Her full name were she registered for Westminister — which she is not — would be Abigal vonSclafenundpoopinpuppy. (All of which aside is another tale for another time.)

Bob is a photographer by trade, a good one at that.

He is also something of a car nut. And he’d just returned from a auto show in a nearby county, where he’d driven for the first time in awhile, his ’49 Hudson.

“It was a star in the early days of NASCAR, you know?”

“Did Junior drive one?”

“No.” Then he mentioned a couple of fellows, Fireball Roberts might have been one of them. I forget the others, but their names were vaguely familiar, lending credence to his position of his Hudson’s racing past.

“It wasn’t all that fast on the straightaways, but it handled well for the day. So it made up time in the corners.”

We kept up the car talk for some time. I mentioned how I’d read an article recently about some car owned by Jim Patterson that was pure art with sweeping lines.

“A Bugatti.”

“Yeah, right. It had to be put back together. They had to take apart in pieces to get it out of Nazi Germany, or something like that.”

Then Bob started talking about car shows in the area where such vehicles could be seen up close and personal. he mentioned the Concours d’Elegance they hold at Churchill Downs.

“Well, if one comes up, I’d love to tag along. Give me a call.”

“Do I have your number?”

“I’m in the book.”

As Abbey and I continued on our walk, I started to smile at my statement.

“What book,” I thought. “There aren’t phone books anymore.”

Like land lines, the numerical designation of which have traditionally been found in the White Pages, phone books are soon to go the way of the slide rule. As if they already haven’t.

When was the last time you looked up a number in a book as opposed to online? Thought so.

Then I wondered what somebody under the age of, say, 25 years old would think if they heard the expression, “I’m in the book.” Would they know what I was talking about? Would they look at me quizzically?

Probably. Time marches on. What’s de rigeur today is often forgotten tomorrow. Many items from our daily life won’t mean a thing to our grandchildren.

Except for cars like that Bugatti, the beauty of which is timeless.

Well, I get around to it actually.

But most of my weekly FPK 91.9 Culture Maven on Film segment is devoted to “Footnote,” an extraordinary film, an Oscar nominee you probably haven’t considered seeing.

Well, think again.

This Israeli film about father vs. son professional rivalry, jealousy in academia and the repercussions caused, familial and psychological, is surprisingly accessible, truly entertaining, intelligent and even funny now and again.

Whodathunkit?

Certainly not me. But, having seen it, “Footnote” has my highest recommendation. Listen up to find out why:

But I’ve move away from such mano a mano sports. Never have taken to MMA.

That said, two of my “sports” faves are The Great Gardenia and Lou Thesz, whom I saw wrestle at Columbia Gym while still in my youth. And I always loved Rowdy Roddy Piper, who brought some true intelligence to the braggadocio which surrounds “professional” wrestling.

So, I’m proud to remind you that it was on May 16, 1964 in Omaha, Nebraska that Verne Gagne beat Mad Dog Vachon for the undisputed National Wrestling Association (NWA) crown.

* * * * *

There’s not a frat boy alive who would miss the T & A fest known as the Victoria Secret fashion show on network TV. They’re not the only ones who tune in either.

Fashion is always in fashion. And it has been so on television since May 17, 1939 — in the very very very early days of the technology — which is when TV televised its first fashion show. From the Ritz Carlton in New York over WBNT-TV.

Soooooooo, since I only saw one film while I was away — “The Five-Year Engagement. Very funny, truth be told — on my regular Tuesday FPK 91.9 gig I talked about some of the scintillating new music I heard at JazzFest instead of that film. Next week: Back to the flicks.

If you’re expecting a report on the BNAs (Big Name Acts) Tom Petty, the Eagles or Bruce, fuhgettaboutit. If you want to hear about some acts that might not be familiar to you but worth your time, press the play button.

Over which limit of avoirdupois, you pay $5/lb if 10 over.

So, maybe those ads should read “Bags Fly Free*. (*= Unless they weigh too much.)

So, it cost me an extra $50 bucks to avoid carrying a backpack full of dirty clothes and JazzFest copies of CDs, Offbeat, the New Orleans monthly music ‘zine. Worth it. I suppose.

But, hey, for my $50, I also got an hour Air Traffic Control delay because of some fierce storm in the flight path from Tampa to Louisville.

I shoulda seen it coming. When I left my hotel in the Quarter this morning, it was raining, New Orleans style. Big drops. Closely packed. Lots of ‘em.

And, hey, why I went from New Orleans to Tampa then to SDF is, well, modern travel.

If you’ve flown much at all, you’ve got worse stories.

Actually they got me for another $5. I’m writing this first segment online with Southwest Onboard Wireless. It’s not exactly speedy. Then again I got nothing else to do.

Addendum: The veritable coup de grace: They lost my bag, which somehow made it home a day late . . . from Baltimore. I am not making this up.

