Dr. John
Men whooped and hollered, rasped and preached. Women sassed, strutted, hurled accusations and wailed away tears. Guitars twanged and cackled, horns laughed, and drums pounded backbeats and chattered with funk. Tuesday was the first of two nights of the seventh annual Ponderosa Stomp, a associate on its way to becoming an institution. The Ponderosa Stomp is an oldies marathon as dreamed up by document collectors: the kind of music fans who outstanding soul veterans’ rare B-sides and circumscribed-edition garage-rock singles, the wilder the improve.
The lineup features rockabilly and beat and blues, and the audience at Tuesday’s concert at the Residence of Blues in the French Quarter, with nine hours of music on three stages, was dotted with women in quality promwear and men sporting greased-up fraction and flashy Western shirts.
The Stomp is officially dedicated to “uncelebrated heroes” of rock and R&B: people like Wardell Quezergue, the arranger behind New Orleans R&B classics from the effrontery-band mainstay “It Ain’t My Irrationally” to Jean Knight’s “Mr. Big Gormandize,” and the Green Fuz, a three-man Texas garage strip that released one single, “Untrained Fuz,” a song that was revived by the Cramps. “Gullible Fuz” was recorded in 1969 in a diner under renovation, and reverberation from barren walls gave it a memorably funereal sound. Band members didn’t like the recording and hastily BB guns at part of their lone pressing of 500 copies. The Unskilful Fuz was scheduled to be reunited, after 40 years, at Wednesday’s half of the Stomp.
Where a conventional oldies show runs...
