In 1947, the great banjoist Danny Barker recorded the Mardi Gras Indian chants “Tootie Ma Is a Big Fine Thing” and “Corrine Died on the Battlefield,” releasing them on 78 several years later. This Friday, November 19, Preservation Hall will release a modern re-imagining of that record, this time performed by Tom Waits and the Preservation Hall Jazz Band. Proceeds will benefit the Preservation Hall Junior Jazz & Heritage Brass Band.
The A side—”Tootie Ma Is a Big Fine Thing”—can be found on Preservation, an album released earlier this year and featuring the band in collaboration with a number of well-known national artists, and the Barker 78 helped start the project. “It was an original copy of those two songs that I sent to [Tom Waits] that got him involved in the project early on,” says Ben Jaffe, director of Preservation Hall.
“I was going through the Preservation Hall archives, which is a huge collection that my parents amassed over the past 40 years. I was flipping through an unmarked box of 78s—it could have been any of 100 boxes. It was as if the skies opened and the light of God pointed to this one record. I pulled it out and it was the original Danny Barker recording of ‘Tootie Ma Is a Big Fine Thing’, and the flipside was ‘Corrine Died on the Battlefield’. I never knew this even existed. I had never seen a copy, no one ever talked about it.
“It took a long time to get the idea to [Tom Waits], and to get him to consider doing the project, then to get him to New Orleans. The whole thing was an act of God. He’s the type of artist that really no amount of money will persuade him to do a project. It’s either something he wants to do or he’s not going to participate. I knew it was going to have to be something really special for him to participate on the Preservation record.”
Jaffe first discussed the idea of releasing a 78 with Waits right after the recording sessions. “We were standing in the back of the hall,” he says. “We had a few minutes by ourselves after we finished the session. I offhandedly said it would be really cool if we released the tracks as a 78. And he said “Yeah, a 78. That sounds great.”
The excitement fizzled a bit as Jaffe considered the logistical difficulties the project would entail. Even in the hullabaloo of today’s vinyl renaissance, very few people have players capable of spinning at 78 RPM—the original standard for records in the ’50s and earlier. That quandary inspired the second half of the project: the first 100 discs in the limited-edition run of 504 will be accompanied by a custom-designed Preservation Hall 78 player. A donation of $200 gets you the player and a copy of the record. The $50 “basic package” gets you the record alone.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=evdZ6JaH27s[/youtube]
“The idea was, ‘Hey here’s an easy way to play a 78,’” Jaffe says. “It’s a great tribute to our past.
“It seemed so cool to me that a project like this would actually encourage people to find a way to play the record,” he adds. Despite the medium’s technical limitations in comparison to modern technology, he sees value in it as a counter to the digital music culture’s tendency to de-value the individual song. “When you have one song, you listen to that one song until every note is emblazoned into your brain,” he says.“Today people walk around with tens of thousands of songs on their iPods. We don’t have that special moment with songs anymore. When you play a 78 you have to sit there. When it’s finished, you have to lift the needle or you’re going to mess it up. You have to be very gentle with a 78. It’s a piece of glass, practically. There’s a value system there that doesn’t necessarily exist today.”
Jaffe tells a story about Waits’ visit to New Orleans for the recording session. “When I was trying to persuade him to do this project with us, we actually sent him a 78 player along with the Danny Barker record. Clint [Maedgen] and I went down to his hotel before he arrived and set up a record player for him along with a stack of our favorite records. The first phone message I got from him, he said, ‘I’m sitting here looking out over the Mississippi River listening to Gertrude Morgan. I can’t think of a better way to spend my afternoon.’”
The 78 and the 78/player combo go on sale Friday at 10 a.m. CST at Preservation Hall. Online purchases can be made at the Hall’s website starting at 12:01 a.m. CST November 20. Sales are limited to one per customer.
