Christiern

No favorite, but I rather like the Louis Cottrell sessions, which is why I did two albums. All in all, I was very satisfied with this recording trip, which is more than I can say for my subsequent trek to Chicago for a continuation of the Living Legends series. In fairness to the Chicago artists, I have to add that bungling amateur "recording engineers" were the hair in that soup.

"Dr." Butler was given his position at Columbia because they felt a need to hire a black person in a high position--pure and simple. He quickly became somewhat of a joke within the company, because it was clear that he was clueless when it came to music. I think the tin-eared lawyers who took the reins at Columbia were impressed with Butler's dilution of Blue Note--seeing it as a cash register-ringing commercial move. Personally, I shared the more professional opinion that he was an idiot. At a cocktail party for the Heath Brothers, he came over to me and told me how much he enjoyed my radio programs and how the company appreciated the fact that I played their "product." I had not been on the air for six years, and he seemed oblivious to the fact that I had spent at ;east a couple of years producing records for his label--in fact, my work had garnered Columbia a Grammy or two. This guy was strictly a wall decoration, but he had the power to make uninformed decisions--which he did. I don't know how instrumental he was in dumping Woody Shaw (who was not in good health, BTW), but I do know that he and a pushy PR woman "created" the myth Wynton was Jazz's salvation. Together, they turned a young musician of some promise into a "star" whose talent was not commensurate with that status--unfortunately, Wynton himself soon began to believe the hype and whatever promise he had shown in the early days with Blakey dissipated as he became the rigid, over-growling caricature we know today. A man whose recognition is based on a paid position rather than on musical achievement. This (the axing of Shaw) may well be a case of "the Butler did it," but I can't say for sure. From what I observed on the spot, I had the impression that they groomed Wynton so fast, because they needed a replacement for Miles. This sort of thing happens when music people are replaced by attorneys and accountants.

That's right, of course, but most of the time I played around with the machine it was just for fun. Kids would check it out while their parents were looking at shoes, so it was possible to get quite a bit of exposure. Back in those days, we used to drop in just to try the machine and see our skeletal feet (I used to go to a shoe store on Austin St, in Forest Hills, NY).

I remember them well from my time in the US as a child (1941-44). I recall having fun wiggling my toes in those things. In later years, I have often wondered how dangerous that was.

I only heard one track, and found it wanting.

