The right trip, but . . .

Dance! Dance! Dance! Dance!

The New Orleans Jazz Fest has to be seen to be believed. It’s held on the grounds of a racetrack. There are eleven stages on each of which music plays non-stop from eleven in the morning to seven at night, one act after another, almost all of which are worth a listen. So you have to chose and dash between the venues efficiently.

My friends Adrienne and Bill (on the left in the picture above) are New Orleans residents and old hands at Fest-going. They know that the quickest (if not always the shortest) route between stages is often the track itself, where the crowds are thinnest.

Bill is also an expert on New Orleans music, and roots music in general, and thus an invaluable guide to the choice acts.  Paul Zahl (on the right in the photo) and I would have been lost without his advice.

Between the tented and open-air stages are food booths serving first-rate Louisiana dishes — cochon de lait po’ boys (and just about every other variety of the sandwich), beignets with café au lait, and many crawfish concoctions, including crawfish in a sack (a crisp and beautifully sculpted pastry pouch).

It’s overwhelming. At the end of a day there (and The Jazz Fest runs for seven days) you find yourself repeating the famous Cajun complaint — “These good times are killing me!”

. . . to Mr. Bob Dylan, forever old, forever young.

Dylan was 21 when this picture was taken, I was 12.  I heard my first Dylan album later that year, when I was 13 and Dylan was 22.  That seemed like a huge age difference at the time, but now that Dylan is 71 and I’m 62, he feels like a contemporary.  In any case, it’s been a blessing to grow old with him — a spirit guide like no other.

I feel giddy already.

The first time I ever heard Levon Helm’s voice was on a jukebox in a bar in New York City in the summer of 1968. That voice took me home, back to the South, where I was born. The song was “The Weight”, and I’d never heard anything quite like it. My friends and I were startled by it, put another quarter in the machine and played it again. The record sounded like roots music, sort of, like Dylan, sort of — like the past and the future tripping off in a graceful dance, in perfect harmony with each other. You got used to surprises in 1968 — but hearing this record was one of the most delightful of them. It made me think, “America is going to be all right.”

And maybe some sweet day you will walk that Milky Way . . .

Goodbye, Levon, and thanks.

Peggy Lee lived near Frank Sinatra in Hollywood and, according to Sinatra’s valet, would come spend the night with Sinatra when she was feeling down.  Sinatra was not that attracted to her, again according to the valet, but felt that making love to her was a form of service to a friend.  Nice work if you can get it.

You can sense the intimacy in the televised performance above, which is kind of sublime.  Lee and Sinatra were both brilliant at subtle off-beat phrasing.  With Sinatra it was usually in the service of the lyric, its meaning and emotion — with Lee more often in the service of a cool attitude, a hip style.  It’s wonderful to hear them playing off each other in the clip, each trying to anticipate and complement what the other is going to do.  It’s a bit like jazz improvisation, or good sex.

(Clip via Facebook friend Jerry Rosenblum, dish via George Jacobs, the valet . . .)