Some notes on The Jon Cleary Show #21
Allen and the Meters
Thank you all for tuning into the show. Apologies to those fans in the States that can’t access it but I hope you can still enjoy the content, if not the commentary. Here are some notes on four of the tunes from this week’s show. Four tunes that, as you will see, have a connection.
The Meters - “Cardova”
I’ve no idea why this tune is titled ‘Cardova’. George Porter, the Meters bass player, told me that in those days, the late 60s, the band had no say in giving their tunes titles; that was left to Marshall Seahorn, Allen Toussaint’s business partner. Some of them were named after racehorses, I seem to remember, and this might have been one of them.
This stage of the Meters sound represents the change that was taking place in the evolution of New Orleans music in the post 50s heyday of Fats Domino and Little Richard. Since the invention of teenagers, young people the world over have eagerly embraced the novelty of the new. If it’s different from what their parents listen to, they will claim it, though when it’s borne out of a folk music it will never stray far in its essence.
Music is the soundtrack of our adolescence, and the people who make records and sell music for a profit are always looking for a hit; hits put money in pockets. The popular music of New Orleans has continually evolved with the times. The first New Orleans jazz record was ‘Livery Stable Blues’ by the Original Dixieland band in 1917. Play it to a teenager now and they’d probably fall about laughing but to a young adult over a hundred years ago, Tailgate blues was the coolest, rockingest sound you’d ever heard coming out of an Edison phonograph speaker. That sound was driven by a drum kit.
Stylistic changes in the music were often technology driven. The first drum kit appears when New Orleans drummer Dee Dee Chandler invents a rudimentary foot pedal for the big bass drum around 1895. Rig up some stands for a snare drum and some cymbals and now you have one person in charge of the rhythm -sitting down. Problem was that the poor old double bass players and guitarists were now getting drowned out. When the electric guitar was invented, guitarists could turn up but now the upright bass players fingers were getting blisters in the effort to keep up and be heard. The electric bass came out in ‘52 and ‘Luscious’ Lloyd Lambert was the first guy to use one on a recording session in New Orleans.
Bands were getting louder, bigger and heavier and by this time the piano, which had originally been the loudest instrument in the band, was now the quietest and was becoming inaudible. Art Neville’s early records had featured him hammering the piano keys (check out his crazy playing on ‘Light’s out by Jerry Burne) and his style had been influenced by his piano playing elders, Professor Longhair, Huey Smith and Eddie Bo, but things were about to change.
