Professor Longhair - Baton Rouge & Memphis 1971-72

In earlier posts, I am fairly certain we have covered all the material from Professor Longhair's first heyday back in 1948-53. So popular was he was back in that first era of record men from the north coming to New Orleans, that he was recorded by at least 5 different labels in those years, Jerry Wexler and Atlantic actually recorded him 3 different times, once in NY and twice here. Both Mercury and Atlantic soon ran into an obstacle with Fess, however, like many New Orleans artists he was unwilling to tour in support of records. He didn't like leaving New Orleans. Not long after his final Atlantic session, Byrd had a what is described as a mild stroke which shelved his career throughout the next wave of record producers like Imperial and Specialty who passed over Fess and his mentor Archibald in favor of their students and proteges like Fats Domino, Mac Rebennack, Art Neville and Allen Toussaint.

Fess had sufficiently recovered to resume his career by 1957 as evidenced by an excellent session for Barbara Rupe's Ebb records which yielded 6 songs but no career traction and Byrd still wouldn't travel far from home. He managed only sporadic singles for labels like Rip, Ron and Watch over the next 7 years (yielding only local hits) and then after 1964, nothing. The gigs had apparently dried up and while I've heard somewhere that he would occasionally host rent parties and Indian practices in his front parlor, he essentially drops out of sight.

By 1970 Fess was destitute, depressed, and chronically ill from a life of malnutrition. He was completely out of music; he reportedly swept the floor of a music distributor on Rampart hoping to pick up some 'royalties' on sales around Mardi Gras. He was weak and his legs shook so badly he couldn't stand for long. Chances are pretty good he would not have survived much longer. Fortunately help was on the way, first in the form of some blues freak Englishmen from Blues Unlimited who came looking for the author of those earlier great recordings. They claim to have found him in a flop house next to a jukejoint on Rampart Street, this was before either of his Uptown homes, but that sounds like a fabricated tale that made good print. Those guys did, however, help a pair of crazy Tulane kids locate Fess for their budding New Orleans Jazz Festival. Once they had found him Alison Minor and Quint Davis helped this frail, starving artist, turned to an old man well before his time (he was only 50!) by extreme poverty, to revive his career and, more importantly, his life. Alison describes Fess as having dropped more than ten years from his apparent age in a matter of months. He morphed into the incredibly hip and vital dude that I remember. With a new audience, a new purpose and a new home club in Tipitina's, his health rebounded and the final decade of that life was spent playing and recording both here and around the world to at least some portion of the sort of adulation he so justly deserved.

The two sessions represented here were the first made by Roy 'Professor Longhair' Byrd in nearly two decades. The Baton Rouge session in September 1971 was done at Deep South Recorders with Snooks Eaglin on guitar, Will Harvey on bass, and Fess' dear friend Shiba (Edwin Kimbrough) on drums. The session was a 17 (18?) track demo to shop him to labels for a new recording contract...no one bit at that point. Somehow Davis managed to get Fess to travel all the way to Memphis for a second attempt. The Memphis session of June 1972 also included Snooks, but this time bassist George Davis and Meters drummer Zigaboo Modeliste were on board for 15 more tracks. Meanwhile Albert Grossman's Bearsville Records in Woodstock, NY (Todd Rundgren's label) became interested in producing a Professor Longhair record but the result was a disastrous session with rock musicians who knew nothing of Fess' music. In the hurry to leave Davis would leave both masters (which had been sent ahead for the session musicians to learn from) behind with the understanding they would be sent back to New Orleans. Grossman never returned them and pulled the classic 'money owed us for the unsuccessful session' dodge in an attempt to steal the recordings. It would be two more years before the same brilliant Frenchman who brought us the first Wild Magnolias albums (Phillipe Rault of Barcaly Records) would produce Fess' first album, 'Rock 'N' Roll Gumbo' with Gatemouth Brown. (bizarrely enough the co-producer was George Winston)

When these two sessions finally came to light after Fess' and Grossman's deaths, Rounder seems to have been given first choice of tracks and Rhino released the rest. (House Party is the Rounder issue, Mardi Gras in Baton Rouge is the Rhino issue.)