* * * * *

I had to bring home the front page of Sunday’s Times Picayune just to read the front page stories of chicanery in the Crescent City.

There’s the story of the former archbishop, Philip Hannan. A great philanthropist, it is said. A man who eschewed any semblance of materiality while alive.

Yet, it turns out he sold a piece of property in Maryland outside DC the year before he passed away . . . for $2.35 million. Read about it here.

Then there’s the convoluted tale, far too complicated for me to relate in this bumpy 1 hour 40 minute flight through the storm front, of one Mark J. Titus. Seems he’s admitted to defrauding the feds in various and sundry ways, to his significant pecuniary benefit. And taken money from his companies for his own personal use and not paid any taxes on the income.

(One of the companies was set up under some program benefiting disabled-veterans, except that the figure head disabled-vet had nothing whatsoever to do with company biz.)

There were kickbacks and bribes in the hundreds of thousands of bucks, to get a $19 million federal contract to do some post-Katrina work.

But he got off on a plea to one count of mail fraud, so he can turn evidence, because the feds want one Dominick Fazzio. And they want Fazzio to get at another couple of alleged scofflaws further up the food chain. Or, is that down the food chain.

Which almost mundane tale is Louisiana biz as usual. Read about it here. It would have been lurid enough to satisfy . . .

. . . if it wasn’t for the other front page story of killings in Toca, Louisiana and Kansas City and pet cemeteries and con men caretakers and connections with Boss Pendergrass in KC and more murders and missing money and an overgrown plantation . . . etc, etc.

You can read that one here. Even Elmore Leonard couldn’t make this one up.

I’m tellin’ ya, kids. Nobody does chicanery like the folks in the Land of Huey P. Long and Edwin Edwards. Just another day in the Delta.

* * * * *

What I also intended to write about, what I thought would be salient and interesting and timely was a comparison of the Derby crowd going home from SDF to that of the JazzFest crowd leaving MSY.

In Louisville, most of the women were carrying very large hat boxes and wondering if they’d fit in the overhead bins of their planes? In New Orleans, the women were carrying bags of airport pralines and/ or souvenir Hurricane glasses from Pat O’Brien’s. In Louisville there was some hokey ragtime band in striped vests to send off visitors with song. In New Orleans there was Sidney Bechet over the sound system.

The JazzFest crowd was more frayed.

New Orleans had as many incoming as outgoing. There’s a big convention of the wireless industry there this week. They’re expecting 40,000 for that.

Okay, not so interesting, hardly salient, but, you gotta admit, timely.

* * * * *

Today, Monday — Blue Monday  — I cut the grass . . . and went to the airport to get my bag.

]]> http://www.culturemaven.com/blog/2012/05/07/from-gettin-down-to-derbytown-real-life-returns/feed/ 0 http://www.culturemaven.com/blog/2012/05/07/history-warp-507-13-even-alfred-e-had-a-mama/ http://www.culturemaven.com/blog/2012/05/07/history-warp-507-13-even-alfred-e-had-a-mama/#comments Mon, 07 May 2012 11:00:30 +0000 mail http://www.culturemaven.com/blog/?p=1962 Perhaps at least some of you have been wondering about the origin of our tribute to mama, a little thing we refer to annually as Mother’s Day?

It started in Almost Heaven West Virginia, or so it seems.

On May 7, 1914, several member of Congress proposed a national holiday for the second Sunday of May to honor mom. It passed without a single nay vote. Imagine our surprise.

The first service specifically honoring mothers apparently took place in Philly in 1908 on the anniversary of the death of Ann Jarvis. Seems that it was in Grafton, West Virginia that a young Ann Jarvis heard her mom, Ann, wish for a day honoring all mothers.

After mama passed on, Jarvis campaigned for such a holiday. Obviously she was successful.

* * * * *

To be honest, it’s been awhile since I’ve read Mad Magazine. Truth be told, I checked the internet just to see whether it was still in existence or not? So much for my status as “Culture Maven.”

Anyhow, the ‘zine has been outrageous and irreverent since 1952.

But it was four years later, on May 8, 1956, that Alfred E. Neuman first appeared on the cover.

The boy became so popular so quickly, he actually received some votes in that autumn’s presidential election. To which the winner, Dwight Eisenhower, is said to have said, “What, me worry?”

Truth is, so much did I want to simply savor the experience of hearing the man that is New Orleans music incarnate on his home turf, that I put away my note pad and pen, moved as close to the big stage as possible and soaked it in.

I have fawned about Toussaint in this space before, waxed on about his talent and import. I won’t do it again. Or, at least not as much as he deserves.

For me, he’s the deal. He is the raison d’etre for coming to New Orleans.

