FoodMusicJustice.com

I love the music of places like Cuba and Brazil and God knows they have had a massive influence on the course of world music.

But let’s look at a few numbers for perspective.

The current population of Brazil is over 191 million people (191.000.000.)

Cuba has over 11 million (11,000,000)

New Orleans, at the height of its population (roughly 1960) had less than one million, 627,000 to be exact.

Today, after the federal levee catastrophe, the city is estimated to have something over 300,000.

So let’s line it up:

Brazil - 191,000,000
Cuba - 11,000,000
New Orleans - 300,000

For people who like percentages this means that New Orleans is only 00.15 % of the population of Brazil and only 2.7% of the population of Cuba.

Now, music is not a competition and the point of all of this is not to rank places and people by their importance, but it does illustrate a point about little New Orleans.

Jazz, R & B, rock and roll, funk, and a whole bunch of other varieties of music that didn’t get a name that stuck…no place on earth in the modern era has ever cranked out as much music as New Orleans.

Ernie K-Doe may have been right when he said it:

“I’m not certain, but I’m almost positive that all music came from New Orleans.”

Manchester, New Orleans’ sister city, which has also had a disproportionate influence on the course of popular music, has a population of less than 500,000.

Big things come in small packages.

For a while there, this Manchester band was second only to the Beatles.

During their six years in the sun, they racked up twenty British hits and seventeen US ones.

Their first EP “Hermania” which came out in January 1965 included two New Orleans R&B covers - Frankie Ford’s “Sea Cruise” and Ernie K. Doe’s “Mother-In-Law”

Reference:

http://www.hermanshermits.com/articles/musicmags/mar87_rc_p2.html

From an article about Henry James Allen, Jr, jazz great

“In the fall of 1959 Red accompanied Kid Ory and his Dixielanders to Europe - it was Red’s first visit and he enjoyed it immensely, as did European audiences, reviewers, and critics. Red was particularly well-received in Britain and would return again in 1963 and 1964, this time to play with the Alex Welsh Band. During the ‘64 tour, he received an award in Manchester for his contributions to jazz music.”

Source http://www.libertyhall.com/red.html

New Orleans is easily the most written about music city in the world.

Manchester is solidly in #2.

The latest: “The North Will Rise Again” about the Manchester music scene from 1976 to 2008 by musician and writer John Robb,

“The Buzzcocks. Joy Division. The Fall. The Smiths. The Stone Roses. The Happy Mondays. Oasis. Manchester has proved to be an endlessly rich seam of pop-music talent over the last 30 years.”

http://www.amazon.co.uk/North-Will-Rise-Again-Manchester/dp/1845134176

New Orleans and Manchester have a history together that goes way back - but everyone forgets because no one on the US side of the ocean asks the question:

“Where did the cotton from New Orleans go?”

To Manchester, where textile mill workers - including children as young as five - faced conditions every bit as brutal as Delta slavery.

In spite of their own situation, Manchester workers stood in solidarity with enslaved Africans in America and called for Abolition.

Today, victimized by government corruption, incompetence and neglect on an epic scale, the people of New Orleans have been beaten, but are not bowed.

If ever there were a time for Mancunians who love the beat to turn their eyes back to New Orleans, now’s the time.

Every beat in popular music - jazz, R & B, rock and roll, funk - originated on a drum kit in New Orleans.

Chicago and Detroit? Musical nephews of the Big Uncle Big Easy. Look it up…and share the video.

Manchester loves New Orleans

Thanks to videographers Hubie Vigreaux, Ken McCarthy, and YouTubers. Edit by Matthew Lipscomb and Ken McCarthy.

Special thanks to A Guy Called Gerald.

Info about the upcoming Food Music Justice program in Manchester, UK is here:

http://www.ChuckPerkinsVoices.com

The original

From Coney Island’s 2008 Mermaid Parade

Here Come the Girls” was written and produced by Allen Toussaint. The Meters provided the funk.

From New Orleans to the UK to New York…

How often has the arc of popular culture traveled this way?

