Some really exciting news was emailed to us last week: Preservation Hall, the legendary traditional jazz venue in the French “Quarters” is launching a new label in late January 2004, “Preservation Hall Recording.”
Distributed by Redeye (Yep Roc, Bonfire, Jazzateria, Planetary Records), Preservation Hall Recordings will release three CDs that feature past and present giants of music from New Orleans.
Perhaps the average reader isn’t aware, but there are several Preservation Hall Jazz Bands. One (with rotating performers) plays the venue every night. There are several other bands, with musicians who are hired for their prowess with their instrument as well as their ability to perform and to appreciate the traditional form of jazz that’s been institutionalized at Preservation Hall.
What’s so great about this is that “Preservation Hall” is being promoted as a brand that is uniquely New Orleans. They put musicians to work in the city and around the world, have a successful venue, the now have a record label that can spread the word—and the music—even further. “These recordings usher in a new period in the life of Preservation Hall,” says Ben Jaffe, son of co-founder Allan Jaffe, who manages the Hall and the label with his mother, Sandra.
The first issues will be Preservation Hall Jazz Band: Best of The Early Years, Hot Four and Shake That Thing.
You’ll read more in upcoming issues of OffBeat.
GRAMMY HALL OF FAME BACK ON THE DRAWING BOARD
For all the folks who read OffBeat who don’t live in New Orleans, we may yet have a Grammy Hall of Fame. Pres Kabacoff, developer of many projects in New Orleans, is now involved as the head developer. After Michael Greene, NARAS Executive Director, resigned from his position, the NARAS board gave it the cold shoulder. NARAS reps, and a 25-member contingent from the city, including Kabacoff’s development team, made their pitch to NARAS officials last week.
The Grammy Hall of Fame site is located next to the Hilton Hotel Riverside on Convention Center Boulevard.
You wouldn’t be reading Mojo Mouth without expecting a soupcon of my personal opinion to be ladled in, so here goes: if the NARAS people decide to give the deal the go-ahead, more power to the developers. We need a music attraction in the city. It’s ridiculous that we don’t have a high-profile music museum in New Orleans. But for my money, a much better location—suitable because of its historic site—would be at Basin and Canal Streets in the old Krauss Department Store building. If the Grammy people don’t want to “bless” the project, then let’s do our own music museum, say the “Real American Music Hall of Fame”—with a lot of Louisiana music, of course. Since New Orleans really provided the roots of all American music, isn’t this the right location?
WWOZ—MOVING OUT OF ARMSTRONG PARK?
The Friends of Armstrong Park are a local group that’s protested the proposed expansion of WWOZ in Armstrong Park, along with Tremé neighborhood activists. They say the building that WWOZ has proposed (about 15,000 square feet) will take up too much of the green space and will just be another suburban office building in the Tremé neighborhood’s only inner city park.
The City of New Orleans held a meeting in November to get public input on the WWOZ expansion. While most of the attendees there agreed that WWOZ needed a larger space, some suggested that they look outside Armstrong Park for a place to locate the station’s production facility and administrative offices, perhaps on Rampart Street. Nothing has been decided yet—WWOZ and the city are both mum on the subject—but we predict that the WWOZ expansion in Armstrong Park won’t happen. This might be tragic for the station’s current management—they’ve been planning this for years—but it may turn to the station’s advantage if they can locate in a building close to the park that will help revitalize the Rampart Street corridor.
LANDRIEU TAKES ON MUSIC
Mitch Landrieu is Louisiana’s new Lieutenant Governor. He understands the creative industry—did you know he is a former professional actor and singer? He understands the problems of the music business—he worked on the legal team that helped get rid of the amusement tax in New Orleans.
I sat down with Landrieu to discuss how he perceives music and how he feels he can positively impact the industry in Louisiana.
“The general idea is to inventory what we have, and to find ways to take the raw material we have—music, culture, etc.—and instead of exporting it someplace else to add value to it, keep it here. What I would like to try to do is to ask people not about how music will improve the quality of our lives, but what about the business of music. What does music ‘business’ mean? What opportunities are being taken advantage of by people outside of this state? Why are Austin and Nashville perceived as music business centers and we are not? How can you increase musicians’ capacity to make a living here, export it and make it better for everyone?
“But I need to understand from the people in the music industry whether or not we’re moving in the right direction. What direction do we need to take?
“There are two questions: what do we have and how do we make it better? In terms of improving the state’s economic development strategies, the first general principle is that there are natural synergies between functions that are taken care of in different state departments that are doing good things but don’t necessarilytalk to each other.
“There hasn’t been a Lieutenant Governor who’s gone to meet with film producers or music industry moguls, for example, because it wasn’t under that department. So you have to connect those things—put them together. Or make it such that departments work together a lot more closely so that they’re responsive to each other in a meaningful way.
“The point is that there’s a lot more, in my opinion, that can be done to recognize music as a catalyst for economic development. For example, cultural environment is conducive to attracting industries to locate in the state. But from a meat and potatoes perspective, we need more production studios and more ways for musicians to make money.
“Who are the people who know what we want to become and how we go about doing that? And what are the resources that we need from the local and state level we need to make it happen? I am not into creating a bureaucracy, I want something that works.
“Creating a Music Office on the state level would be fairly simple. We need to ‘connect the dots’ to make things work the way they should—but first we need to identify what those dots are! We need to ask fundamental questions on how to make a flexible, forward-looking entrepreneurial ‘thing’ that works.
“I’m talking to people and am interested in hearing what people know and what they think we can do to improve. What we need is a ‘white paper.’ Design something that you think would work, something we can use to show what you think the music industry should look like. Then we distribute it to everyone, get opinions, what works, what doesn’t and the kernels of truth will emerge.”
