Here is some flip cam video I shot at the recent Stomp gala. It’s not the greatest- but it will give you an idea of what went down.
The video features music by Lil Buck Sinegal and the Top Cats with Stanley Buckwheat Zydeco Dural, Bobby Allen, Jay Chevalier, Frogman Henry, Al Carnival Time Johnson, and Dave Bartholomew. Others appearances include Wardell Quezergue, Dr. John, Harold Battiste and Warren Storm.
The Louisiana State Museum Foundation honored legendary producer Dave Bartholomew, studio owner Cosimo Matassa and the Ponderosa Stomp Foundation recently at the Cabildo in New Orleans. The event marked the 60th anniversary of the Fats Domino release “The Fat Man,” widely considered the first rock ‘n’ roll record, which Bartholomew arranged and Domino recorded at Matassa’s J&M Recording Studio. Currently on display in the museum is “The Secret History of Louisiana Rock ‘n’ Roll,” which was curated by the Ponderosa Stomp and features exhibits about Domino, Bartholomew and Matassa’s contributions to early rock ‘n’ roll.
Stomp friend/photographer Jacob Blickenstaff, reporting for the blog Brooklyn Vegan, notes, among other great moments, the “Hard To Handle” cover, when Paul Schaffer sat in with Stax veteran William Bell.
Before the event got underway, the New York Post weighed in with a lengthy preview.
“The third night of the inaugural Lincoln Center edition of the Ponderosa Stomp — the annual spring resurrection of forgotten roots-rock and R&B heroes and heroines, founded and held in New Orleans — was an oddly formal affair, compared to the outdoor soul and rockabilly shows presented earlier in the week. ‘Everybody get on your feet/You make me nervous when you’re in your seat,’ Robert Parker sang on Sunday night in a well-preserved voice at the start of his 1966 hit ‘Barefootin’,’ one of the many Crescent City R&B classics associated with the evening’s honoree, producer-arranger-songwriter Wardell Quezergue. But sitting down is where the otherwise delighted audience at Alice Tully Hall stayed during most of the two-hour revue. In New Orleans, when a song like that is in the air, anything short of a shimmy is against the law.
But Quezergue, who turns 80 this year, deserves the lofty setting. In the Sixties and Seventies, he earned the nickname ‘The Creole Beethoven’ for his masterful blend of New Orleans rhythms and commercial wisdom in bedrock soul recordings such as Earl King’s ‘Trick Bag’ (1962), Professor Longhair”s ‘Big Chief’ (1964) and King Floyd’s ‘Groove Me’ (1970), then on mainstream collaborations with Paul Simon and Willie Nelson. At Lincoln Center, Quezergue conducted a ten-piece band from a chair as more than half a dozen of his original charges, including Dr. John, the Dixie Cups, Jean Knight and Tammy Lynn, recreated their biggest hits with him.”
And Jon Pareles covered the event for the New York Times, writing in part that, “the Dixie Cups, the New Orleans girl group, had distributed napkins before the concert, to be waved over the New Orleans second-line parade beat, and they got the audience up and dancing for ‘Iko Iko,’ which they turned into a medley of Mardi Gras songs and ‘When the Saints Go Marching In.’ After their segment, Rosa Hawkins of the Dixie Cups turned to Mr. Quezergue and said, ‘Thanks for the hits.’”
