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Oddball, with the greatest respect, the Magnolias aren't about the roots of N O Marching bands. (See the books by William J Schafer and Lee Friedlander, and listen to the Bunk Johnson American Music recordings, the Folkways Eureka sides, and the 1961 Atlantic recordings by the Eureka and Young Tuxedo BB's to get that story). The Mardi Gras Indian music is a different story. It was first documented on record by Danny Barker in the 1940s (he was first to record Indian Red, for example, which was on Jo3) and then the music and secret language was further documented by Dr John and the Meters, and later by Donald Harrison and the Wild Tchoupitoulas. Some of the best attempts to document the Mardi Gras Indians recently were the episodes of Treme on HBO that dealt with the marching society that Clarke Peters' character had belonged to. Those of us who heard the Eureka, Young Tuxedo, Olympia and even the Hurricane brass bands in their prime find some of the latterday bands somewhat risible. The Dirty Dozen crossed boundaries with some success, the Rebirth somewhat less so. It's a specialist subject - but repays listening to the early records to put a lot of what's going on today into some kind of perspective. Again, Treme got a lot of it right. The jazz funeral in Episode 1 with Doc Paulin's Brass band plus actor hangers on is rather closer to the roots of this music than anything heard on R3 lately.
Oddball, with the greatest respect, the Magnolias aren't about the roots of N O Marching bands. (See the books by William J Schafer and Lee Friedlander, and listen to the Bunk Johnson American Music recordings, the Folkways Eureka sides, and the 1961 Atlantic recordings by the Eureka and Young Tuxedo BB's to get that story). The Mardi Gras Indian music is a different story. It was first documented on record by Danny Barker in the 1940s (he was first to record Indian Red, for example, which was on Jo3) and then the music and secret language was further documented by Dr John and the Meters, and later by Donald Harrison and the Wild Tchoupitoulas. Some of the best attempts to document the Mardi Gras Indians recently were the episodes of Treme on HBO that dealt with the marching society that Clarke Peters' character had belonged to. Those of us who heard the Eureka, Young Tuxedo, Olympia and even the Hurricane brass bands in their prime find some of the latterday bands somewhat risible. The Dirty Dozen crossed boundaries with some success, the Rebirth somewhat less so. It's a specialist subject - but repays listening to the early records to put a lot of what's going on today into some kind of perspective. Again, Treme got a lot of it right. The jazz funeral in Episode 1 with Doc Paulin's Brass band plus actor hangers on is rather closer to the roots of this music than anything heard on R3 lately.
Thanks for that, Alyn. I can see I have barely scratched the surface of this important area. But Tom Challenger, the subject of Jon3, also appeared not too clear about it - and he was basing his music on it!
I know in the past there were some Jazz Library sessions with very early 20th century recordings - but I found the sound quality a barrier to appreciating the music. From another angle, Lucy Duran did a large number of programmes on Latin music in N.E. Brazil, which I found interesting and which might share some common heritage with New Orleans.
It might be a "specialist subject", but there appears a hell of a lot of current day music directly based on New Orleans stuff. So it looks as though either I have to do some independent research on this, or, probably asking too much, there might be an authoritative programme broadcast on R3 in the future on this subject.
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