means to be seduced by the Big Easy.
It was the beat-the beat I felt the I moment I stepped onto Canal Street two days earlier and slid into Banu's
white Buick Riviera. She had classical music on the radio, but inside my head it sounded like an old vinyl disk
spinning crazily between Buddy Bolden and 1943.
"You ready?" she asks, glancing at me, her designated roadie, the musical thrill-seeker who intends to play
jazz drums for her. "I think you're gonna dig it."
Dig! I hadn't heard that verb in a long time. Ah, but it sounded sweet and fresh and as uninhibited as a breeze
off the Mississippi.
"Banu," I say, "I dig."
"O-Tay!" she replies.
In the lobby of the Hilton, where Banu is scheduled to play tonight, a big silky banner flutters near the
ceiling: Laissez les /oons temps rou~ Let the good times roll.
"Words to live by," says Banu.
I duck into the musicians' suite while she changes for the show. There are other bands on the bill, and they
are hanging out. Black guys with graying hair, white shirts, suspenders, funky captain's hats with gold braid;
archetypical New Orleans jazzers.
"Yep, we be it," one of them tells me, speaking of the traditional style. And that tradjazz, I am informed, does
not embrace most modern players. People like me are (to put it politely) pale imitators of the indigenous
black- and Creole inspired rhythms.
Now I am really sweaty. I mean, I'm no Baby Dodds or Chick Webb; the gurus of tradjazz. But after 40 years
at the drums (professionally) I thought I knew enough to be humble, to cop a few licks, to fit in. Was I kidding
myself?
"Man, the music's gotten so political. But that's not what it's about," Banu says, leading me across the lobby
and through a swampy morass of microbiologist conventioneers. She moves quickly, like a tiger working the
night, seeing what others don't, always a little ahead of the beat.
We step through the big double doors and into the ballroom. Slowly the size of the room sinks in. Big enough
for a couple of hockey games. Floating above the crowd, like an invisible mist, I hear a cymbal beat, crisp and
clean and swinging.
On a bandstand to my right Banu and the crew are ready to go. The M.C.'s voice drawls, "She's the tradlady,
the voice of New Orleans Hot Jazz-Banu GIBBBBson!"
She jumps straight into a bright ragtime, the girl in the white Buick now cruising in the pocket of the beat,
flashing in her sequined jacket, flinging good-time energy into the crowd, heart plainly displayed on her
sleeve. She's hot. Makes no secret of it. And the conventioneering microbiologists become animated for the
first time.
At noon the next day, I lunch with Banu at the Camellia Grill surrounded by the "high Victorian" homes in
the River Bend district.
By now my musical sensibility has drifted between the ragtime of Scott Joplin, the permutations of Jelly Roll
Morton and Louis Armstrong Dixieland. Quite a mix. Being mostly a modern player, I am out of the loop.
Banu has been living and singing in New Orleans for 20 years. She knows exactly who she is and where her
inspiration comes from. Her style of jazz is basic New Orleans soul food. And tomorrow night, I'm supposed
to make my debut on Bourbon Street.
"I'm not a Dixie guy," I confess over red beans and rice. "I'll need a little prepping. Maybe one of the local
drummers...."
Banu raises a slender hand, strong as her dancer's legs. "No pro-blem-o," she replies, munching into a
burger and slaw.
We drive uptown to Tulane University, home of the William Ransom Hogan Jazz Archive, and wander along
strangely silent walls lined with historic vinyls and big reels of audio tape, dusty steamer trunks, photos,
reams of newspapers and the ennui of long lost but unforgotten souls.
"Like to hear some interviews?" offers our host, Dirk Van Tuerenhout. He reels off a tiny sampling of the
audio menu: conversations with Kid Ory, Jelly Roll, Lil Hardin, Satchmo, "Lemon" Nash. There are more
than a thousand interviews to choose from.
I need something a bit more tangible. Dirk, a student from Belgium, leads us into a glass-enclosed room.
Against one wall stands an upright piano; against another looms the gilded mantelpiece from the Hilma Burt
House on the infamous Basin Street. Along with a framed photo of a young and very somber Jelly Roll, there
is a scrap of filigreed red wallpaper that had been saved with the mantelpiece.
I'm about to give up when Dirk asks if I'd like to see the drums once owned by Ray Bauduc.
Bauduc was once "the man" in New Orleans, the great "fat beat," the "big crash," the pencil-mustached
"tom cat" of the French Quarter, gone but still venerated on the scene.
Dirk hauls out a black drum case. Inside is a set of white pearl tom-tome with brass Ludwig keystones. Ray
had cut the largest tom in half and fitted it with little D-ring satchel clips; the smaller drums slid neatly inside
the big one, like Russian nesting eggs. I thump them with my fingers.
"Like 'em?" Banu asks. She's doing a little tap dance in her Nikes.
"Yes." Something flows from those lovely drums. I can imagine them punctuating the beat of every jazz giant
of Ray's era.
Later, Banu and I stroll up Charles Street into the pleasing low maze of the Quarter, where the sharp edges
are smoothed over by a distinct Vieux Carre vibe. It's said you'll see more nuns and nudes here than
anywhere else on Earth (I saw neither). As for the music, it was a child of pure lust, an orphan from the old
Storyville red-light district that somehow found a home and made good in the depths of the Bible Belt.
I suggest we visit Preservation Hall, the famous tradjazz venue on St. Peter Street. Banu is less than
enthusiastic.