Beyond New Orleans, Katrina Destroys Music History Too This loss is a human one first and foremost. But as word spreads that (among others) New Orleans R&B legend Fats Domino remains unaccounted for after the storm, media is more mindful this is cultural devastation too--destruction of primary information about the beginnings of American music, and of a currently thriving community of jazz and rap and everything betwixt. To better understand the enormity of the situation from that perspective, we spoke with musicologist Ned Sublette. Last year Sublette, musician, label co-founder, and much-applauded author of Cuba and Its Music: From the First Drums to the Mambo, spent time in New Orleans as a Rockefeller Humanities Fellow at Tulane University, doing hands-on research for a book about the city and its fundamental relationship to American musical history. Below are some of Sublette's reactions to the loss: Intro "The destruction of New Orleans, from a cultural point of view, is too awful to contemplate. And at the same time, everyone had contemplated it. Anyone who came to have dinner last year at my house in New Orleans heard me describe pretty much what happened, in advance. Not because I'm clairvoyant, but because it was well-known what would happen. "The hurricane was not preventable, but the flooding that occurred was preventable. That levee break was preventable, the destruction of the marshland was preventable. And even if the flooding were not preventable, there was another failure, which was the complete failure of civil defense. "It's very simple: the plan was--and everybody knew it--the plan was that the poor would be left behind to drown. "As of Friday, I was 102,000 words into a book [i'm writing] about [New Orleans]. So I have been for months deeply synthesizing this. So for this to hit me now is just like--it's a mindfuck. Simple example: three weeks ago, I had somebody drive me past Fats Domino's house so I could take a picture of it. And that house is under water now. It's like the whole time I was there, I was on input, remembering things that might not be there next year, and I was conscious of that as I was doing it. I would say to people, it's as if we're midway between life and death here." On the loss of primary historical information: "Everything from documents to recordings to things that are in private hands [are lost]. Many of the more serious archives are on higher floors--presumably many of them have survived the flood waters. But what condition are they in? How quickly will cultural workers be able to get in and rescue the patrimony which is very important in understanding where American music came from? "For instance, Gwendolyn Midlo Hall , the historian, went around from parish courthouse to parish courthouse looking at documents that many times were not considered to be of great importance. She managed to compile a database of the identities and nationalities of 100,000 enslaved Louisianans, from primary documents sitting in Louisiana. There are many secrets that those documents might yield up with some hard-working historians to examine them. Congo Square and its Importance to American Music: "Congo Square, there were gatherings of black people dancing and playing ancestral drums and singing in ancestral languages probably since the introduction of slaves by the French in 1719. There were gatherings in the French period, there were gatherings in the Spanish period--the gatherings continued up to before the Civil War. In the first half of the century in the United States, the English-speaking slave owners prohibited the playing of drums by blacks, because they could be used to signal rebellion. But in Congo Square--it was the one place in the United States that black people were allowed to play drums with their hands. It's the one place where an African-derived drumming tradition directly continued. It may be that the Mardi Gras Indians, the groups of black men that dress in fantastical African-style costumes imitative of the motifs of the Plains Indians, it may be that their tambourine tradition derives from this. If so, this is the only direct descendant of the African hand-drumming tradition in African American music. In the years before recordings, this very fertile period between the end of slavery and the beginnings of recordings when we don't quite know what happened and what it sounded like, when there was music going up from Brazil to North America, the step that turned the music into jazz was taken in New Orleans. We know that." New Orleans's Connection to Rock: "If you're only looking at it from the rock and roll perspective, New Orleans is a fundamental city in the story. In 1949, Dave Bartholomew, who I hope evacuated in time, led the house band that backed up Fats Domino on his first hit, "The Fat Man", and became the first professional R&B studio band, the forerunner of the kind of thing that they would have in Motown. Singers like Little Richard, Lloyd Price, Ray Charles would come to New Orleans to play with this house band. Many of the first R&B and rock and roll classics were recorded in New Orleans. Rebuilding New Orleans: "You cannot abandon New Orleans. You can say that New Orleans has no viability as a business or industrial city. But if our history and culture as a nation mean anything, New Orleans is central to it. And if we can save New Orleans--if we haven't lost it already--it has to be put back and saved right. If we can somehow turn around the hateful direction this country is going in, and really save and fortify New Orleans, and really show the world that we as a nation can save our own cities, that our concept of homeland security means something, then we can be proud of ourselves. Right now we can't. "We're not only watching history disappear. History is watching us disappear."

His hometown is New Orleans--a new cause for worry. I hope he is alright and just taking a rest from the boards.

Join a touring tango troupe.

Here's a chicken I painted in 1956. I started with an egg, of course.

"All these issues, and many more, will now be the subject of congressional and other inquiries. Not if Tom DeLay has any say in the matter--last night, he was scrambling to stop any inquiry.... hmmm The poor fool can't hide this giant!

Chrome: "I live near enough to Canada to get CBC, and I watched some of their coverage over the weekend ... it was fascinating/depressing to see their take on things ... calling the Superbowl/Convention Center refugee camps, showing bodies floating in the water and some really scary footage of try to "restore order," wondering how something like this could be happening to the world's richest country ... the best way I could relate it to the folks here is to have you imagine what it would be like if Christiern were running the news ..." Are you saying that the CBC's reporting was painfully honest?

I used to use paper labels and have not had any problems with them, but Kevin is right to caution against that method--it definitely opens possibilities for grief. More recently, I have begun to use the LightScribe system, which burns the label onto the disc, using the disc burner. Iy comes with a program for creating the labels and the result can be great (depending only on your design, of course ). A LaCie internal LightScribe burner can be had for $79--it will create CDs and DVDs, the latter in double layer, if needed, and it accepts -R as well as +R blanks. Yes, the discs cost a little more, but the price is not prohibitive. Here's a sample--not the best reproduction, I simply threw the disc on the scanner.

