See, I don't know nothing about singing. I never wanted to be a frontman. Frontmen had big egos and was always crazy and aggravating. I just never thought that was a good idea.
When I first started, I didn't know what I was doing. I was such a - like a kid that got into things before I was ready. I was like the original learning-on-the-job-experience guy. All I knew was, if I hired the best musicians, I got the best arranger, and got the right songs for the right singer, I had did my job correctly.
There was a lot of freedom, so bands in those days did not have to play for the public. They played for club owners that enjoyed music. You know, what happened - there was a lot of clubs that had bebop music or different forms of music. It was great for musicians.
The old-timers schooled me good. They brainwashed me to respect music, whether we were playing rockabilly or blues or rock and roll.
That's one of the reason T-Bone Burnett calls me... he thinks I'm used to doing what I do in the studio for him.
It was the first time I was looking, really, right after the storm, that I saw maybe the amount of devastation that had happened in the Lower Ninth Ward. Where my friends lived, which was about six blocks from where the industrial canal was, houses was smashed into houses, and there were, like, four houses smashed together.
That this city has second lines - it's something I'm proud of. When the bands come back from the cemetery, they'll play something up - something like 'I'll Be Glad When You're Dead (You Rascal You)' - that will bring the people back to life.
Where Charlie Christian left off, Papoose started a new thing; he was an innovator of the guitar. The things he did during his recording career with Fats Domino in the Fifties and Sixties until the day he died was as much a part of the music of New Orleans as anybody else has had to offer.
It's obvious some people don't have an emotional thing for the music.
The less said about Inner Space Fungus the better. I've still got the tapes in my house, but I'm afraid to play them back for fear that bacterial growth will take over my house.
Like the tangled veins of cypress roots that meander this way and that in the swamp, everything in New Orleans is interrelated, wrapped around itself in ways that aren't always obvious.
Right after Katrina, we did 'Sippiana Hericane.' I was real upset with everything.
My dad always pointed out Louis Armstrong's pad when we passed by there. And me and my dad were both proud Louis Armstrong was from New Orleans.
New Orleans cats don't play a lot of solos unless they got something to say. It's not an ego thing like it is with some other musicians. You say what you gotta say and then shut up.
I strongly believe that Professor Longhair playing just instrumentals would be just as effective as stylized vocals; that's how much I believe in his music.
The whole Lower Ninth Ward hasn't really recovered, but I feel a good spirit in my heart that something is going on - music is coming back slowly.