For example, did you know that the first song John Lennon ever learned to play on the guitar was Fats Domino’s “Ain’t That a Shame.”

Here are the CORRECT lyrics to “Here Come the Girls”…

There’s lots of laughably bad transcriptions out there. This may be only place on the Internet you can get them straight.

“Here Come The Girls” Lyrics

Chorus
Here come the Girls! (Girls, Girls, Girls-Girls)
Here come the Girls! (Girls, Girls, Girls-Girls)

Looking so good, its a doggone shame, that they couldn’t all be mine.
Looking so pretty, its a doggone pity - Oh! - you’re looking so fine. (Fine)

Look out brother. Let me get one, a little closer to the one I love.
Anything better than the opposite sex they must have kept it up above.

Chorus
Here come the Girls! (Girls, Girls, Girls-Girls)
Here come the Girls! (Girls, Girls, Girls-Girls)

I can live without coffee, I can live without tea.
And I’m living without the honeybee.
Now the Philly Steak,
I can leave or take,
but the girls are part of me!

And oh water.
I don’t need no lemonade.
But to live without girls,
I can’t live without girls,
It’s like a man with a hole in his head.

Chorus
Here come the Girls!
Here come the Girls!
Here come the Girls! (Girls, Girls, Girls-Girls)
Here come the Girls! (Girls, Girls, Girls-Girls)

Going out of my head, (Hey!)
While the foxes do their thing, (Hoo-hoo-hoo!)
You make me feel so good inside,
I got to jump up and sing! (Aaah!)

Naa, naa, naa, naa!
Naa, naa, naa!
Naa, naa, naa, naa!
Naa-naa-nana-na!
Naa, naa, naa, naa!
Naa, naa-nana, na!
Naa, naa, naa, naa!
Naa-naa-nana-na!

OOOOoooooooOOOHH!
I’m not saying I can live on love alone.
OOOOoooooooOOOHH!
But that’s the only thing that turn me on.
OOOOoooooooOOOHH!
I was born to be free just once!
Freedom of choice,
Ring that bell,
Give all the girls to me!

Chorus
Here come the Girls!
(Girls, Girls, Girls!)
Here come the Girls!
(Girls, Girls, Girls!)
Here come the girls!
(OOOOOOOHHHH! waaaah!)
Here come the girls!
(I don’t need…no lemonade!)
Here come the girls!
(girls!)
Here come the girls!

Here come the girls!

Here come the girls!

(I’m taking about them fine foxes)

Here come the girls!

(Oooh they really turn me on)

Here come the girls

(Repeats until fade)

— All in all, a very apt anthem for the Mermaid Parade

It’s a mystery - to the Times-Picayune at least - why police harassment of backstreet culture in New Orleans continues, and who is behind it and why.

First, in every city that I know, the mayor runs the police because it’s the mayor who appoints the police chief. One word from the mayor and the word would trickle down: leave the Indians and second lines alone, or if there is a reason for communicating, do it with the same respect you’d afford people attending the opera or symphony.

Treme seems to be the battleground now. It must have to do with real estate and the desire of the city to “gentrify” north of Rampart. Why they think it’s necessary to kill the culture of the Treme in the process - one of the most culturally significant places in North America (and the world) - is another great American mystery.

Destroy what’s great to replace it with…what exactly?

Click here to read the latest police outrage

Cellist Helen Gillet - a New Orleanian by way of Belgium, Singapore, Japan and Chicago - was a renter in pre-Katrina times.

She came home in October 2005 to a roofless apartment inhabited by wildlife.

Now she is a home owner through the Habitat for Humanity Musician’s Village program.

Click here for more about Helen Gillet
Helen Sings with Vavavoom

In the spirit of “anything worth doing, is worth doing badly,” I got on my bicycle on a slow night on Frenchman Street and one-handed it with my $95 video camera.

Yes, it could be done a lot better. Consider it a rough sketch, a very rough sketch.

Caught this at the Sound Cafe and glad I did.

The video doesn’t begin to do it justice.

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