Amazing but not surprising--thanks for posting that, Conrad.

Thanks, Harold -- it's always good to hear that one's work is appreciated--this, however, was more fun than work. Great people who left me with many fond memories.

Thanks, Lon. Here are a couple of pictures I took while working on the albums. One shows the entrance to Les Jeune Amis Hall, which I rented for the project, the other is an interior shot of instruments.

Well, there's always the aforementioned Riverside series, New Orleans: The Living Legends, sessions that represent two memorable weeks of my life. JIM ROBINSON PLAYS SPIRITUALS AND BLUES New Orleans: The Living Legends JIM ROBINSON'S NEW ORLEANS BAND New Orleans: The Living Legends KID THOMAS AND HIS ALGIERS STOMPERS featuring Emile Barnes New Orleans: The Living Legends OJCCD-1845-2 (Riverside 386) BILLIE AND DEDE PIERCE New Orleans: The Living Legends Blues and Tonks from the Delta OJCCD-1847-2 (Riverside 9394) BILLIE AND DEDE PIERCE New Orleans: The Living Legends OBCCD-534-2 (Riverside 370) PERCY HUMPHREY'S CRESCENT CITY JOYMAKERS New Orleans: The Living Legends OJCCD-1834-2 (Riverside 9378 THE LOUIS COTTRELL TRIO Bourbon Street New Orleans: The Living Legends OJCCD-1836-2 (Riverside 9385) PETER BOCAGE with HIS CREOLE SERENADERS AND THE LOVE-JILES RAGTIME ORCHESTRA New Orleans: The Living Legends OJCCD-1835-2 (Riverside 9379)

