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The Big Payback

By Marc Stone

Partly in tribute to the recently departed Godfather of Soul, James Brown, and partly in celebration of the city that gave America its soul, trombonist Fred Wesley will team up with Meters’ bassist George Porter, Jr. and drummer Johnny Vidacovich on Friday, February 2nd at Tipitina’s. Wesley—whose decades of playing with Brown, the JBs and associated groups produced some of the most widely heard and imitated body of work for his instrument in popular music—is not often associated with New Orleans. Wesley is from Mobile, and Brown from Georgia, but Wesley sees the Crescent City at the center of his approach to the instrument.


“I first played in the Excelsior Marching Band in Mobile,” Wesley says. “Some of the cats were from New Orleans. The way I play is definitely a New Orleans style.” He references James Brown classics “the Big Payback” and “Papa Don’t Take No Mess” to illustrate his point.


Wesley’s meeting with Porter and Vidacovich was conceived and organized by 23-year-old Justin Aliperti and 22-year-old Stuart Raper of Soul’d Out Booking. Both are Loyola University seniors working under the tutelage of multiple-Grammy winning producer John Snyder. As head of the Loyola Music Business Department, Snyder has set up eight different music business related “entrepreneurial unions” (or E.U.s) to give students hands on experience in the industry.


“My dedication is to the New Orleans music market,” says Snyder. “My mission is to provide opportunities for students to work. It’s all volunteer, no grades.” If the E.U.s are profitable, the students are paid for their work. Under the program, the students run the E.U.s with the intent of taking the businesses and connections they have made with them into the real world after graduation.


This event marks an auspicious beginning for Soul’d Out. It is Wesley’s first trip to New Orleans post-Katrina and one of his first major appearances since the passing of James Brown.


“I’m going to definitely play my ass off,” Wesley says. “It’s going to make a statement that those of us who are still alive got to hold it up.”


Fred Wesley with George Porter, Jr. and Johnny Vidacovich at Tipitina’s Friday, Feb 2 with Groovesect opening and DJ Soul Sister spinning early and between sets.


Published February 2007, OffBeat Louisiana Music & Culture Magazine, Volume 20, No. 2.


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