LATEST ADDITIONS

(This piece, originally written in 1988, runs with a few updates)

Maddy Matlock and the Paducah Patrol, Warren Barker, The Vestry Choir, Raoul Meynard and Orchestra, Clint Walker and the Sunflower Serenaders, Gus Farney at the Giant Wurlitzer- these are just a few of the exciting musical acts that helped Warner Brothers Records lose a whopping $3 million a year between 1958 and 1962- its first four years in existence.

Not a great start. In fact the parent company, Warner Brothers films almost shut the doors, but didn’t, according to Fredrick Dannen in his excellent and often hilarious book “Hit Men,” out of fear that it wouldn’t collect money owed by slow paying independent record distributors.

There was a moment early in the afternoon of the last Sunday of New Orleans’ first post-Katrina Jazz Fest when it appeared to me that everything about the event, my perception of it, and even my hopes for the damaged city I’ve come to call home for the past ten years, changed dramatically. I was standing just outside the Economy Hall tent listening to the Trémé Brass Band, one the city’s oldest and funkiest old-time-jazz aggregations, when it started to rain.

Up to that point, the festival had managed to avoid bad weather. First, it outlasted an early heat wave that had collapsed a week and a half earlier, just as music fans began streaming into the city, then it successfully dodged heavy periods of rain that fell overnight on the first weekend. Another wave of rain showers had passed immediately north of the city on the second weekend. Now, however, it seemed the festival’s luck had pretty much run out.

“Roots” music specialist Marley’s Ghost gets a turbo boost from producer Van Dyke Parks, who turns what could have been just another musical “Antiques Roadshow” into a truly special recorded event.

This superbly recorded, meticulously produced collaboration reminds me of an expanded version of Roy Rogers’ and Dale Evans’ “Happy Trails.” It’s packed with nostalgia and exudes a wistful, “see you around” vibe that at times gets downright suffocating.