SOUTHERN COMFORT AND NEW ORLEANS, NOW WE HAVE THE MUSIC TO GO WITH BOTH

New Orleans is a city that`s famous for its rich musical culture. The city has produced some of the best avant garde piano players just for starters, including the eccentric Dr. John and the Jimi Hendrix of the keyboard, the late great James Booker, who barely had the opportunity to put six songs onto tape in his tragically underrated life as a musician, spare the one album he recorded as an amateur contestant at a live talent quest in Europe not long before he died. 

I will get to that album later down the track maybe, but James Booker was awesome
when in full swing, never one to play with a clear melody but always with as many zigzagging chords as you could imagine thanks to his extremely long fingers which were said to be longer than those of Jimi Hendrix. 

He played a piano like a slide guitar, he didn`t sound pretty but yeah, he had something special. More so than the more famous and commercially successful Dr. John, who certainly had ability below all the jam tin eccentricities which all too often tended to muddle his terrific piano playing.

I have an album in front of me which I have been in possession of for nearly twenty years now. It was never commercially released, I think it was sold to the public ever so briefly in about 1990 or 1991 as a Southern Comfort promo in all the bottle shops around that time, and it is simply titled `The Heart. The Soul. The Spirit`, obviously a commercially directed reference to the alchoholic beverage that was being marketed by having this CD coming free with every purchase of a bottle of Southern Comfort. 

It is the definitive drink, or at least back then it was, of the city of New Orleans. With the exception of the one song from the mercurial bluesman John Lee Hooker, all the other eleven songs and eleven artists on the CD were from obscure musicians of the deep south. 

The best way to describe the album is that it is a wonderful sampler of New Orleans music, everything from cajun, zydeko, blues, jazz, Memphis soul and loopy avant-garde is represented on it, half the songs are a mishmash of all those styles. 

I am more the fan of a melody over complicated chord laden music, but for all its muddled sound in many parts, `The Heart. The Soul. The Spirit` is good listening for anyone who desires to discover a long lost talent on the back of one carefully selected song which made it onto the album. 

The album opens with `Cajun Angel` by Baxter/BJ Varne. No I dont have a clue who they are either, Jack Dupree cooks up a real finger licking good chicken storm with the lewd song `Hometown New Orleans`, while James Booker puts on a dazzling  performance on `Classified` to prove beyond any doubt that he was the`prince of the piano`in New Orleans. 

Johnny Adams provides the most sophisticated tune to the set with `Fortune Teller`, a classically styled and cool soul performance, while Nathan and the Zydeco Cha Cha`s and Buckwheat Zydeco/Stanley Dural make a predominantly accordion laced zydeko contribution to the album as one could expect given their names. 

`The Flame Will Never Die` by Beausoleil. S. Landreth, you know him of course just like I do, 😄, provided what is unofficially the title track of the album, and Dalton Reed chucked in some fun with `Party on the Farm`. 

The truth is that I am not a big fan of zydeko music, because I have never taken to the accordion to be honest, I kind of regard it as being as irritating as an out of tune violin. 

But when mixed with a few other instruments the accordion occasionally doesn`t sound too bad, especially in the company of musicians who were obviously playing the performance of their life in the hope that one song might give them the break they really deserved. 

Oh yeah, and by the way, I forgot to mention a song by the name of `Boom Boom` by who else than John Lee Hooker. 

Not sure how many versions John Lee made
of this song, but I`m nearly positive that the version here is a jazzed up one compared to the one I`m familiar with.

Anyhow, I wonder if there is any chance of this album being very belatedly pressed and sold by a record company.

Until that happens, then I know that I have got my hands on a real collectors item which hasn`t aged quite as good as a bottle of Southern Comfort, but it`s pretty smooth.