The Jazz Foundation of America, an organization whose mission it is to provide (amongst its vast outreach and charitable work) Covid-19 relief to musicians here in New Orleans and around the country, has hopped aboard the creative Carnival porch float craze around town by fashioning a house at 6075 Laurel St. (at the corner of Webster St.) into a celebratory dedication of many of the musicians we’ve lost over the past year. The front of the house is adorned with four murals by local artist Brendon Palmer-Angell, featuring Ellis Marsalis, Alton “Big Al” Carson, Alfred “Uganda” Roberts, and WWOZ’s very own Jesse Hathorne aka Brother Jess aka The Midnight Creeper. To that end, I’ll be featuring, this Sunday evening on The Dean’s List (Midnight—3 AM CST) an interview with Steve Jordan, multi-instrumentalist, producer, arranger, musical director, X-Pensive Wino (with Ivan Neville and Keith Richards), Verb (with his wife Meegan Voss), and drummer extraordinaire. He is also a board member of the Jazz Foundation of America, and we’ll be discussing the Krewe du Jazz house project Uptown and the ongoing mission of the Jazz Foundation to help foster and sustain the life and livelihood of musicians of all kinds. We’ll also spotlight the music of many of those musicians that have passed over the last year, as well as feature tracks from Mr. Jordan’s incredibly varied career as session musician, performer, and composer. (I’d list all his credits but I don’t wanna crash our website.) As Steve likes to say: "Let the music speak." Here are some links to the Foundation and its important work:
https://jazzfoundation.org/covid19fund/
https://jazzfoundation.org/no-parade-year-new-orleans-festooned-mardi-gras-house-floats/
See y’all Sunday night!