GULF COAST CRISIS: FEDERAL RELIEF EFFORT Ex-officials say weakened FEMA botched response By Frank James and Andrew Martin Washington Bureau September 3, 2005 WASHINGTON -- Government disaster officials had an action plan if a major hurricane hit New Orleans. They simply didn't execute it when Hurricane Katrina struck. Thirteen months before Katrina hit New Orleans, local, state and federal officials held a simulated hurricane drill that Ronald Castleman, then the regional director for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, called "a very good exercise." More than a million residents were "evacuated" in the table-top scenario as 120 m.p.h. winds and 20 inches of rain caused widespread flooding that supposedly trapped 300,000 people in the city. "It was very much an eye-opener," said Castleman, a Republican appointee of President Bush who left FEMA in December for the private sector. "A number of things were identified that we had to deal with, not all of them were solved." Still, Castleman found it hard to square the lessons he and others learned from the exercise with the frustratingly slow response to the disaster that has unfolded in the wake of Katrina. From the Louisiana Superdome in New Orleans to the Mississippi and Alabama communities along the Gulf Coast, hurricane survivors have decried the lack of water, food and security and the slowness of the federal relief efforts. "It's hard for everyone to understand why buttons weren't pushed earlier on," Castleman said of the federal response. As the first National Guard truck caravans of water and food arrived in New Orleans on Friday, former FEMA officials and other disaster experts were at a loss to explain why the federal government's lead agency for responding to major emergencies had failed to meet the urgent needs of hundreds of thousands of Americans in the most dire of circumstances in a more timely fashion. But many suspected that FEMA's apparent problems in getting life-sustaining supplies to survivors and buses to evacuate them from New Orleans--delays even Bush called "not acceptable"--stemmed partly from changes at the agency during the Bush years. Experts have long warned that the moves would weaken the agency's ability to effectively respond to natural disasters. Less clout, experience FEMA's chief has been demoted from a near-Cabinet-level position; political appointees with little, if any, emergency-management experience have been placed in senior FEMA positions; and the small, 2,500-person agency was dropped into the midst of the 180,000-employee Homeland Security Department, which is more oriented to combating terrorism than natural disasters. All that has led to a brain drain as experienced but demoralized employees have left the agency, former and current FEMA staff members say. The result is that an agency that got high marks during much of the 1990s for its effectiveness is being harshly criticized for seemingly mismanaging the response to the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The growing anger and frustration at FEMA's efforts sparked the Republican-controlled Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee to announce Friday that it has scheduled a hearing for Wednesday to try to uncover what went wrong. Meanwhile, Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) called on Bush to immediately appoint a Cabinet-level official to direct the national response. "There was a time when FEMA understood that the correct approach to a crisis was to deploy to the affected area as many resources as possible as fast as possible," Landrieu said. "Unfortunately, that no longer seems to be their approach." John Copenhaver, a former FEMA regional director during the Clinton administration who led the response to Hurricane Floyd in 1999, said he was bewildered by the agency's slow response this time. It had been standard practice for FEMA to position supplies ahead of time, and the agency did preposition drinking water and tarps to cover damaged roofs near where they would be needed. In addition, FEMA has coordinated its plans with state and local officials and let the Defense Department know beforehand what type of military assistance would be needed. "I'm a little confused as to why it took so long to get the military presence running convoys into downtown New Orleans," Copenhaver said. And there isn't an experienced disaster-response expert at the top of the agency as there was when James Lee Witt ran it during the 1990s. Before Michael Brown, the current head, joined the agency as its legal counsel, he was with the International Arabian Horse Association. That loss of experienced personnel might explain in part why FEMA was not able to secure buses sooner for the evacuation of New Orleans, a step anticipated by the hurricane disaster simulation last year. Peter Pantuso, president of the American Bus Association, said, "I have a hard time believing there is any game plan in place when it comes to coordinating or pulling together this volume of business," referring to FEMA's effort to obtain hundreds of buses to move tens of thousands of evacuees from New Orleans. "And what happens in two or three weeks down the road when all of these people are moved again?" When FEMA became part of the Homeland Security Department, it was stripped of some functions, such as some of its ability to make preparedness grants to states, former officials said. Those functions were placed elsewhere in the larger agency. FEMA capability `marginalized' "After Sept. 11 they got so focused on terrorism they effectively marginalized the capability of FEMA," said George Haddow, a former FEMA official during the Clinton administration. "It's no surprise that they're not capable of managing the federal government's response to this kind of disaster." Pleasant Mann, former head of the union for FEMA employees who has been with the agency since 1988, said a change made by agency higher-ups last year added a bureaucratic layer that likely delayed FEMA's response to Katrina. Before the change, a FEMA employee at the site of a disaster could request that an experienced employee he knew had the right skills be dispatched to help him. But now that requested worker is first made to travel to a location hundreds of miles from the disaster site to be "processed," placed in a pool from which he is dispatched, sometimes to a place different from where he thought he was headed. Pleasant said he knew of a case in which a worker from Washington state was made to travel first to Orlando before he could go to Louisiana, losing at least a day. What's more, that worker was told he might be sent to Alabama, not Louisiana, after all.

