Jazz for aficionados

Rok, I suppose each of us has our own idea of what is and isn't Delta in a blues sense, but I have to agree with you that the city of N.O. was a relative void in the birth and development of blues music.  In that sense, you're also likely correct that young Louis "never set foot in that Delta."  My understanding is that the only way he ever left N.O. was by playing Jazz on the riverboats.

In those formative years, I think of Jazz as city music and Delta Blues as rural.  Blues became city music when it spread up the river and railroads to Chicago and other cities along the way as part of the "Great Migration."

Good way for me to spend a little time learning today while playing everyone's links.  A geographer would say N.O. is in the "St. Bernard Delta," which is one of six delta "lobes" that have formed over the millenia.  I don't want to go full nerd here, but if anyone is curious about their layout, here's a graphic:

https://mississippiriverdelta.org/files/2016/07/delta-lobes.jpg
(Not a hot link - you'll have to copy and paste in your browser.)

**** as incredulous as that might seem. ****

Just can’t help yourself, can you? Reminds me of the common syndrome that afflicts the mediocre, “one trick pony” saxophone player who “specializes” on one instrument, say the baritone. So, because he “specializes” and is only capable of playing one horn he automatically considers himself a better player on that instrument than the far superior player who happens to be versatile and plays more than one horn 😊.

Btw, no thanks necessary. Would hate for you to have to be up all night 😱

https://youtu.be/HlKwyMe2WUU

     https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTcBC2wbXv8

@frogman 

  Trentmemphis, checked out Freddy Cole @ JALC.  Very nice!  Unique stylist and very good band.  Thanks for the tip.

I’m intrigued by your comment re what people say about the Delta.  Would like your thoughts.

I just recently ran across Freddy, myself.  I dig him.  He's not trying to set the world on fire.  He just plays good music well.

The Delta is so dadgum complicated, it's hard to even know where to start.  And living practically my whole life on the *edge* of it, particularly as a white person, does not make me an expert.  Most particularly because I grew up in what's called a "sundown town."  But I did grow up cheek-by-jowl with it, in a small, rural town, in a family who didn't have any money and didn't even know anybody who *did* have any money.  I spent a lot of time on my grampa's farm, so I know the heat and the smell and the sweat of the cotton fields (and then the soybean fields and then the rice fields, with their clouds of mosquitos), up close and personal.  I know the levees and the ditches and the fence rows.  I know shotgun houses and dogtrot houses.  I know the religion of little, country churchhouses built by the same people who worship in them.  All of that was part of my raising.  It's very much a part of who I am.  Levon Helm and Johnny Cash are musicians I *immediately* and implicitly understood.  Race put me at one remove from Delta blues, but only one.  It was a different dialect, but still my native language.

When I hear people talk about my little part of the world, what they're saying usually *feels* untrue more than sounds untrue.  True as it may be, it's inaccurate.  I'm sure everyone feels that way when they hear an outsider talk about the place they're from.  It's just that the place I'm from happens to get talked about that way a *lot*.
   

O10, thanks, love that Pettiford piece.  Marvelous.