{"id":5166,"date":"2015-06-22T17:48:12","date_gmt":"2015-06-22T17:48:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.artinfo.com\/blunotes\/?p=5166"},"modified":"2015-06-22T17:48:12","modified_gmt":"2015-06-22T17:48:12","slug":"drummer-shannon-powells-brilliance-shines-in-louis-armstrongs-light","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/2015\/06\/22\/drummer-shannon-powells-brilliance-shines-in-louis-armstrongs-light\/","title":{"rendered":"Drummer Shannon Powell's Brilliance Shines in Louis Armstrong's Light"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Shannon<\/a>
Shannon Powell’s Traditional All-Star Band (with trumpeter Leon Brown, clarinetist Evan Christopher and bassist Peter Harris) at Corona Park, Queens\/photo by April Renae<\/figcaption><\/figure>
\nAt any given moment, there are sounds of New Orleans in New York City\u2019s air\u2014lately, a little more than usual.
\nLast week, pianist Jon Batiste<\/strong>, who will lead the band for Stephen Colbert\u2019s \u201cLate Show\u201d come September, had melodica in hand as he led something like a second-line parade out of Union Square Park (see my account and an interview here<\/a>.) He’ll hold court during what he calls a “social music residency” at Manhattan’s NoMad Hotel June 23-26.
\nOn Saturday, June 20, the Rebirth Brass Band<\/strong>, who pretty much authored present-day brass-band style,\u00a0brought their parade-honed sound to\u00a0the mainstage of a festival called “Louis Armstrong’s Wonderful World”<\/strong> in Flushing Meadows Corona Park. Around that same time Saturday, the New Breed Brass Band<\/strong>, full of bright young upstarts, performed on Governor’s Island, within the Nalofunk Crawfish and Music Festival<\/strong>. On Friday, June 26, the Soul Rebels<\/strong>, who\u2019ve slid brass-band tradition comfortably into Afro Latin and hip-hop territory during the past two decades, make their debut at the Blue Note jazz club with a late set featuring rappers Rakim and Slick Rick.
\nFor those who didn’t let Saturday\u2019s persistent spray of light rain dampen their enthusiasm, the \u201cWonderful World\u201d festival brought Armstrong\u2019s spirit and legacy to life in several ways not far from the legendary trumpeter’s former home, which is now a terrific\u00a0landmark, the Louis Armstrong House Museum<\/strong><\/a>. Ricky Riccardi<\/strong>, that museum’s archivist and the author of an essential book on Armstrong, “What a Wonderful World: The Magic of Louis Armstrong’s Later Years,” was over at the nearby Queens Museum, sharing insights and pleasures from his research.
\nThe day\u2019s highlight, the essential heartbeat of the event, was a set from drummer Shannon Powell\u2019s Traditional All-Star Jazz Band<\/strong>. Powell, who headlines too infrequently in New York City, is rightly revered in his hometown, where he\u2019s known as \u201cThe King of Trem\u00e9\u201d for his prominence in a neighborhood that has nurtured traditional jazz culture and which he still calls home. In some ways, Powell\u2019s Saturday set reminded me of those he led at New Orleans now\u2013defunct Donna\u2019s Bar and Grill, in late 2005, when the city was still gripped by the aftermath of the flood that resulted from levee breaks following Hurricane Katrina; these were transformative gigs, in part for the deep beauty and easy camaraderie Powell\u2019s drumming, singing and presence generated despite the surroundings.
\nWearing a backward black Kangol hat emblazoned with a fleur-de-lis on Saturday, Powell stood up at his drum kit twice\u2014first to coax some melody from a ride cymbal during a Sidney Bechet tune, \u201cBlues in the Air,\u201d and next to build (and then slyly cross up) a galloping beat on tom-toms for \u201cSkokiaan.\u201d Mostly though, Powell stood out while sitting back, smiling and making the authority, taste and humor with which he deploys New Orleans rhythms, which he learned as a child and has refined over a lifetime, look easy; and by coaxing the best from his sidemen.
\nOn Saturday, these included musicians who don\u2019t need much coaxing; his rhythm section mates, keyboardist Kyle Roussel<\/strong> and bassist Peter Harris<\/strong>, along with clarinetist Evan Christopher<\/strong> and trumpeter Leon “Kid Chocolate” Brown<\/strong>. Christopher and Brown in particular<\/span>\u00a0are both serious students of and accomplished voices in the tradition Powell upholds. Christopher\u00a0has mastered not just his difficult instrument but also the complex process of articulating the legacy of early Creole clarinetists such as Sidney Bechet, Omer Simeon, and Barney Bigard without mimicry and in a contemporary vein; on that Bechet tune, he moved smoothly from reverence to innovation.
\nBrown has the sound and tone of a New Orleans traditionalist, the harmonic savvy of a jazz modernist; his singing style and stage presence display a grasp of Armstrong\u2019s blend of ebullience and humility. In Powell\u2019s band, Brown dropped some bebop riffs into an Armstrong favorite, \u201cStruttin\u2019 With Some Barbecue\u201d; he studied such things in depth while a teenager attending the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts (NOCCA). Yet, on \u201cSleepytime Down South\u201d and elsewhere, he seemed very much to channel Armstrong\u2019s approach.
\nNo wonder. Hours earlier, he had played that same tune on Armstrong\u2019s horn. He and Christopher had visited the Louis Armstrong Archive at Queens College<\/strong><\/a>, hosted by Riccardi.
