{"id":21743,"date":"2021-10-02T05:30:36","date_gmt":"2021-10-02T09:30:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=21743"},"modified":"2021-09-30T13:08:09","modified_gmt":"2021-09-30T17:08:09","slug":"album-review-professor-longhair-fess-at-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2021\/10\/02\/album-review-professor-longhair-fess-at-home\/","title":{"rendered":"Album Review: Professor Longhair – Fess at Home"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

This intimate recording absolutely sparkles. You are right there at Tipitina\u2019s in 1973 as Henry Roeland Byrd (Professor Longhair, or \u201cFess\u201d to those in the know) stretches out for a rollicking performance on the piano, aided and abetted wonderfully by percussionist Alfred \u201cUganda\u201d Roberts.<\/p>\n

The good professor\u2019s vocals are somewhat indistinct for the opener \u201cTipitina,\u201d but his piano magic is what got people in the door. The aptly-named Fess at Home<\/em> presents the professor in the best possible light: at the piano, with a minimum of distractions. He runs through a delightful set of standards and obscurities, including an instrumental reading \u201cRum and Coca Cola,\u201d popularized by the Andrews Sisters (and written by Morey Amsterdam, whom listeners of a certain age may remember from The Dick Van Dyke Show<\/i>.<\/p>\n

The thing about Professor Longhair is that he made nearly every tune sound as if he wrote it. And when he didn\u2019t, he made it sound like it was written for<\/em> him. He bends every song to his inimitable style, adding whistles to estabvlish the lead melody on \u201cBig Chief,\u201d for example.<\/p>\n

And after warming the audience up with a few standards, he switches gears and presents a clutch of his own material, including \u201cMean Ol\u2019 World,\u201d \u201cHow Long Has that Train Been Gone\u201d and \u201cHer Mind is Gone.\u201d In the second half of the set, he sprinkles a few more covers into the gumbo, including Fats Domino\u2019s \u201cWhole Lotta Loving\u201d and the blues standard \u201cEveryday I Have the Blues.\u201d All the while, Roberts\u2019 hand percussion adds thrilling texture to the proceedings; as great a master musician as Fess was, Roberts deserves equal billing here.<\/p>\n

This release \u2013 part of the Tipitina\u2019s Record Club offerings \u2013 features a liner note essay by David Kunian, Music Curator at the New Orleans Jazz Museum. It\u2019s quick yet essential reading. And the dazzling translucent gold vinyl pressing is the icing on the cake.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This intimate recording absolutely sparkles. You are right there at Tipitina\u2019s in 1973 as Henry Roeland Byrd (Professor Longhair, or \u201cFess\u201d to those in the know) stretches out for a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21745,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[42,49,65],"tags":[1735,4655],"class_list":["post-21743","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-jazz","category-new-release","category-review","tag-professor-longhair","tag-tipitinas","cat-42-id","cat-49-id","cat-65-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21743","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21743"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21743\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21746,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21743\/revisions\/21746"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21745"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21743"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21743"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21743"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}