american routes shortcuts

Baton Rouge guitarist, harp player and singer Kenny Neal is a second-generation leader in the city’s blues scene, born into a family of ten children. Kenny’s father Raful Neal was a noted harmonica player, influenced by Little Walter and played in a local band with Buddy Guy. Raful Neal’s friend Slim Harpo gave son Kenny Neal his first harmonica at age three. Kenny started playing bass for his father at thirteen and went on to Buddy Guy’s band. Later, he recruited his siblings to form the Neal Brothers Blues Band. In 1989, Kenny recorded a breakout swamp blues LP Big News from Baton Rouge for Alligator Records. His fine guitar work and harmonica, as well as authoritative voice, carried him forward making sixteen more records. Kenny carries on the Baton Rouge blues tradition. Let’s go to to the Juke Joint stage at West Baton Rouge Parish Museum with Kenny Neal.

Evan Christopher began playing clarinet in junior high school in Long Beach, CA. His first introduction to New Orleans music was hearing Louis Armstrong's Hot Fives and Sevens with Johnny Dodds and Artie Shaw on his dad’s records. Evan moved to New Orleans in his early 20s. Here he worked as a steamboat clarinetist by day and explored the music scene on Frenchmen Street by night. He went on to collaborate with Tom McDermott, Al Hirt, the New Orleans Nightcrawlers, Galactic, and others. His “Clarinet Road” led him from Socal to New Orleans, San Antonio, Paris, and he now resides in New York City. Evan told us how he came to understand the music of New Orleans.

Donald Harrison is known as a modern jazz saxophonist here in New Orleans, and although he grew up hearing parades and funerals in his youth, his major influence was at the New Orleans Center for the Creative Arts, under his teachers like Kidd Jordan and Alvin Batiste. Harrison spent years in New York City as one of Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers and later co-lead a modern jazz band in New York with New Orleans trumpet player Terence Blanchard. But Harrison never forgot his New Orleans roots…a place where jazz is still dance music. He also came home to his father Donald Harrison, Sr.’s traditions of song and street performance, suited up in sequins and feathers as a Mardi Gras Indian chief leading the Guardians of the Flame. Donald Harrison told me that his rooted, but worldly musical eclecticism began at home.

The late Dr. Lonnie Smith of B-3 organ fame was a native of Buffalo, NY, where he got noticed sitting in with Jack McDuff. Lonnie Smith moved to New York City to join George Benson’s quartet and scored a solo record deal with Columbia. “Doc” Smith mixed jazz, soul, blues and pop in his own compositions, as well as covers of Coltrane, Hendrix and Beck. Growing up, Lonnie Smith sang gospel songs in church and at home. His brothers played guitar and drums. Lonnie’s first instrument came to him magically, he says, “almost like in a movie.”

This is American Routes for St. Patrick's, with singers, fiddlers and pickers from Ireland to Appalachia live in this hour. Sharing Irish, bluegrass and country tunes with one another at the 80th National Folk Festival. Beginning with brothers Rob and Ronnie McCoury playing banjo and mandolin on stage in Salisbury, Maryland, 2021 with Ronnie's tune, " Quicksburg Rondevouz."

In Lafayette today, our guests are Cedric Watson and Chris Stafford, part of a younger generation that is preserving Cajun and Creole culture by playing the music. Cedric Watson, a fiddler and accordionist who grew up in San Felipe, TX, taught himself the Creole language spoken by some of his elders. Cedric eventually moved to Lafayette where he became involved with several great bands, from the Pine Leaf Boys to his own group, Bijou Creole. Also in Bijou Creole is Chris Stafford, a multi-instrumentalist, producer, and researcher, known for co-founding the band Feufollet when he was eleven years old. We’ll soon hear a bit of Chris and Cedric’s duo set live, but first, I asked the two of them about how playing traditional French music as a duo is different than a full band. Cedric Watson:

This week on American Routes, it’s a rare Leap Year show with Guilty Pleasures and Forgotten Treasures. As the 29th of February rolls around we take stock of our circles round the sun, just for cosmic fun, not so much to analyze but to imagine our years in space and time. We’ll have music from fellow travelers: The Grateful Dead, Johnny Cash, Aretha Franklin, King Pleasure, and Sun Ra.

The Carolina Chocolate Drops began as a seminal African American group that revived the old-time string band tradition of the Piedmont where Black performers were formative from the 19th century onward. The Chocolate Drops started out as the Sankofa Strings after meeting at the Black Banjo Gathering in Boone, NC in 2005. They evolved over the next decade. Rhiannon Giddens, trained formally in opera, played banjo and fiddle and sang with her bandmates to growing audiences.

Our guest this hour is the late Bob French, a traditional jazz drummer, local radio host, and trenchant commentator on the New Orleans scene, famous for his love of local music. He and I sat down to talk things over a little while back on a comfy couch before his show at the DBA Club downriver in Faubourg Marigny. His father Albert French was a banjo player, but the band tradition goes back to the Original Tuxedo Jazz Orchestra early in the 20th century.

The Black Masking Indians of New Orleans Carnival—some say Mardi Gras Indians—are neighborhood groups with roots in the late 19th century that include a Chief, a Queen, and roles like Flag Boy, Spy Boy, and Wildman. The Indians are on foot dressed in large, complex, beaded suits depicting Black and Native American histories as warriors with a crown of feathers. They sing, backed by a handmade rhythm section. I walked with Big Chief Tyrone Casby, an educator in everyday life, among his tribe, the Mohawk Hunters, their families and friends in Algiers, on the West Bank of New Orleans.