The Soul of New Orleans Jazz Fest Is Alive and Well: Fricke's Favorite Sets - RollingStone.com
The eighteenth year of the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival – 1987 – was my first. Many of the mythic names in my collection of Crescent City R&B records – including Earl King , Clarence "Frogman" Henry and Ernie K-Doe – were still alive and resurrecting those hits on stages across the Fair Grounds race track. Sidebar This year's Jazz Fest was my 27th. There was a lot of rain, mud and, with first-time headlining appearances by the Who and Tony Bennett and Lady Gaga , much local hand-wringing over the state of the festival's soul – specifically, how much... Bennett has been a Jazz Tent regular on his own. Elton John , who closes the festival on May 2nd at the Acura Stage, carries a lot of the city's piano history in his ivories. ) And the Who were covering classic New Orleans R&B – like Benny Spellman 's 1962 single "Fortune Teller," written and produced by Allen Toussaint – when it was fresh fruit. The second weekend of the 45th Jazz Fest has just opened, as I write this. There is a lot of missing that comes with every Jazz. Source: www.rollingstone.com
