After 55 years in the music business, one of the great unsung figures of New Orleans R&B, singer Willie West, is finally getting the chance to perform solo in New York. Since Katrina, West has been living and performing in St. Cloud, Minnesota, a town of about 65,000 that is 65 miles from Minneapolis/St. Paul. Before leaving New Orleans, West had worked with the who’s who of New Orleans R&B, from arranger Wardell Quezergue to bandleader Deacon John and producer Allen Toussaint, and even had a short stint singing in the Meters during the band’s last days.

West came up in Raceland in the late-1950s under the tutelage of Guitar Slim and his cohort “Thunderbird” Davis. After releasing several locally-distributed singles and moving to New Orleans to gig, Toussaint took on the project of producing tracks for West, often using the Meters as the backing band. West songs such as “Hello Mama,” “Fairchild” and “Said to Myself” are neglected gems of the Toussaint catalog, and in 1974 West even sang on the sessions for Toussaint’s soundtrack recordings for an obscure blaxploitation film, Black Samson.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72QKg-Pp5O0[/youtube]

When the Meters began to break up in 1977, West filled in as lead singer when Art and Cyril Neville first left the band. By 1980, though, the Meters had called it quits, with West staying in New Orleans to play assorted gigs until leaving the city post-K. He had recorded an album’s worth of studio material with the Meters during his tenure, but the sessions have never been made public.

After a long hiatus from record store shelves following his final single with Toussaint in 1975, West released several CDs of blues and soul in the late ’90s and early ’00s. In the past two years, Finland-based retro funk and soul label Timmion Records has released two new singles by West, backed by the label’s Finnish house band.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQHcIQs8XqM[/youtube]

This Saturday, February 26, Willie West leaves Minnesota for his first solo gig in New York (although he did once perform with the Meters at an area festival). According to the New York Times, he was once booked to go on stage at the Apollo Theater, but missed his chance when fellow New Orleanian Lee Dorsey’s performance went past schedule. He plays 9:30 p.m. at Southpaw in Park Slope, Brooklyn. Tickets are $10 in advance, $15 at the door. As West showed at last year’s Ponderosa Stomp (and in the clip below), classic New Orleans R&B fans are in for a treat.

For more history on Willie West, see Jeff Hannusch’s article in our March 1998 issue or this blog post at Home of the Groove.