Because he never tours with a big band or even play here with a big band, except at JazzFest, his sets with one can be a crap shoot. If the big groups that may rehearse a time or three cook, it can be marvelous. If all doesn’t fall right, it can be frustrating. Saturday, it was — Thank you — the former.

Lots of horns. Lots of back up. (I love when his arrangements have staccato counterpoints by his female back up singers. Yesterday’s trio also played clarinet, trombone and trumpet to augment the other horn section.) Plenty of melody and rhythm.

Toussaint’s voice isn’t much. But it’s of no matter. He’s the guy. He wrote the songs, lots of them hits during the early halcyon days of rock & roll. And later. For Ernie K-Doe. Lee Dorsey. Robert Palmer. Little Feat. He arranged the tunes for many of the artists that have ruled their eras. Like LaBelle. Like the horn charts for The Band. If only for the seminality of “Southern Nights,” a song so sweet and melodic, we should bow in reverence.

And, oh my, the man is dapper. Yesterday he wore a multicolored coat and tie. Immaculate and cool as always, even on a searing hot day. He’s as elegant as Duke Ellington and as important or more so in the pantheon of American music.

(He may have been momentarily trumped sartorially Saturday, when he called on stage “from Planet Soul to join us on earth,” Cyrille Neville, who was dressed in a lime green zoot suit.)

Theresa Anderson also joined Toussaint for a great duet, beautifully arranged.

The point is this. I have come to New Orleans again this year to bathe in the musical culture that cleanses me, to feast on that which sustains me.

Hearing Allen Toussaint on a New Orleans afternoon is the trip.

* * * * *

One of my favorite moments ever at JazzFest was in the 90s when I discovered African guitarist Ali Farke Toure. It was a time when you didn’t know who was playing until you got to New Orleans, and there was no youtube to check out the names you didn’t recognize.

Now the Cubes come out a month ahead of time, and the internet allows you to get a sense in advance if there’s an act you haven’t known that you should hear.

So it was this year with Omara Moctar, known as “Bombino.” He is a Tuareg, from a nomadic Berber clan in Niger.

His playing is mesmerizing. Literally.

Trancelike. Incessant. Melodic. I’d love to know to whom he listened growing up, his guitar influences? Dick Dale? Ali Farke Toure? John Lee Hooker? Any of them at all? Or, did he simply pick up the instrument and modernize the chording and melodies that have resonated with his desert ancestors for centuries.

I heard of him about a month ago, checked him out on youtube and put him atop my 2d weekend must see list. (Behind Toussaint.) Bombino did not disappoint. He’s one other important reason for my annual trek to JazzFest. Only the most lucky of us will get a chance to hear Bombino in our town.

This guy is the Real Caravanserai.

At this point a shoutout to the Threadhead — one who roams the JazzFest chatrooms year ’round — who started a thread a month or so ago about Bombino. Thanks, dude.

* * * * *

I believe I briefly discussed the origins of zyedeco music in a post last week.

Accordion player Clifton Chenier merged cajun music and R & B into a new, fun danceable music, the sum of which is, when done right, greater than its parts.

The soul part, the R & B, has been mostly lost through the years.

Curly Taylor & Zydeco Trouble take it back to where it once belonged. This guy from Somewhereotopa, Louisiana, is the best young soul singer (in any genre) I’ve heard in years. This guy is Curtis Mayfield with a squeeze box.

His washboard player does a mean James Brown sidestep slide.

“It’s alright/ If you come to the club/ And fall in love with a cajun girl.”

“We could dance all night/ Somebody do the curly two step.”

Instead of the usual numbing repetitiveness that plagues much of zydeco, Taylor and his gang weave lots of melody and harmonies between the danceable beat.

This guy could/ should be big.

* * * * *

I also loved the the easy Brazilian stylings of Ricardo Crespo & Sol Brasil.

And the sweet Latin nuance of Mas Mamones to start the day. They sang of coffee, while I sipped on a delicious frozen cafe au lait.

Cha Wa did a version of the classic Mardi Gras chant, “Meet Da Boyz on Da Battlefront,” that was more melodic than most.

Steve Earle, as his reputation was back before he got sober, took the stage kind of mean. “It took me five fuckin’ years to get this gig.” I was really looking forward to hearing him at the Fais Do Do, but it just wasn’t working for me, so I moved on. After all there are ten other stages.

* * * * *

Eventually it was time to go.

One last large chocolate snowball from my girls at AJ’s. One last walk across the track and through the barns to the DeSaix gate.

There’s one more day of JazzFest, but I’m comin’ home. Six days is enough.

As the t-shirt read on a guy walking in as I was walking out, “Less is More.”

The Eagles were on stage and provided the sound track for Exit 2012.

The were singing “Take it to the limit one more time.” And, so I have.

Then a haunting trumpet dirge introduced “Hotel California.”

For me, New Orleans is that hostel, I check out, but I never leave.