New Orleans in the House: Streaming WWOZ

And "Rare" is Still On the Air

The world of music mourned when the death of Ronnie Spector of the Ronettes was announced on Wednesday, January 12. And the sorrow was real, and earned. But down in New Orleans, the big same day news was the passing of Rosa Lee Hawkins, one of the original members of the Dixie Cups.

They were a “girl group,” like the Ronettes, best known for the "Chapel of Love," a number one Billboard pop hit; it's follow-up, "People Say"; and the 1965 top 20 hit, "Iko Iko," a classic Mardi Gras Indian chant that expanded its national renown when Dr. John recorded it on his album, Gumbo. Look deeper and you'll see it was also a single in 1953 by James "Sugar Boy" Crawford and credited to Sugar Boy and his Cane Cutters. I have a t-shirt that looks like a fraternity which for some reason is spelled “Aiku Aiku” rather than the more logical Iota Kappa Omega (IKΩ).

That night I was doing what I usually do most nights between 9 pm and 11 pm EST: Listening to WWOZ streaming live from New Orleans. I listen on my Roku's Tune In radio channel. I never change the setting from WWOZ. You can also hear it streaming from WWOZ.org, and other online alternatives. I listen almost every night for an hour or so.

Wednesday is my favorite night on WWOZ, because that time slot belongs to "Rare On the Air," which is a bit of a double pun. I've never lived in New Orleans, but I would guess that the disc jockey Bob Murret, who plays records as "Rare" on the air, was part of the lives of many generations who grew up in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast (heard down there at 90.7 FM) with WWOZ. A bio of Murret on an archaic-looking Big Easy Street Sounds web site says that Rare originally retired in 1990, more than 30 years ago, after hosting the show that had once been anchored by New Orleans rock star emeritus Ernie K. Doe.

Around 2010 . . . often, time in New Orleans is measured in approximations, and historic dates are sometimes referred to as "back then." How often does this happen? Sometimes. Once in a while. On occasion.

Around 2010, Rare on the Air came back. I would guess his age to be somewhere between 55 and 105. I like to think I have a good ear for regional dialects. I used to play a bar game in which I would guess the state someone with a southern accent was from, and usually, or often, or sometimes, either nail it straight, or be within one state border.  Bob "Rare" Murret's accent is likely impenetrable to non-natives of southeast Louisiana, sounding parts Cajun, Creole, black, white, swamp, French-American southern, Cherokee, who knows, and he speaks low, almost as if making asides. I'd like to say, yeah, as soon as I heard him speak, I guessed he was from Bayou Lafourche, but I'd be lying.

I am also fairly well-schooled in New Orleans R&B, the specific, piano-driven regional rock and roll of the Crescent City, which I have loved since sixth grade. A song appeared on the radio one day, and I insisted that we go to the Sam Goody store at Green Acres shopping center in Valley Stream, so I could buy the 45. The song was "Don't You Just Know It," by Huey Smith & the Clowns, on Ace Records, and I had a feeling, and I was right, that I might never hear it on New York radio again.

But Rare plays records that I have never heard. At first I felt bad about this, like I was a NOLA music poseur. His mission early in his career at WWOZ is the same as it is now. On that Big Easy Street Sounds website, he says:

"I would play music out of my own collection of 45 rpm records, which included a mix of Blues, R&B, New Orleans R&B, Soul, and some Swamp Pop. I tried to cover as much of the listening audience as possible. What made the show somewhat unique is I would play mostly the rare, the obscure, the unheard, the who thats, and the what nots, the music most people had never heard before on radio. It was great music, it's just none of the DJ's played it when it came out."

The spring of sixth grade was also when Ernie K. Doe's "Mother-in-Law" stormed the charts.  Now in New York, and most of the rest of the world, K-Doe (born Ernest Kador Jr.) had one hit and one-hit only: "Mother-in-Law," which hit No. 1 in spring 1961. It was the last of three consecutive, unexpected number ones that made that semester of sixth grade so exciting: Who could pay attention to the cranky droning of Miss Kurz when we had "Blue Moon" by the Marcels, followed by "Runaway" by Del Shannon, followed by "Mother-in-Law."

