“Me big chief, me got ’em tribe.
Got my squaw right by my side,
My flag boy just went by,
My spy boy he full of fire.
My whole tribe is having fun,
We gonna dance ‘till morning come.”—Earl King
Closely identified with Carnival, “Big Chief” was recorded by Professor Longhair and produced by Wardell Quezergue in 1964. It first saw the light of day as a two-part single on the local Watch label. While one would assume “Big Chief” was about the colorful Mardi Gras Indians, in fact the inspiration was the mother of the song’s writer, Earl King. A photo of the stern woman reveals no Native American features, but the physically imposing woman was definitely a big chief.
When Longhair waxed “Big Chief,” he was at a low point in his career.
“Fess was about ready to give it up,” said Earl King in 1982. “In fact, as far as personal appearances were concerned, he had. He was hanging out at the One Stop (Records) sweeping up.”
King had written the song while in school, and when he thought about recording the song with Professor Longhair, he also knew how it should sound. “I had the idea to record Fess with a lot of bass because I never thought he’d been recorded right,” King said, “so me and Wardell got together and wrote an arrangement for 15 pieces.
“Meantime, me, Fess, and Smokey Johnson got together and rehearsed it. When we get in the studio, Fess thought there were going to be four pieces, but there were all these musicians hanging around the studio. Fess says to me, ‘Earl, what are all these guys doing here? I guess waiting for the next session, huh?’
“I said, ‘Probably so.’ So Fess gets behind the piano and plays his little intro. Then Smokey and the rhythm section falls in. Then, where the big crash of horns come in, Fess stops playing—bam! He says, ‘What is that?!’
“I said, ‘That’s the rest of the guys that’s gonna be on the session.’ So we took a 15 minute break for Fess to compose himself. Fess says, ‘We really don’t need all of them.’
“I said, ‘I know, but they’re going to play, man.’ After he got his head together, he was alright.”
On “Big Chief,” Longhair concentrates solely on the piano while King takes care of the vocals and the whistle break. Not to be overlooked here is Smokey Johnson’s brilliant drumming. The results were, of course, memorable. According to King, “Big Chief” temporarily transformed the piano legend.
“Fess reached a new energy level. He was enthusiastic about being a musician again and started playing again every day.”
They didn’t think of “Big Chief” as a Mardi Gras song when they recorded it, and when London Records leased the single, it didn’t think of the song as a Carnival song, either. In fact, London didn’t seem to have any plans for the song at all. According to King, London released the song without any accompanying promotion.
“I think Fess was victimized because at that time they (London) had a lot of hot groups then”—the Rolling Stones, first and foremost. “They weren’t too impressed with newcomers they had to spend big bucks promoting. The first year it came out, the (local) stations wouldn’t even play it. The second year, though, people here started getting into it.”
Sadly, Longhair’s enthusiasm quickly waned after “Big Chief” had apparently flopped. After one more Watch single, he fell into musical semi-retirement. This would thankfully end in the early 1970s when his rediscovery would lead to a New Orleans R&B revival. As that transpired, “Big Chief” became a Carnival classic and appeared on Mardi Gras In New Orleans in 1976, the collection that introduced a new generation to Carnival music.
There is a splendid clip on YouTube of Longhair, King and the Meters performing “Big Chief” in Montreaux in 1973.
