TUNE-UP It was a good feeling for me to see that "Fats" Domino was among those stars chosen to perform during the re-starting of the celebrated New Orleans Jazz Festival last week.
Domino has never been a personal favorite of mine, largely because I stem from a slightly earlier era is which the use of the term "Fats" in music applied exclusively to "Fats" Waller who was a musical force to be reckoned with. I felt, and feel, that much of the material Domino does so well is not quite of the New Orleans jazz style, but more of what the genre has been becoming.
Domino was just the right choice to hold up as symbolic of defiance against such encroaching factors as the hurricane, flood and great losses sustained. And, we did the proper thing last Sunday when he was scheduled to be on stage,by appearing-though ill - to personally thank people present for all they had done to make him what he has become and to encourage to work hard to restore the festival. He was a very real victim of the natural disaster, having lost home in the desolated North Ward of the ;ten musical instruments, plus his entire silver and platinum recording recognitions and other mementos of his career.
He was speaking to other people who can do something about it all,too. Bruce Springsteen was there; Bob Dylan, Jimmy Buffet,Paul Simon as well as Irma Thomas, the soul singer. Even if these singers, composers, producers do not seem to fit the exact street definitions of what you think the New Orleans ought to be, they are brethren of a common cause to sustain a section of jazz which is so typically American.
Pete Fountain was there, of course as a good example of how someone of special talent can find an authentic place in the New Orleans heritage. Local artists Art Neville and his three brothers were there in essence as they have always been. Irma Thomas sang "In the Middle Of It All", too. Domino, who had severe heart surgery done this past season served as a key to it all in a real sense and his being present will be remembered and,I hope, appreciated.
It is not at all disturbing that this years attendance at the Festival was smaller than the usual brag-about-it figures, but the Jazz Festival was,truly, re-launched and will do well, I feel, in this era of electric guitars and digital innovations. We are already well into a next pop music world! The Jazz era needs constant redefinition to sustain its unique characteristics and New Orleans can be the focal point where such music can be sustained and properly memorialized.
A.L.M. May 9, 2006 [c467wds]
