Derek Bridges

115 Articles

Derek Bridges lives in New Orleans, trading in words and pictures. A carpetbagger of long standing, he grew up in the top right corner of IL and later went to college in the middle cornfield part. He has also lived in MS and FL, for educational purposes only, and was diasporized for a time in TX.

High Society Rag

Derek Bridges
2 Min Read

From Subversive Sounds: Race and the Birth of Jazz in New Orleans by Charles B. Hersch (University of Chicago Press, 2008, pages 180-182):

The small group transformation of ragtime through the blues tradition, hauling it onto the streets where it marched, can be seen in a performance of High Society Rag by King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band, featuring a young Louis Armstrong. This tune defined New Orleans jazz, for as Lee Collins put it, ‘at that time when you heard a clarinet play High Society you didn’t ask him where he was from. You knew he was from New Orleans …’

 

Derek Bridges, Music, New Orleans

From Motown to The Big Easy: Interview with Musician & Photographer Joseph Crachiola, part 2

Derek Bridges
21 Min Read

  Please go here to read part 1 of my interview with Joseph Crachiola. It sounds like for most of your life you’ve identified primarily as a photographer rather than as a musician, or am I misreading that? Well, I don’t know. Photography was my…

Derek Bridges, Music, New Orleans, Profiles & Interviews

From Motown to The Big Easy: Interview with Musician & Photographer Joseph Crachiola, part 1

Derek Bridges
21 Min Read

Joseph Crachiola is from a small town outside Detroit that got swallowed up by the suburbs (same story for me, except replace Detroit with Chicago). He worked 15 years for suburban Detroit newspapers and 22 years as a corporate photographer before he got bought out and decided to move to New Orleans about 2 years ago. He recently served as road manager for the Pinettes Brass Band in Turkey, and photographed the Umbria Jazz Festival in Perugia, Italy.

Derek Bridges, Music, New Orleans, Profiles & Interviews

Controversy Dogs Treme

Derek Bridges
2 Min Read

The producers of HBO’s Treme have gone into crisis mode to tamp down another controversy.  Fresh off the heels of the brouhaha that ensued when houses depicted in the advertising campaign promoting the first season of Treme were demolished following a high profile spat between Treme creator David Simon and New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu over a feeble attempt by preservationists and Treme producers to save the doomed structures, preservationists have now turned their attention to the chair featured in the advertising campaign for the second season of Treme.

Preservationists contend the chair was once sat in by Hokie Mokie, considered by many the “King of Jazz” for a brief period in the 1940s. Mokie apparently sat in the chair during a rent party in the Back ‘O Town neighborhood later essentially mowed over by urban renewal projects in the 1960s.

Derek Bridges, Fiction, New Orleans

Analia Saban at Thomas Solomon Gallery

Derek Bridges
1 Min Read

From Dave Pagel’s Los Angeles Times review of Analia Saban‘s “Grayscale”:

The Argentina-born, Los Angeles-based painter’s second solo show, at Thomas Solomon Gallery, does not begin with grand notions, abstract ideas or idealized fictions. Instead, the 13 intimately scaled works that make up “Grayscale” start with stuff: physical substances that, in the right combination, become paintings you never tire of scrutinizing.

Analia Saban, Art
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