During the 1950s, the Alcoa Steamship Company offered cruises from New Orleans to points south in the Caribbean. Trombonist Charlie Halloran has created an album imagining what the music would have sounded like on the three ships plying the azure waters of the Gulf of Mexico en route to Cuba and elsewhere in the tropical latitudes.
This was a fertile if relatively unexplored period of music when early rock ’n’ roll from the pen of artists like Dave Bartholomew and Huey “Piano” Smith resulted in a danceable big band sound that was unintentionally exported to the islands via AM radio. Meanwhile, Americans were experiencing Caribbean music from Cuba, Martinique, Guadeloupe, Jamaica and Trinidad by way of expanding air travel.
The album features a who’s who of local talent including guitarist and vocalist Don Vappie; drummers Doug Garrison, Joe Lastie and Chris Davis; pianists Lawrence Sieberth and David Boeddinghaus; a jumping big band horn section led by Halloran and even the legendary vocalist Dédé St. Prix from Martinique as a guest artist on one cut.
The album is organized as if you, the listener, were actually on one of the ships jamming to the house band. The collection opens with two lesser-known New Orleans cuts from the period before transitioning to Caribbean dance band music, including Venezuela’s unofficial national anthem, “Alma Llanera,” and the moody and exotic “Margarita Rosa” from the Fitz Vaughan Bryan Orchestra, a dance band working in Port of Spain, the capital of Trinidad and Tobago, throughout the 1950s.
The brilliant conceit behind the album’s concept is connected to the actual history of the Alcoa line. The house bands on the ships were New Orleans musicians versed in both traditional jazz and raucous R&B. But while in various ports the band welcomed local musicians to perform, creating an exciting opportunity for the passengers to hear different styles of music.
Listening to the album in one sitting is like taking a musical cruise from the sweaty nightclubs of New Orleans to the steamy ports of the West Indies, spending your time on board swaying to the music under a million pulsating stars.
