Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Summer 2008 - (Page 51)

like Louis Armstrong in his stage presence. He smiled a lot; he was clearly having fun. He was just a wonderful person to see performing. Who else was there that night? Sweet Emma was there, Sweet Emma the bell gal. I was kind of scared, I thought she looked like Marie Laveau, the voodoo queen. I was only about twelve then so I was impressionable. She had this beanie and the bells on her garters and she sang. And I thought she was weird. A wonderful player but just strange. These were all strange people in their own way. They were different from the ordinary people I associated with in my kind of sheltered middle class life. But especially I was smitten with George Lewis on the clarinet. The sound of his clarinet was like nothing I’d ever heard. It was absolutely angelic, his tone, and so almost spiritual. There was something almost religious about it. He also was a very charismatic person in his bearing. He was a small man, so small the clarinet looked enormous in his hands. But he was very trim and he had this kind of coppery color, it was like this light came from inside of him. I learned later that his father was half Choctaw Indian, so he had some Indian blood in him. There was something very special about him. He was a very nice looking man and a gentle man when he spoke. He actually had a very deep voice but very gentle. He was just a character who was completely out of the ordinary. He had this charisma that spoke to me and particularly the sound of his clarinet spoke to me. From that night on, I sort of secretly wanted to play music like that. What I particularly remember was that he played his own composition, his famous composition, the “Burgundy Street Blues”, which is almost like a hymn. It has this quality like a woman singing, almost, very human, very moving. When I heard that, I got chills up my spine and that’s when I sort of decided that some day, if I could, I would like to play music like that. Raeburn: Well as a matter of fact, to replicate that fully I think there’s only one way I think that we could achieve that and that would be if you picked up that clarinet and played us some of the Burgundy Street Blues. Would that be all right? Sancton: Would you like me to play? Raeburn: Get ready for the chills. [Musical interlude] Raeburn: Tom, would you take a second to introduce the guys in the band to the audience? Sancton: Sure. Actually, everybody here has some link to this story that I tried to tell in Song for My Fathers. As I talk about what I call the jazz pilgrims who would be young men that I met who come from overseas to learn this music. New Orleans was the jazz mecca and many of these young men had become quite versed in this music and this culture’s records. When they arrived many of them already were fairly good New Orleans-style musicians and they came here really to apprentice and learn the music first hand. One of these young men was the trumpet player here, Clive Wilson from England. Clive came over on a school trip in ’64. I remember the first night he came. He was very young then. He still looks young, but he was very young then. Twenty-one, twenty-two? Twenty-one. He came in and he had short pants on. Wilson: Oh no I didn’t! Sancton: Yes you did! He sat there just absolutely enthralled by Kid Howard and Percy Humphrey, all these people he heard. He is one of the jazz pilgrims who stayed here and put down roots — I think he went back and then eventually moved back here — and became part of the New Orleans jazz scene. He played for a number of years. He’s played with lots of bands, but particularly the Papa French Band, successor to Papa Celestin. He actually held the Celestin chair in that band for a number of years. Lars Edegran, our pianist, is from Stockholm, Sweden. He came here about the same time as Clive, in the early ’60s, and has become a wonderful fixture on the jazz scene here. In addition to playing with many bands, recording with many bands, he wrote the show One Mo’ Time which was very successful here. It went on to Broadway. He’s an old friend of mine and a wonderful musician; he also plays several other instruments including the clarinet. But don’t hire him on the clarinet. Call me first. On the bass, Bernie Attridge another jazz pilgrim who came here from England somewhat later, got right into the scene and he’s pulling his oar now in the New Orleans jazz tradition. Wonderful bass player. I had the privilege of recording in a group that included him, the album’s called T.A. SANCTON COLLECTION Tom Sancton, in background, with the Olympia Brass band, preparing for a street parade, ca. 1966. Summer 2008/LOUISIANA ENDOWMENT FOR THE HUMANITIES 51 Louisiana’s Fairytale on G.H.B. Records that goes back I guess 12 years or so. I’m very happy to have Bernie Attridge here with me today on the bass. The men I learned from were New Orleans traditional jazz musicians who grew up here and most of them, some of them, very old men. Actually some of them were the age I am now, which seemed very old to me at that time as well. Collectively, they were the New Orleans Jazz Tradition. They were the successors of the first generation and many of them were contemporaries of Louis Armstrong. One of the men that I heard regularly at Preservation Hall and learned from listening to his wonderful drumming and singing, was a

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Summer 2008

Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Summer 2008 Contents Friends Editor’s Column Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities George Rodrigue’s Louisiana: Cajuns, Blue Dogs & Beyond Katrina The Historic New Orleans Collection After The Flood Faubourg Marigny: The Creole “Suburb” Preserving New Orleans Jazz, One Generation at a Time: Conversation & Music with Tom Sancton Louisiana Foodways Louisiana Architecture Baton Rouge Photographs, 1863-1910 Jazz Notes The Ogden Museum of Southern Art Louisiana Association of Museums Nature of the “Beast” Louisiana State Museum Bookstand Sound Advice Forum

Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Summer 2008

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