“What Coffee is all about is soul,” Coffee keyboardist David Mondebello contemplates. “It all comes down to feeling, music that you create from feelings within your soul.”
On the band’s new Soul Snatcher CD, soul music is in abundance and authenticity. The analog production throbs with the precise coitus interruptus of a Willie Mitchell session, circa 1967. Mondebello plays the Hammond B-3 organ, a Wurlitzer electric piano and an acoustic piano–synthesizers are banished to Techno Hell. Bassist David Hyde, clutching one of his vintage Danelectro “Longhorn” basses, utilizes an amplifier that once resided in the legendary Muscle Shoals studio. The guest vocalists include John Fred, in whose band Mondebello performed for nearly a decade. Two contingents of brass and reed players vie for your attention: the “White Trash” horns, direct from Edgar Winter’s employ (Jon Smith and Steve Howard) and the Coffee Horns (Ward Smith, Ken “Snakebite” Jacobs, Bobby Henderson, John Lyons, Mark Mullins and Eric Baskin). Vocalist Ernest Scott, a native of Denham Springs and probably the greatest Louisiana singer you’ve never heard, is the awesome reincarnation of soul giants O.V. Wright and Otis Redding.
“Ernest Scott is just an incredible undiscovered talent,” Mondebello correctly surmises. “The recording is nowhere near what he is live. This band is a much better band live than it is on tape. We get out there and we don’t take any prisoners. It’s like Number Ten from the time we start until the time we finish. We just like to get out there and blow it out. When Ernest does Otis Redding, we’ve got people telling us he’s better than Otis Redding.
“David and Ernest and I have a chemistry on stage. We know each other so well–we’re literally like blood brothers. David and I started playing together when he was 12 and I was 14. Ernest came in a few years later. We get on stage and do it.
“Coffee was first together in the early and mid-’70s for about four years. At that time, other than David Hyde and I, Coffee was a black band that played soul music. We did a lot of Earth, Wind and Fire–stuff like that. We mostly appeared in black clubs–it was an era when black and white music really came together. Then we disbanded and everybody went their own ways.”
David Hyde went on the road, backing Chuck Berry, Bonnie Raitt and Delbert McClinton. He continues in this realm today, currently finding work with Mitch Ryder and Felix Cavaliere, formerly of the Rascals. Mondebello spent time in Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Lake Tahoe and the French Quarter. Ernest Scott went back to church, singing gospel.
Mondebello continues the saga: “We said to ourselves, ‘It was such a good time when we had Coffee and we enjoyed the music so much–it would be nice if we could re-live this thing and accomplish what we failed as kids.’ We tracked Ernest down and said, ‘Ernest, let’s do it again before we get too old.’ Whatever happens will happen.”
What happened was the recording of the CD with its acute devotion to old-school soul and a new round of live gigs, featuring Frank Fairbanks on guitar, John Lyons and “Snakebite” Jacobs on saxophones, Michael Barras on drums and, taking a break from his duties with the Ray Charles Orchestra, Larry Foyen on trumpet. One day–eventually, Jazz Fest audiences will be exposed to Coffee and we predict they will go nuts. If ever a band was tailor-made for the Fair Grounds, Coffee is it.
Meanwhile, Coffee plans to cut its next album live at Ruby’s Roadhouse in Mandeville. And, as for the question that begs to be asked, David Mondebello says his favorite coffee is Community and he sometimes strays in the direction of “a Latte with a little hazelnut added.” David Hyde notes that “I was in Sweden and I had some Swedish coffee and I stayed up for four days. I guess my favorite is Jamaican Blue Mountain.” Ernest Scott has the succinct last word: he drinks his black.
Davell-icious
Hearing that New Orleans’ most handsome keyboardist was recuperating from surgery, we called Davell Crawford to offer our condolences. Feareth not, Davell rasped: “I’m doing very, very well. I had a tumor on my vocal cords–I’ve been knowing about it for quite some time. It doesn’t bother me to talk–they actually want me to talk. The operation went very well–better than they expected.
“I flew in town Thursday, I went in Friday morning at 6 for the operation, by 2 o’clock I was home and by 3:30, I was eating king cake–painfully.
“I’ll be back singing in about four or five weeks. I can play keyboards now but I’ve got to be selective about where I play because I don’t want to be around too much smoke.”
Detecting the sound of running water in the background, we asked the patient if he was preparing to wash his Wedgwood china, eliciting the tantalizing response: “You’re talking to Davell in the nude, in a Jacuzzi tub, relaxing with a Granny Smith apple and some vanilla pudding.” Now, girls–that’s a picture!
Also on the mend is Aaron Neville, who you’ve no doubt seen singing the praises of Banner Chevrolet in a local television commercial, brandishing dreadlocks and a Jesus Christ tattoo. Following his doctors’ orders, Aaron has had to cancel a series of concerts because of a throat malady. He is seeing specialists in New Orleans and Nashville.
Rizzo Goes To Africa
New Orleans rapper Rizzo, “that evil, wicked, mean and nasty negro” (as he calls himself), is conquering Africa. “I have the Number One rap album in Nigeria,” Rizzo reports. “The guy who owns my record label [King Shaka]–Tai Ogunzbe–is from Africa and he sent some copies of my Short While CD to a Nigerian radio station and it started blowing up. And then they sent a crew over here to New Orleans to shoot a video in Little Woods and on the Riverwalk.” The Rizzo song all Nigeria is crazy about is “Take It Off,” previously lauded in these pages for its jaw-dropping descriptions of exotic dance and/or female anatomy.
Curry On
Daydreams & Curry, the faultless rock band we raved about last month, will celebrate the release of its Water CD at a party to be held at a unique venue: Deutsches Haus (normally the site of German carousing and stein-swigging), 200 South Galvez, on Saturday, February 12. D&C leader Greg Wiz promises Teutonic damsels wielding spears and other surprises.
Ninth Ward Nails?
Trent Reznor, owner of a Garden District mansion and a Magazine Street recording studio, confided to England’s FHM magazine that he digs his New Orleans digs: “I’ve lived in New Orleans for the past few years, and that’s a place where people are much less enamored of who you are…there’s times when you don’t feel like being looked at. When you’re standing in Wal-Mart with condoms and underpants, you don’t want to be judged by the guy behind you.” We’ve never encountered Trent at Wal-Mart but we did almost hit him with our car one afternoon in Audubon Park when he shot in front of us on a bicycle, dragging his poor Weimaraner by the leash. Sorry–we don’t brake for rock gods.