I'd been to Preservation Hall in 1962 but didn't realize it had been a 1950s art gallery that featured
tradjazzers in jamming situations. Founders Allen and Sandra Jaffe subleased the space, hung out a wooden
sign with the name on it and told the musicians to play with their backs to the storefront window. Instant funk!
Preservation Hall became world-famous, and every night there are long-suffering lines waiting to get in.
"Now see," says Banu, "that's wrong. That's not the real thing."
But people like to think it goes back to the glory days, I suggest. "Sure! That's the shame of it," she replies.
All lines part for Banu, and Preservation is no exception. The lady at the entrance greets her warmly and we
stand in the lobby, a properly dingy hole-in-the-wall lit by gritty yellow lights. In the next room the l musicians
spin a languid improvisation. They rock in their bent-cane chairs, the drummer rolling a torpid 19th-century
funeral cadence. When it's over, a hat is passed.
"Unbelievable," Banu sighs.
The following day, Banu takes me to see one of the most authentic tradjazz drummers in town, British-born
Trevor Richards. He's agreed to prep me for Fritzel's.
"So you're here to learn the 'language' of New Orleans," he says as he unpacks a huge bass ; drum. The
snare has a l shallow metal shell. l Trevor loosens the wire l snares and taps with an odd-shaped drumstick.
The drum responds instantly: huunuzzzzzap! It's tuned the old-fashioned way, with lots of overtone to cover a
variety of sins.
Attaching a small tom-tom to the bass (its ancient goatskin heads are in remarkably good condition), he
mounts a pair of small cymbals that once belonged to Ray Bauduc. "Puma of the French Quarter," Trevor
calls him.
Trevor plays the cymbals lovingly.
I sit behind the drums.
"Now," Trevor begins. "You want to bounce off the bass drum to get a big full sound."
Voooommmm! Voooommmm! Big sound all right. Deep enough to propel a marching band all the way out to
the "Cities of the Dead," those all too-visible New Orleans cemeteries where the crypts are raised high
above the swampy ground.
"Yes, that's it," Trevor says. He sets up another snare and we play in unison, like a couple of marching
drummers. "Accent on three and four," he says, "like you're chopping off the end of the phrase." We play
for hours. Back in my hotel room on the 84th floor of the Sheraton, I pace and stare through the window at
the big oil tankers plowing upriver. My jitters turn to melancholy. In 24 hours, I'll be on the jetway. Why is it
that just when we start to get the feel of a new place we have to leave? The language of the city and its music
would soon be abstract, another souvenir in my already crowded memory.
I switch on the radio: WWOZ-FM ("woozy," they call it): "...Do you I know what it means to miss New Or-~]
leans/To miss it each night and day/;' Know I'm not wrong/The feeling's I getting stronger the longer I stay
away..." I hit the off button.
Banu later greets me in smart breezy slacks and a white blouse. No Nikes. Tonight she wears low heels and
dark shades.
"Ready?" she asks.
"Let's hit it!"
The Quarter is mobbed. Cars line both sides of Bourbon Street. After much frustration, we decide to make a
parking space of our own. Banu nudges two cars to make a space.
I step onto the street with my Abita beer and stand in front of Fritzel's. An archaic street lamp lights the
facade. It's a narrow slice of a building, very old, the second story girdled by elaborate French wrought iron.
Through the door I see yellowing walls and thick blue smoke. At the far end of the room, the band is romping
through the blues.
Now's the time to take the stage. I belt down the Jaegermeister. The band is getting ready for its second set.
There's Chris Burke on clarinet; Dave Boeddinghaus on piano; dark-shaded, fedora-wearing Mike Owen on
trombone; exuberant Scott Black on cornet, a veteran of Leon Redbone's road show; Bernie Attridge on
bass; and Trevor, who is now motioning me to the bandstand.
I take my seat behind the drums. WWOZ is booming behind the bar. "...Don't tell me not to fly/I've simply
got to...." Good ol' Jule Styne.
Trevor fusses over me. "You're comfortable? You're sure?"
"Perfectly." I feel a surge of focused energy. Is it the Jaegermeister? Does it matter?
Burke clutches the microphone. He schmoozes the audience, gets them laughing and announces the sit-ins.
"...New Orleans Hot Jazz sensation, Banu Gibson!" Applause. Cheers. I play a rim shot. "The one, the only
[pause] Dave Boeddinghaus on piano." More applause. Rim shot. "And all the way from Washington,
D.C...." When I hear my name and the applause, I give out with a final, slightly more intense rim shot.
Chris counts off the tempo, Dave noodles a neat little eight-bar intro, and the band lifts off like the Space
Shuttle-all heat and Gs propelling Banu's good rich voice through the pub and out onto Bourbon Street where
a crowd gathers.
"...Won't you come home Bill Bailey?/Won't you come home?/I know I done you wrong...."
People clap in time to the music, couples gyrate and jitterbug near the bar, the song caresses the room like a
sweet, sexy cloud.
"...I'II do the cookie', honey/I'II pay the rent/I know I done you wrong...."
The years of playing, of living the jazz life, are as insistent as the river, relentless as those big knife-like
tankers making white bow wakes in the muddy water. One doesn't control music; you talk to it, and it tells
you what you've said. Sidney Bechet understood, and Satchmo, and all the greats who made New Orleans
beat synonymous with good-time jazz.
It is the beat, the sound, that blots out all prejudices of style. It is as basic as gravity and as far out as the
stars.
"...Remember that rainy evening/I threw you out/With nothin' but a finetoothed comb/I know I'm to blame/
Oh, ain't it a shame/Bill Bailey/Won't you please come home...."