\n
\"aprilrenae20150620armstrongfest03\"<\/a>
photo: April Renae<\/figcaption><\/figure>
\nChristopher was taken by just how much writing by Armstrong the archive contained about Armstrong\u2019s days in his native New Orleans\u2014\u201cwell beyond what we have in published volumes,\u201d he said. Brown marveled at the meticulousness of Armstrong\u2019s penmanship, even in casual notes. Both appreciated his compendium of dirty jokes.
\nBrown recalled how, as a young trumpeter, he was first drawn to Dizzy Gillespie\u2019s music. But he\u2019d sometimes cut school while at NOCCA, head for Jackson Square, and sit right next to Anthony \u201cTuba Fats\u201d Lacen, mentor to many, who\u2019d sing him traditional jazz melodies.
\n\u201cThat\u2019s a different dialect,\u201d Brown said, \u201cand it eventually led me back to Armstrong. When I was 19, I started understanding just how deep Armstrong\u2019s music really was, by transcribing the solos and seeing how complex even the simplest sounding thing was.\u201d
\nAt the Armstrong Archive, Brown was struck by how shallow Amrstrong\u2019s mouthpieces were. He got to try out four different trumpets. He played a few tunes, including \u201cSleepytime Down South,\u201d and, in duet with Christopher, \u201cWest End Blues.\u201d
\n
\"mouthpieces<\/a>
photo: April Renae<\/figcaption><\/figure>
\n\u201cEach one had a different personality,\u201d Brown said. The one he liked best was, according to Riccardi, a Selmer horn from 1964, and the one that Armstrong brought to New Orleans when he returned in 1965 and \u201968. \u201cThat one really popped,\u201d said Brown, \u201cit really spoke. For a second or two, I thought I understood a little more about how Armstrong might have felt.\u201d
\nThat\u2019s the beauty of what\u2019s contained in the Queens College archive and at the Louis Armstrong House Museum\u2014embedded in these artifacts are feelings and ideas best experienced firsthand. (Here<\/a>\u2019s a link to a New Orleans Times-Picayune piece I did after visiting the Armstrong House with trumpeter Kermit Ruffins.)
\nNew Orleans will get a better and lasting taste of all that through \u201cSatchmo: His Life in New Orleans,\u201d<\/strong> an exhibit mounted through a partnership between the Louis Armstrong House Museum in New York City and the Louisiana State Museum in New Orleans.
\nThe exhibit will open at Old U.S. Mint in New Orleans on July 29 as part of the annual Satchmo Summerfest<\/a><\/strong> and will remain on exhibit through January 2017. The exhibit will also coincide with the 100th anniversary of his first professional gig at Henry Ponce\u2019s in New Orleans in 1915.
\nThe following, from the Armstrong House press release about the exhibit:<\/p>\n

According to Armstrong\u2019s autobiography, the young cornetist was offered the job by his friend \u201cCocaine\u201d Buddy Martin, who asked, \u201cYou play the cornet don\u2019t you?\u201d Armstrong responded, \u201cYes, I play the cornet, Buddy. But I don\u2019t know if I am good enough to play in a regular band.\u201d Martin assured him, \u201cAll you have to do is put on long pants at night, play the blues for the whores that hustle all night until \u2018fo\u2019 day in the morning.\u201d That was good enough for Armstrong, who fronted a trio of cornet, piano and drums and ended up playing the blues nightly for the next six months in 1915 (while hauling loads of coal from 7 a.m. until 5 p.m. during the daytime ). Armstrong\u2019s career as a professional musician was underway\u2026.
\nLouis Armstrong led an almost impossible-to-believe life, especially during his younger days. Satchmo: His Life in New Orleans will celebrate all of his early influences, including his mother Mayann, who raised young Armstrong by herself; the Russian-Jewish Karnofsky family, who instilled in Armstrong lessons about \u201csinging from the heart\u201d; his first music instructor at the Colored Waif\u2019s Home, Peter Davis, who made Armstrong the leader of the institution\u2019s brass band after only six months; and cornet legend Joe \u201cKing\u201d Oliver, who became Armstrong\u2019s mentor and biggest influence.
\nFrom the time he was born in 1901 until the time Armstrong headed to Chicago to join Oliver\u2014and change the world of music forever\u2014in 1922, he never stopped absorbing key lessons about music, food, people, race and work. Although Armstrong traveled the world and eventually made New York City his home, rarely a day went by where he didn’t spend a part of it talking about his hometown. He published an entire autobiography on the subject, Satchmo: My Life in New Orleans, wrote letters about it, discussed it in interviews and recorded his thoughts on private reel-to-reel tapes and in unpublished manuscripts. As he told Life magazine in 1966, \u201cEvery time I close my eyes blowing that trumpet of mine\u2014I look right in the heart of good old New Orleans.\u201d
\nThe exhibit will showcase over 70 different artifacts, including Armstrong\u2019s first cornet from the Colored Waif\u2019s Home, which will sit side-by-side with the last Selmer trumpet he brought for his final visit home in 1968. Most of the materials on display are from the research collections of the Louis Armstrong House Museum, with the great majority never having been previously exhibited in New Orleans. Armstrong\u2019s great love of New Orleans cooking, and especially red beans and rice, will also feature prominently.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At any given moment, there are sounds of New Orleans in New York City\u2019s air\u2014lately, a little more than usual. Last week, pianist Jon Batiste, who will lead the band for Stephen Colbert\u2019s \u201cLate Show\u201d come September, had melodica in hand as he led something like a second-line parade out of Union Square Park (see … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Drummer Shannon Powell's Brilliance Shines in Louis Armstrong's Light”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5175,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[291,25,149,14,292,293,294,295,296,297,298],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5166"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5166"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5166\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5166"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5166"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}