September 5, 2005 After Failures, Government Officials Play Blame Game By SCOTT SHANE This article was reported by Scott Shane, Eric Lipton and Christopher Drew and written by Mr. Shane. WASHINGTON, Sept. 4 - As the Bush administration tried to show a more forceful effort to help the victims of Hurricane Katrina, government officials on Sunday escalated their criticism and sniping over who was to blame for the problems plaguing the initial response. While rescuers were still trying to reach people stranded by the floods, perhaps the only consensus among local, state and federal officials was that the system had failed. Some federal officials said uncertainty over who was in charge had contributed to delays in providing aid and imposing order, and officials in Louisiana complained that Washington disaster officials had blocked some aid efforts. Local and state resources were so weakened, said Michael Chertoff, the homeland security secretary, that in the future federal authorities need to take "more of an upfront role earlier on, when we have these truly ultracatastrophes." But furious state and local officials insisted that the real problem was that the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which Mr. Chertoff's department oversees, failed to deliver urgently needed help and, through incomprehensible red tape, even thwarted others' efforts to help. "We wanted soldiers, helicopters, food and water," said Denise Bottcher, press secretary for Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco of Louisiana. "They wanted to negotiate an organizational chart." Mayor C. Ray Nagin of New Orleans expressed similar frustrations. "We're still fighting over authority," he told reporters on Saturday. "A bunch of people are the boss. The state and federal government are doing a two-step dance." In one of several such appeals, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, Democrat of New York, called on President Bush on Sunday to appoint an independent national commission to examine the relief effort. She also said that she intends to introduce legislation to remove FEMA from the Department of Homeland Security and restore its previous status as an independent agency with cabinet-level status. Mr. Chertoff tried to deflect the criticism of his department and FEMA by saying there would be time later to decide what went wrong. "Whatever the criticisms and the after-action report may be about what was right and what was wrong looking back, what would be a horrible tragedy would be to distract ourselves from avoiding further problems because we're spending time talking about problems that have already occurred," he told Tim Russert on "Meet the Press" on NBC. But local officials, who still feel overwhelmed by the continuing tragedy, demanded accountability and as well as action. "Why did it happen? Who needs to be fired?" asked Aaron Broussard, president of Jefferson Parish, south of New Orleans. Far from deferring to state or local officials, FEMA asserted its authority and made things worse, Mr. Broussard complained on "Meet the Press." When Wal-Mart sent three trailer trucks loaded with water, FEMA officials turned them away, he said. Agency workers prevented the Coast Guard from delivering 1,000 gallons of diesel fuel, and on Saturday they cut the parish's emergency communications line, leading the sheriff to restore it and post armed guards to protect it from FEMA, Mr. Broussard said. One sign of the continuing battle over who was in charge was Governor Blanco's refusal to sign an agreement proposed by the White House to share control of National Guard forces with the federal authorities. Under the White House plan, Lt. Gen. Russel L. Honoré would oversee both the National Guard and the active duty federal troops, reporting jointly to the president and Ms. Blanco. "She would lose control when she had been in control from the very beginning," said Ms. Bottcher, the governor's press secretary. Ms. Bottcher was one of several officials yesterday who said she believed FEMA had interfered with the delivery of aid, including offers from the mayor of Chicago, Richard M. Daley, and the governor of New Mexico, Bill Richardson. Adam Sharp, a spokesman for Senator Mary L. Landrieu, Democrat of Louisiana, said the problem was not who was in command. FEMA repeatedly held up assistance that could have been critical, he said. "FEMA has just been very slow to make these decisions," Mr. Sharp said. In a clear slap at Mr. Chertoff and the FEMA director, Michael D. Brown, Governor Blanco announced Saturday that she had hired James Lee Witt, the director of FEMA during the Clinton administration, to advise her on the recovery. Nearly every emergency worker told agonizing stories of communications failures, some of them most likely fatal to victims. Police officers called Senator Landrieu's Washington office because they could not reach commanders on the ground in New Orleans, Mr. Sharp said. Dr. Ross Judice, chief medical officer for a large ambulance company, recounted how on Tuesday, unable to find out when helicopters would land to pick up critically ill patients at the Superdome, he walked outside and discovered that two helicopters, donated by an oil services company, had been waiting in the parking lot. Louisiana and New Orleans have received a total of about $750 million in federal emergency and terrorism preparedness grants in the last four years, Homeland Security Department officials said. Mr. Chertoff said he recognized that the local government's capacity to respond to the disaster was severely compromised by the hurricane and flood. "What happened here was that essentially, the demolishment of that state and local infrastructure, and I think that really caused the cascading series of breakdowns," he said. But Mayor Nagin said the root of the breakdown was the failure of the federal government to deliver relief supplies and personnel quickly. "They kept promising and saying things would happen," he said. "I was getting excited and telling people that. They kept making promises and promises." Scott Shane and Eric Lipton reported from Washington, and Christopher Drew from New Orleans. Jeremy Alford contributed reporting from Baton Rouge, La., and Gardiner Harris from Lafayette, La.

Interesting. You know you're in real trouble when even your apologists see your flaws.

Nuremberg was never your model. Stalin style show trials, followed by bullets in the back of the head is more like it. ← Unlike Bush, I don't believe in capital punishment--not even for people as heinous as those who control this regime.

