I wish I could see this!!! It's going to be there until the end of this year! I plan to write to the guy who designed it to see if there's any chance they'll take the display on the road eventually. I think a lot of music fans would enjoy it.
http://nola09.nytimes-institute.com/200 ... louisiana/Celebrating the Unsung Musical Roots of LouisianaBy Jessica Goff
May 29th, 2009Lazy Lester. Professor Longhair and Earl King. Slim Harpo, Guitar Gable and Lil Bob.
They may not be burning up the airwaves much these days. But to anyone interested in the cultural roots of Louisiana, they are groundbreakers of modern music.
A new exhibit in the French Quarter pays homage to such musical pioneers. “Unsung Heroes: The Secret History of Louisiana Rock ‘n’ Roll,” at the Louisiana State Museum, divides the state’s musical history by region and gathers a sampling of rare artifacts to illustrate the musicians’ stories.
The show is being presented with the Ponderosa Stomp Foundation, a nonprofit founded in 2001 to preserve music history. The foundation, which also sponsors an annual music festival in New Orleans, takes as its mission the promotion of “overlooked sidemen, session musicians and other influential pioneers whose contributions have shaped American culture for over 50 years.” In sponsoring the new exhibit, “we wanted to show how music is interlocked, how music in different regions of Louisiana influenced each other,” said Dr. Ira Padnos, a local anesthesiologist also known as “Dr. Ike,” who founded Ponderosa Stomp.
The exhibit traces the development of several musical genres, including rock ‘n’ roll, jazz, rhythm and blues and a particularly local concoction, swamp pop.
In 1947, an electrician named J.D. Miller started a recording studio inside a shop he co-owned with his father. They called it the Crowley Studio, named after Miller’s hometown, and it gained notoriety for its distinctive local sound, dubbed “swamp pop” for its bayou origins.
Artists like Slim Harpo, Lazy Lester and Guitar Gable and the Music Kings collaborated to define the record company’s unique genre. Slim Harpo’s 1957 song “I’m a King Bee” was popularized later by the Rolling Stones.
According to music historian John Broven, “swamp pop” is a combination of rock and dreamy Louisiana ballads.
“There is a history and romance to Louisiana music,” said the London-born historian, the author of “South to Louisiana: The Music of the Cajun Bayous” and “Rhythm and Blues in New Orleans.”
Also highlighted in the exhibit are artists from the Lake Charles area like the bluesman Lonnie “Guitar Jr.” Brooks, Cajun rockers Johnnie Allen and Rod Bernard, and the band Cookie and the Cupcakes, who performed the 1958 swamp pop anthem “Mathilda.” Phil Phillips, a singer from Lake Charles, reached No. 1 on the Billboard R&B charts with the 1959 recording “Sea of Love.”
The museum exhibit calls Lafayette “ground zero” for Cajun music, R&B and bayou-influenced rock, and it singles out La Louisianne, a studio founded in 1958 by Carol Rachou.
Today, Rachou’s son David still operates the studio.
“South Louisiana has a lot of different types of music; that’s what kept the studio going,” he said.
The exhibit also pays tribute to Dale Hawkins, a native of Goldmine, La., who originally sang the hit “Susie Q.” A cover of the song later became a hit for Creedence Clearwater Revival. Hawkins went on to become the first white artist to sign on to the Chess record label. As a young musician, he recalled fellow Chess artist Muddy Waters giving him guitar lessons.
In a telephone interview, Hawkins said he was influenced by all kinds of music growing up in Louisiana.
“Where I came from was a melting pot of all kinds of music,” he said.
Shreveport, the exhibit notes, was the home of the Louisiana Hayride, a weekly radio program that reached 28 states. The program shadowed Nashville’s Grand Ole Opry, Broven said, giving artists in the Texas, Louisiana and Arkansas region the chance to build their careers. Hank Williams made his first appearance on the show in 1948.
“Unsung Heroes” also pays tribute to Louisiana’s “piano professors,” such as Champion Jack Dupre, Tuts Washington and Professor Longhair. These artists popularized the New Orleans “junker” piano sound, mixing of blues, Cuban and Caribbean influences.
A retired and worn Steinway baby grand piano is propped in the center of the exhibit. It belonged to Fats Domino, whose home was severely damaged by Hurricane Katrina; the Domino family donated the piano after the storm.
Influential recording studios such as Cosimo Matassa’s J&M and A.F.O. - which recorded artists such as Little Richard, Art Neville, Earl King and Allen Toussaint - get their own place in the exhibit.
Artifacts in the exhibit include the crown of Clifton Chenier, who was known as the “King of Zydeco,” Lazy Lester’s harmonica set, Silas Hogan’s acoustic guitar and, in one display case, an old brown bottle of Hadacol.
Hadacol was marketed as a vitamin supplement known for its 12-percent alcohol content. The product’s pitchman, Louisiana State Sen. Dudley J. Leblanc, marketed the product with elaborate traveling medicine show featuring top entertainers.
Visitors might find the bottle’s inclusion in the exhibit a bit odd - until they read about its central role for Louisiana musicians: Bill Nettles and Jerry Lee Lewis, the exhibit notes, even recorded a special homage to the potent drug “Hadacol Boogie.”
