Stomping 2011 - 4: to New Orleans

We headed south out of Mississippi, having breakfast at a roadside place in Rolling Fork, birthplace of Muddy Waters, and arriving in New Orleans in mid afternoon. After checking into a cheapish hotel we went into town and had a quick look at Big Sam's Funky Nation, who were playing for free in Lafayette Square. Rather loud so we went to the Crescent City Brewhouse for a pint and had some jambalaya in a restaurant in the French Quarter. Then it was on to the new Rock and Bowl for Joe Krown, an innocuous swing band where a few people were jiving.

Next morning we had breakfast at the St Charles Tavern and then went to the Renaissance Arts Hotel for day one of the Ponderosa Stomp conference. I listened to two sessions - one with Bobby Rush, who was amusing as ever, even if he did repeat some of the stories I heard when I saw him last year. The second one was with two of the older ladies of the blues - Carol Fran and Miss Lavelle White - who took good natured digs at each other as they recalled their long careers, times at the Dewdrop Inn and stars they had known and, in some cases, had 'nights of fun' with. Carol told a story about how Elvis gave her $10,000 because his record company brought out Crying in the Chapel to cash in on Carol's version.

In the evening, after a fairly poor meal in a place off Esplanade, we went to Mimi's in the Marigny for a record launch show by Michael Hurtt and the Haunted Hearts and met up with the other Woodies in town for the Stomp. An excellent evening and I bought their 45, My Hamtranck Baby.

Today is the first day of the Stomp and I've spent some more dough on records at a great new record store called Euclid on Chartres. Looking forward to tonight's show.