Hearing it for the ten-thousandth time on the car radio, my mother, who would usually not comment on my rock and roll favorites, threw her hands in the air and said, "I hate this song!" It begins with K-Doe starting the verse: "The worst person I know" and Benny Spellman, in his bass voice, replying, "mother-in-law, mother-in-law." It was clear to me even as an 11-year-old, that there was some transference or repressed feelings being expressed, since we all knew my mother had no patience for my dad's mom, her own mother-in-law. Who barely spoke English, who never left the kitchen because she was always pouring spouts full of salt into the forever cooking chicken soup . . . on the other hand, "Mother-in-Law" was a little maddening even to us when it came to being overplayed on the radio, as had "Runaway" and "Blue Moon" by the end of their runs. The bass singer Spellman was no slouch as a New Orleans local hero himself, as the singer of "Fortune Teller," covered by the young Rolling Stones, and written by Allen Toussaint (credited to his mother, "Naomi Neville".)

"Mother-in-Law" was indeed a one-hit wonder for K. Doe, if you care about what the rest of the country thinks. But as a regional artist, Ernie K. Doe was nonpareil. Here Come the Girls, a 49-track collection, was released around 2007 by the UK Charly label (it has gone through numerous iterations in packaging) when the title song had second life as a Boots TV commercial in the U.K. There is not a bad track on it.

The New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival foundation owns WWOZ. During my first visit to Jazzfest in 1989, larger national acts were elbowing their way onto some of the multiple stages, as some of the elders pf the NOLA r&b scene were dying off, and ticket buyers had to be satisfied. Santana was playing the main stage one afternoon, and drew a big crowd. But I had seen Santana plenty of times, and I did not come to New Orleans to see them. I walked around the perimeter of the Santana audience trying to find the stage where Ernie K. Doe was performing.

All I had to do was follow the crowds. And the chants. "Boin, K-Doe boin! Boin K-Doe, boin!" (Which translates as "Burn, K-Doe, burn!") This is why I came to New Orleans, to see Ernie K. Doe, where his music has never been out of fashion.

That's the thing I love about WWOZ. There are no "oldies" in New Orleans music, even if the music is 100 years old (Preservation Hall, if you like that sort of thing), but especially when it comes to the music of the 1950s and 1960s. It is present tense, the piano rhumba of Professor Longhair, the rollicking call and response of Huey Smith & the Clowns, the piano and sweet suffering of Fats Domino, the piano of Dr. John (known as Mac Rebennack when he was playing and producing sessions around town for Ace Records), the piano of Eddie Bo, the piano of James Booker. Rock historian and Patti Smith guitarist Lenny Kaye leans into New Orleans in his lively new book, Lightning Striking: Ten Transformative Moments in Rock and Roll, and I hope Lenny will come on Critical Conditions for deeper discussion.

New Orleans had its own strain of 1950s vocal group music, the Spiders, the Pelicans, Sha-Weez (featuring both Sugar Boy Crawford and Big Boy Myles), another through-line via Cosimo Matassa's studio, the producer/songwriter Allen Toussaint, through to the piano/percussion instrumentals of the Meters, which developed into the Neville Brothers, which spread New Orleans music, with a little more funk, to to the world.

Did I mention that one of the current members of the Dixie Cups, Athelgra Neville, is a Neville sister?

I made many trips to New Orleans over the years, and did a lot of cool stuff, including spending a Sunday afternoon drinking beer and eating oysters at the Royal Sonesta Hotel with Clint Eastwood. I'll tell you about that story here, I promise.

But it's a funny town sometimes. This was 1980 or 1981 or so. Early one morning (about 4 am) I was still awake after seeing Lil Queenie & the Percolators close down a bar on the other side of town. Still percolating, I stopped for a nightcap in a blues bar in the French Quarter. An attractive blonde woman, hair in a pony tail, sat down next to me. She edged up close and asked if I had any cocaine. I did not, I never did. It was never my thing, although I might try some back in the day if it was your thing. I said, "well, I've got a joint and maybe some valium in my hotel." As she sidled close to me, I took note of her powerful hips. She said "no thanks, I'm just looking for coke. " As she stood up to move on to the next guy, I noticed the police-issue revolver sticking out of the holster on her undercover agent hip.