Smithsonian Folkways Releases 5-Disc Epic Box Set of
Louisiana Music Legends
Celebrates 50 Years of New Orleans Jazz Fest
Key Musical
Legends in the Box Set Include Trombone Shorty, Irma Thomas, Big
Freedia, Professor Longhair, The Neville Brothers, Allen Toussaint, Dr.
John, Kermit Ruffins, Terence Blanchard, Preservation Hall Jazz Band,
Champion Jack Dupree, Buckwheat Zydeco, and more
Coverage from Rolling Stone, The FADER, Billboard, Bandcamp, Newsweek, Relix, LA Times, Jazziz, All About Jazz, and
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For 50 years, the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage
Festival,
known to Fest-goers as simply Jazz Fest, has brought the sights, sounds, and
tastes of the Big Easy to millions of festival goers. In celebration of
Jazz Fest’s golden anniversary, venerable record label Smithsonian
Folkways is proud to
present a comprehensive box set of live recordings from the festival’s
past. The five discs in Jazz Fest: The New Orleans
Jazz & Heritage Festival present the sounds of the festival as you’d hear them while
wandering across the 145 acres of the New Orleans Fair Grounds Race
Track in the Gentilly neighborhood.
Though the festival attracts some of
the biggest rock stars on the planet, the focus of this ambitious new
box set is on the roots of Louisiana music, which comprise the vast
majority of the festival’s bookings, from Jazz to Bounce, Zydeco to
Gospel, Brass Bands to R&B. Carefully selected from countless hours
of live recordings, the box set includes unreleased material spanning
the years 1974 to 2016 and features key moments with celebrated artists
like Trombone Shorty, Irma Thomas, Big Freedia, Professor Longhair, The Neville Brothers, Allen Toussaint (solo and in a duet with Bonnie
Raitt), Dr.
John, Kermit
Ruffins, Terence
Blanchard, Preservation
Hall Jazz Band, Champion
Jack Dupree, and Buckwheat
Zydeco, among many
others. The music is accompanied by a 135-page book, filled with
exclusive photographs drawn from the archives of the New Orleans Jazz
& Heritage Foundation, The Historic New Orleans Collection and
independent photographers, as well as historical essays by journalist
Keith Spera and
author Karen Celestan, a retrospective of the music heard at
Jazz Fest by Robert H. Cataliotti, and in-depth notes by Jeff
Place and Huib
Schippers of
Smithsonian Folkways, New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Foundation
archivist Rachel Lyons, WWOZ’s Dave Ankers, and Jon Pareles of the New York Times.
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“We are simply
delighted with this collaboration,” says Smithsonian Folkways director
and curator Huib
Schippers.
“It immediately made sense to us as soon as we started discussing it.
There is a compelling and beautiful synergy between the first fifty
years of an iconic music festival and a 70-year old record label
committed to documenting and celebrating this country’s sound legacy
and keeping it available in perpetuity, in whatever format, for a
listenership of 230 million and growing. We are so pleased that we can
bring some of the amazing sounds and sights and impressions from New
Orleans to new and familiar audiences.”
The box set starts
with the song “Indian Red,” sung here by The Golden Eagles, a song
traditionally sung at the opening of iconic Mardi Gras Indian parades
and gatherings. And it ends, as the festival did for many years, with a
rousing version of “Amazing Grace.” Between these bookends, five albums
of music, taken from WWOZ radio recordings and live stage recordings,
bring us some of the best Louisiana artists to ever grace the stage.
Each track was selected by a committee of individuals who know the 50 year
history of the festival intimately. The set recreates the joy and
spirited energy of Jazz Fest, placing each listener on the grounds of
the festival, walking between stages, discovering new music and great
moments. Most of these recordings have never been released commercially
and sparkle with life. Jazz Fest: The New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival is an immersive
experience, both for listeners discovering the festival for the first
time and for some of the millions who’ve been there in person.
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Champion Jack
Dupree & Allen Toussaint
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Musical genres roll and flow across the
Fair Grounds at Jazz Fest, and the varied arrangements of the discs
showcase this musical diversity. Disc One strolls
through the powerful jazz offerings at the festival, with a festive jam
from New Orleans saxophonist Donald Harrison Jr and a racing traditional jazz tribute to
Louis Armstrong from Kermit Ruffins, plus boogie-woogie piano from Champion
Jack Dupree. Discs
Two and Three guide
the listener through Jazz Fest’s many ties to New Orleans blues, soul,
and R&B, from the legendary Allen Toussaint to definitive soul singer Irma
Thomas, with detours
to virtuoso guitarist Snooks Eaglin, and New Orleans soul natives Dixie
Cups. Highlights
include the great Dr. John on “Litanie des Saints,” and a remarkably
spirited cover of “My Bucket’s Got A Hole In It” from Preservation
Hall Jazz Band.
Gospel deep dives come in Disc Three with a powerful performance of “Old Rugged
Cross” from Irma Thomas, and inspired sets by the Zion
Harmonizers and Johnson
Extension. Disc
Four brings the
listener to the Cajun and Zydeco Fais-Do-Do stage, with sets from Buckwheat
Zydeco, Boozoo
Chavis, The
Savoy Family Cajun Band,
and Beausoleil, before moving to the mainstage and major live sets from The
Neville Brothers and
Allen Toussaint & Bonnie Raitt. Disc Five is the most genre-smashing selection,
with mainstage sets including a surprising cover of “Take the ‘A’
Train” from blues guitarist Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown, and a burning “Fire on the Bayou” from The
funky Meters. As a
city that’s always birthed new American music forms, New Orleans’
hip-hop is paid homage to here with a blazing set from Bounce
ambassador Big Freedia.
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To thrive for
fifty years, any festival needs to learn how to fight and survive, and
some of the story of this box set speaks to these battles for cultural
survival. The indelible impact of Hurricane Katrina, which shook the
festival itself and almost led to its cancellation, echoes through
these selections. New Orleans singer John Boutté’s impassioned reworking of the song
“Louisiana 1927” is one of the most powerful moments in the set, and,
to this day, in the festival’s history. Sonny
Landreth’s “Blue
Tarp Blues” speaks to the devastation of Katrina as well. Beyond
Katrina, it’s been a fight to keep the festival going so long with so
many cultural changes and the economic pressures on festivals today.
The foundational vision of Jazz Fest that has helped it endure so long
is a boundless love for the music and people of New Orleans and
Louisiana. It seems like a simple idea for a festival’s core mission,
but Jazz Fest’s embrace of little known but locally celebrated musical
geniuses like Professor Longhair or Dr. John is still radically out of step with the
profit-driven world of big music festivals. Though later years have
seen huge headliners on the main stage, there’s a humility to everyone
who performs at Jazz Fest, no matter how famous, a recognition that New
Orleans is the birthplace of American music.
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Jazz Fest: The New
Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival was created by The New Orleans Jazz & Heritage
Foundation,
utilizing its Archive and with the assistance of the Jazz &
Heritage radio station WWOZ; the production was made possible through
the generous support of The Helis Foundation, a Louisiana family foundation dedicated
to increasing access to the arts. The Helis Foundation has pledged to
donate copies of the box set to every branch of New Orleans Public
Library, ensuring all citizens of New Orleans can access this
unparalleled collection.
The
New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival presented by Shell is a co-production of Festival
Productions Louisiana, LLC. (a wholly owned subsidiary of Festival
Productions, Inc.-New Orleans) and AEG Louisiana Production, LLC. (a
subsidiary of AEG Presents).
*****
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