If you goin' to New Orleans, you wanna go see the Mardi Gras

Like many of you reading this blog, amongst the earliest exposure to music that I had was the music I was surrounded by in my own house. Before I made it out into the big wide world and began to choose my influences for myself, the music I heard was largely down to my parents' own tastes. And thank goodness that my father has one of the most eclectic musical tastes, and record collections, of anyone I know. What I know about music, which is not a great deal in the grand scheme of things, I owe in no small part to his own diverse musical wanderings, which set me off on a journey of discovery and exploration that I am yet to tire of, or even come close to exhausting. And one of my earliest memories, musical or otherwise, is dancing around to the music of New Orleans piano legend Professor Longhair, and he has remained a hero to mine to this very day.

Given the travails visited upon the Big Easy in recent times there is of course an added poignancy to the tale, but if there is any thing that conjures up images of New Orleans to me it is listening to Fess' music. I've never made it to the city, and I doubt I will now that the heart has been torn out of it by nature's cruelty, and the soul removed by simply sickening governmental responses. However, for somewhere I have never actually been it still holds a special warm place in my consciousness, and a strange familiarity that started in the music of Professor Longhair and has continued since. Longhair's piano playing is nothing short of remarkable, described by fellow New Orleans' giant Allen Toussaint as the Bach of Rock'n'Roll due to its clarity of syncopation and beauty of tone (don't even get me going on Toussaint's own work with The Meters!).

Others have said he was to piano what Picasso was to painting, and if anyone deserves a title as granddaddy of fun surely Longhair is up there amongst them. His vocal style is uniquely freaky and off-kilter yet warm and appealing, and as a performer he seems second to none. I have too much good to say about him than I can fit in here, and will gladly return to the subject and those many people he inspired at some future point. His life itself was remarkable enough to recount also, but for now if you are in need of a fillip of pure joy and energy dig out some Professor Longhair, grand master of the Mardi Gras.