New Orleans gears up for Jazz Fest

By Larry Blumenfeld

NEW YORK (Billboard) - Eight months after the floods following

Hurricane Katrina ravaged New Orleans in 2005, there was at least one

hard, good fact regarding a threatened music scene: the annual New

Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival took place at its customary Mid-City

Fair Grounds site.

Familiar favorites, from Buckwheat Zydeco to pheasant-and-quail

andouille gumbo were served up. Local heroes like singer John Boutte

and national ones like Bruce Springsteen brought audience members to

joyful tears.

"I remember talking to Mitch Landrieu, the lieutenant governor,"

festival producer Quint Davis says from his office in New Orleans. "It

was January, and we weren't sure if we could mount the event. And he

told me, 'Not having the festival is not an option.' I knew what he

meant. And I knew that if we put this big, soul-generating battery on

and, for two weekends, people could plug in, it would mean something."

The festival also generated $300 million in city revenue last year;

that meant something too.

Now, more than two years later, in a city rebuilding only in troubled

fits and starts, the festival arrives again (April 25-27 and May 1-4)

with another positive jolt. The 2008 Jazz Fest marks the return of the

Neville Brothers, who have not played the event since Katrina, and the

festival's full seven-day schedule.

Davis says the festival's fortunes now draw heavily on the support of

its corporate underwriter, Shell Oil, which came onboard as title

sponsor in Katrina's wake. It has also been aligned since 2005 with AEG

Live, which has led to the booking of headliners with broad appeal.

This year's crop ranges from Billy Joel to Stevie Wonder, Santana to

Diana Krall. Yet for many in attendance, especially New Orleans

residents, it's the local heroes that define the event -- none perhaps

more so than the Nevilles.

"There are still over 100,000 people who are estranged from NOLA, whose

families are separated," Davis says. "To me, the Nevilles embody and

represent those people."

And tucked in between Jazz Fest's two weekends is another

soul-generating spark--the two-day Ponderosa Stomp.

"It's a complete narrative of the roots of American music," founder Ira

Padnos says, "or, more simply, the ultimate jukebox -- all killer, no

filler."

A veteran New Orleans label is also celebrating a milestone as Jazz

Fest draws near. In 2006, when the event's CD tent was in doubt, Mark

Samuels, the man behind Basin Street Records, jumped in to fill that

void. It was one of many steps along a challenging post-Katrina road

for Samuels, his family and the label he founded, whose recording

artist family includes trumpeters Kermit Ruffins and Irvin Mayfield,

clarinetist Michael White and pianist Henry Butler.

When Samuels returned to New Orleans in 2005, he found his home in the

Lakeview section and his office on Canal Street virtually wiped out.

Suddenly, all that was up and running was the label's Web site. Though

Samuels relocated with his three children for a while to Texas, he was

determined to return. He began issuing missives online. By mid-2006, he

had restored the second story of his home and was running the company

out of the gutted ground floor, surrounded by whatever inventory had

survived.

With four new CDs this spring -- from Mayfield, Butler, White and

singer Theresa Andersson -- Basin Street returns to issuing new music

and marks its 10th anniversary. It's an inspiring story of personal

tenacity and one more significant piece of the New Orleans cultural

puzzle back in place.

Reuters/Billboard