by Nick DeRiso This two-hour documentary explores music from both southern and northern Louisiana, a rare tip of the hat to both traditions. So you have the expected segments on Acadiana- and New Orleans-based standouts Rosie Ledet, the Hackberry Ramblers, Henry Butler, Nathan Williams and the Jambalaya Cajun Band, amongRead More

NICK DERISO: Go into this hidden-away New Orleans gem expecting blues — what with Jim Dickinson producing and East Memphis Slim as a sideman — and you’re in for a big surpise. The House Levelers were more of a thumpy roots-music outfit, one that was at once sharp as scissors,Read More

by S. Victor Aaron A few years ago I came across a list of the all-time “50 funkiest songs.” I remember an entry in there for The Meters, I think it was “Cissy Strut.” Pffft, what a useless excercise. Try coming up with “The Fifty Funkiest Meters Songs.” If youRead More

You had to wonder how much better “Louisiana 1926” would have been with someone who could really sing it. Enter Aaron Neville.

by S. Victor Aaron They look and sound like they’ve been around forever, but the Subdudes have “only” existed for 20 years (counting the roughly eight-year hiatus from 1996-2004), mainly flying under the radar. They come out of that musically rich town of New Orleans, but have rarely been mentionedRead More

NICK DERISO: Sequencing an album by the New Orleans-based Irish folkie Beth Patterson must be like trying to make sense of a series of radio stations. The first track on her debut solo CD was a classic reel, one of those familiar yet still luminous moments with the swirling rhythmsRead More

by Nick DeRiso A truly special, even virtuoso, street-level discovery, Snooks Eaglin burst onto the musical landscape with this nearly uncatagorizable debut. The in-joke around New Orleans was that he was presented as a “folk” musician, when in actuality the then-22-year-old Eaglin had already been playing in electric blues andRead More

NICK DERISO: Charmaine Neville – yes, she’s one of those Nevilles – didn’t want to be a singer. She wanted to tell jokes. Convinced to go another way, Neville initially split the difference. She sang funny songs. “When I was a kid, when ‘The Flintstones’ would come on TV, IRead More

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS — Musicians in white shirts and black pants led a hearse carrying the body of clarinetist Alvin Batiste through the streets of New Orleans on Saturday, and hundreds of mourners attached themselves to the jazz funeral honoring one of the city’s most revered musicians. In the morning,Read More

Cowboy Mouth — announced this week as one of the many featured bands at the 2007 Jazz and Heritage Festival in New Orleans — emerged in the early 1990s as a rugged, but distinctly popular rock alternative to the typical fiddle-and-rubboard fare associated with Louisiana music. Not that its NewRead More