The Entroporium

I get back from my annual Burning Man-forced news blackout and frickin’ Armageddon hit a huge swath of the country. I knew going up that things were going to be bad; my last news as my radio signal faded in the desert was that the levees had broken and the water was spilling in. I imagined that the city was gone, but I was still surprised by the level of depravity and desperation achieved. We should all be asking ourselves questions about how this might happen in our own communities and what we can do to prevent it, but that is a topic for a later post.

I never had the privilege of visiting Nawlins, but it always loomed large for me as a place of cultural richness and weird behavior, seemingly catering to the very worst touristic instincts — gluttony, drunkenness, sloth — but without the cold calculation of the minds that run Las Vegas. Not to mention centuries of political machinations, running the gamut from virtual dynastic royalty to populist uprisings to Lee Harvey Oswald hawking socialist newspapers down on the corner.

For the next several posts, I’ll be whipping out some of the great artists that made Nola one of the most influential musical cities in the universe. With the great diaspora under way and most of the area’s housing stock destroyed, we may never see a city like this again where history and demographics conspired to blend such disparate influences and peoples to create unique, exciting music.

Today’s artist, Lee Dorsey, is a personal favorite. With several huge national hits in the mid-60s (including “Ya Ya,” “Working In A Coal Mine” and “Everything I’m Gonna Do Is Gonna Be Funky”), Dorsey was massively influential on the birth of funk in the late 60s. Although he didn’t have the flash of megastar performers like James Brown, you can hear Dorsey’s intonation and groove in many of the great funk bands of the 70s, like Parliament and Cameo. Perhaps he’d be better known today if he hadn’t retired in 1970 to open an auto repair business. Yes, really.

[Soundtrack]
Lee Dorsey – Yes We Can Can.mp3
Lee Dorsey – Give It Up.mp3
Lee Dorsey at AllMusic
Robert Christgau covers Dorsey opening for The Clash in 1980