They call him Red. He’s a rooster that’s claimed as his territory the block of Washington Avenue…
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Mojada, Part IV
Reuniting with Dad
After staying with my grandparents for a month in Santa Ana California we flew to Chicago in April to be with our dad. We arrived at O’Hare airport and when we saw Dad, we were simply ecstatic. I thought. “We are finally here with dad.” It is not an easy transition for someone when they first move from one place to another. Imagine how you have felt when you have moved from one house to another or from living at home to living in a dorm. It’s strange. You are entering a complete new world, new culture, new customs, new everything. My dad had rented an apartment for us to live in. He used to live with my uncle and two other men in a different apartment, but when he found out we were coming he made arrangements so that we could have our own place. It was barely furnished and I remember we had to use buckets as chair whenever we ate and our dining table was also the center table in the living room. We definitely did not have much but through my dad’s hard work and support from my grandmother our almost empty apartment began to look like home. Then again I think that us being together was sufficient to call it home.
I don’t remember whose grandmother it was I went with Graydon to help fix a leaky tap….
Coco Robicheaux passed away Friday evening. Much has been written about the man, his music, his artistry, his character and his seemingly mythical background. Much more will be written. Many of us spent yesterday between tears and laughter, blaring his music through our homes to let him know we’re here thinking about him. I double checked my files to be sure that I hadn’t lost the 40 minute live set I recorded on my phone at Mimi’s a couple months ago. I regretted never having given him the eagle feather I had told him I’d bring when I saw him next. I remembered that the ancients believed there is a four day window between the time the soul leaves the body and its transition to the higher realms. I’ll have to light a candle for him today so he sees it along the way.
Fringe Fest is this week, which you no doubt know unless your head has been under a rock. As usual, I scoured the list of shows, then culled them, then arranged them by time and location. It’s a difficult process given so many interesting offerings. Several pieces really stood out and one I was determined not to miss started off last night at NOCCA with Never Fight a Shark in Water.
To say it was moving is to understate things. To say it was strong is still weak. What I saw was nothing short of the personification of sheer will, faith and optimism walking around in front of me in the person of Greg Bright.
To give you some background, in 1975 Greg Bright, then 20 years old, and Earl Truvia, 17, went to bed one night in the Calliope Projects. Later that night with the requisite banging on the door and shouted threats to open up, Greg was arrested for the murder of a 15 year old boy. After a Kafka-esque trial including an incompetent court appointed attorney, withheld evidence, testimony against him by a paid schizophrenic heroin addict testifying under a false name due to her own criminal record he was convicted and sentenced to life in prison. Did I mention that he and his co-defendent, Earl Truvia, didn’t even know each other?
I fear the management team at the Black & Gold Wash & Fold has grown complacent.
Bluesy cornetist Chris Kelly, most popular with the downtrodden and ratty, “always ended his performances with the hymn ‘When the Saints Go Marching In,’ played, contrary to modern practice, as a ‘sacred song’—slowly” (p. 169).
Dark clouds hang over White Sox Nation.
The final indignity of a season of disappointments will likely soon come, with the contract of stellar lefthander Mark Buehrle expiring today with the end of the 2011 season. With the Sox poised to go into rebuilding mode, it is doubtful the free agent pitcher is part of the team plans moving forward. And that is a shame.
Over the past 11 seasons, Buehrle has been hands-down my favorite player in baseball. For a fan who treats baseball like his religion, this off-season is going to hurt. Last night’s performance — 7 innings, no runs, no walks and pitching out of jams caused by two errors — was typical of the man who can barely hit 89 MPH on the radar gun, yet has consistently fooled the best hitters in baseball with his great control and ability to throw first-pitch strikes. A tater served up by reliever Jesse Crain was the only run allowed in a hollow 2-1 victory.
A few years ago I started noticing many of my photos were getting uploaded to Wikimedia Commons–which was perfectly legit as I’d uploaded them to flickr using a Creative Commons license that allowed anyone to use my images so long as I received attribution. The Wikimedia uploads, mostly pictures of musicians, second line parades and politicians, were diligently attributed to me and increased the likelihood someone would see them. I liked the idea there was some guy out there who thought my photos were worth the effort–his effort, slight as it may have been.
At some point I finally connected that the guy uploading my pics to Wikimedia was one of my flickr contacts, Infrogmation. I poked around and found he was quite active in Wikimedia and Wikipedia, and judging by some of his photos, he seemed to play a little trombone. He didn’t shoot with a high end camera but he had a decent one (Canon PowerShot) and a patient eye and he covered a lot of ground (a good example of his dogged work is his series documenting Banksy’s graffiti art around New Orleans). He also uploaded photos he inherited of family members from the 1920s and 1930s and he had a good feel for oddball but revealing historical ephemera:
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 …’
Please go here to read part 1 of my interview with Joseph Crachiola. It sounds like…
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.
Just like New Orleanians need to repeat that it was LEVEES, not Katrina, that devastated New Orleans, we need to keep repeating that the public school system was shattered, not “rebuilt”… 