Great Live Moments - Clarence Gatemouth Brown

May 1, 2008. Posted by Joshua Jackson.

Add new comment | Filed under: 2005 new orleans jazz and heritage festival, b b king, beale street, blues club, clarence gatemouth brown, Listening Post, Live Music, lobby fountain, mallard ducks, memphis tennessee, new orleans jazz, new orleans jazz and heritage festival, npr, peabody hotel, photojournalism, Places and Spaces, program directors, public radio program, strange things, waft, wbgo, webstream, wwoz

This photo of B.B. King and Clarence Gatemouth Brown was taken at the 2005 New Orleans Jazz And Heritage Festival. It's from "Last Days of Fame," a powerful piece of photojournalism by Jennifer Zdon.

Gatemouth and I shared a birthday, though we were separated by half a century. I first met him at WWOZ in New Orleans. He sat in our tiny on-air studio, his head buried beneath a black Stetson, his hands wrapped around a small pipe. The occasional waft of an illicit substance. This must explain the fact that, as Michael Bourne once discovered, Gatemouth Brown loves to eat grape jelly on everything...including steak. Strange things happen.

In 1999, I attended the Public Radio Program Directors conference in Memphis, Tennessee. The Peabody Hotel, as I recall, where mallard ducks marched through the hotel hallway (led by a man in a tuxedo, suggesting penguin not duck) and climbed a flight of custom-made steps into the lobby fountain. This was part of the hotel's daily schedule. Strange things happen.

I went to BB King's Blues Club on Beale street one night. Gatemouth Brown was performing live. WBGO and JazzSet were broadcasting the show. NPR's Bettina Owens threw a huge party to celebrate the fact that this concert was NPR's first live webstream! I had no relationship whatsoever with any of this, other than kid spectator. One year later, however, I was working on an NPR show. And the next year, I started working at WBGO. Strange things happen.
-Josh

Listen to Gatemouth perform "Strange Things Happen," from the WBGO Archives.

© 2008 WBGO

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Studio Session - Combo Nuvo @ NYU

April 30, 2008. Posted by Joshua Jackson.

Add new comment | Filed under: clive davis, jim anderson, Listening Post, Live Music, music, new york university, studio session, Studio Sessions, wbgo

On Monday, I went to New York University for a studio session with Combo Nuvo.
Thanks to Jim Anderson and to the students at the Clive Davis Department of Recorded Music, we captured a beautiful performance.
Listen to the Combo Nuvo session.
-Josh

© 2008 WBGO

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Great Live Moments - Hilton Ruiz

April 30, 2008. Posted by Joshua Jackson.

Add new comment | Filed under: benefit, benny golson, bourbon street, clifford, dizzy gillespie, hilton ruiz, hometown, hurricane katrina victims, Jazz Alive, jazz ballads, Listening Post, Live Music, lyrics, new orleans, performance studio, wbgo

So how can we say something so real has really gone away?
I hear him now, I always will
Believe me I remember Hilton still.

Those are actually the lyrics to "I Remember Clifford," one of the enduring jazz ballads by Benny Golson. With one modification. The name.
It should not go unnoticed that nearly two years ago, Hilton Ruiz lay unconscious on Bourbon Street in my hometown. What particularly stings me is that he was in New Orleans working on a benefit CD for and video about Hurricane Katrina victims.

It reminds me of a quote attributed to Dizzy Gillespie:
“Men have died for this music. You can’t get more serious than that.”

In 1986, Hilton Ruiz played the Steinway B in our performance studio.
Listen to "I Remember Clifford" from the WBGO Archives.

-Josh

© 2008 WBGO

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