I said "perhaps" tried, because I don't know how far these thugs have to go to qualify. Dan Gould: "What is disappointing is that among all of the people on this board, a PhD candidate actually gives support to the idea that laws on the books might actually be folded, twisted and mutilated into forming the basis for Albertson's wet dream, otherwise known as a good old fashioned political show trial." As for my "wet dream," I really don't think that the books need to be "folded, twisted and mutilated" in order to determine that Bush and his cohorts have been grossly negligent in their duties. Perhaps no laws were broken, but they are certainly morally bankrupt and they can now add a lot more blood to that which their Iraq adventure has put on their hands. Whether or not the "books" will allow them to be tried, these are criminals who do not have the good of our country and its people at heart. Just think of how they lied to you--it's what they have been doing since 2000 and are doing at this moment. Think of Chertoff and Brown, who are currently going around spreading the latest Bush lies--these people have learned nothing! The consequences of their lies are immeasurable and mounting--their days of destroying our country and other parts of the world are finally numbered, and imagining them in a Nüremberg situation is not at all far fetched. Do you still believe there are WMDs in Iraq?

Chris, do you ever get tired of playing the race card? There wasn't a single racist thing about GA Russell's comment. Just because there happens to be a lot of black people living in New Orleans does not make a negative comment about New Orleans or its people "racist." It's the same thing when people criticize the policies of the state of Israel, and many Jews claim that these criticisms are "anti-Semitic." It just isn't true. The race card is soooo overplayed in this country...And you'll probably call me a racist for saying that, too. ← It is, IMO, racist because GA Russell is essentially saying that the the people who were trapped in these two structures "gambled," which means that they had a choice. Many of them--most, probably--did not have a choice. These were poor people, many of them elderly and sick. Most of them were black and I am not suggesting that they were neglected by government because of their skin color--in fact, I think it was more a case of class discrimination. That said, racism is clearly what kept these people down. The Bush regime would like us to think that the thousands of victims who were left in the city were there by choice, that they "gambled" on survival in spite of having their "eyes wide open." Well, if that were so (and when was the last time the Bush people told us anything that wasn't, at best, a self-serving distortion?) it would take the fumbling, incompetent government decision-makers off the hook. It would make Bush and his cohorts seem like victims of "bashing." That, of course, is pure bullshit and either GA Russell has bought into it or he is joining the effort to whitewash Bush and his regime. So, yes, callously blaming thousands of poor and ill people for the suffering brought upon them through lack of leadership in the White House and unspeakable neglect by their own country's government, is racist, even if the neglect was not directly based upon the color of their skin. It becomes racist when one considers that the people in question--the wide-eyed gamblers, as GA Russell would have it--can attribute their lowly status to a history of racism. The world knew in advance about Hitler's hatred for Jews, but not all Jews left their country for a safer place--were they also "wide-eyed gamblers"? Should we blame them for being so foolish as to land themselves in concentration camps? I don't think so, but, since "Vibes" brought up the subject, I see a parallel. I see a sad lack of comprehension when someone points an accusing finger at people who--through no fault of their own--have undergone a nightmare of human suffering. Those who sought refuge in the Super Dome and Convention Center did so because no effort was made earlier to get them to safer ground, and because this is where they ultimately were told to go. When they got there, there was no one in charge, nothing to drink, nothing to eat, no medicine for the sick, no electricity, no working bathroom facilities. The doors were closed and they were, in effect, entombed. They deserve our compassion and help, not such insensitivity as GA Russell's remark reveals. Sorry to ramble on like this, but it really irks me when someone shows such a lack of feeling. We are talking about people who never had much of a chance to rise in society, people who became victims of a major natural disaster and then had their suffering compounded once more by their own government. Point your finger at the Oval Office and Pentagon, GA Russell.

You are either heartless or clueless--Unless you have your head in the sand, I suspect that the former is the case, but neither is forgivable. I think (hope) we have reached a point where the Bush regime's spins are falling on deaf ears, except among the lock-steppers. To say that the people who were crammed into the Super Dome and Convention Center "gambled with their eyes wide open" is callous and blatantly racist. Sorry, but your posts paint a rather sorry picture of GA Russell.