Here's Johnny

Mardi Gras is just around the corner, and to celebrate I like to queue up my collection of New Orleans music on my iPod. Just as carols lend Christmas its distinctive sound, a large group of Louisiana artists give Mardi Gras its own unique soundtrack. I would like to introduce you to one of my Mardi Gras favorites.

Johnny Adams was a blues singer, and one of the finest vocalists ever to come out of New Orleans. He is best known for his remarkable range, his ability to effortlessly soar over the gritty backing of his blues bands. Many male vocalists can sing high, but Adams had the unusual ability to hit very high notes and without losing his masculine vocal timbre. The only other singer that comes to my mind who could do that as well as Adams was Roy Orbison, but Johnny's voice was raspier, more streetwise, and yet equally passionate. Adams could groove along, then suddenly explode with emotion. In these days of the American Idol, where young singers are coached to elevate to maximum energy from the very first note, it is refreshing to listen to a singer who knows how to hold back until precisely the right moment.

About a year ago, I bought a very nice blues album called Night Train To Nashville, a compilation of blues and R & B songs from Nashville in the 1950s and 60s. The point of the album was to showcase the R & B talent recording in Nashville at the very time Country-Western was swallowing that city's music scene. Something of a retrospective look at Nashville's lost sound. As I listened to the CD for the first time in my car, I heard a familiar voice. I had to pull off to the side of the road to look at the CD case. Could it be? Yes, it was Johnny Adams! I was surprised because Adams had spent almost his entire career in New Orleans, and I had never thought of him as anything but a New Orleans musician. But apparently Adams had gone up to Nashville in the 1960s a few times to cut records. In the brief time he was there, he impressed the establishment so well that the producers of Night Train chose to include him among Nashville's all-time best bluesmen.

That says a lot. A singer who can briefly flit through a town as musically sophisticated as Nashville and make such an impression that he is still remembered 40 years later must have been nothing less than a monumental talent. And he was. Adams died in a Baton Rouge hospital in 1998, but he is not forgotten. I play him every year come Mardi Gras. Some of my favorite Johnny Adams tunes include the unearthly "I Won't Cry," "Reconsider Me," and one of the best song titles I have ever heard, "Hell Yes, I Cheated."

Comments

[travelingdoc]

My favourite from New Orleans are Professor Longhair, Clifton Chenier and Allan Tousaint but I will check out Adams, I will.

[Michael Hebert]

travelingdoc: I'll give you that Professor Longhair is the more distinctive and talented musician. No one can sing like Johnny Adams, though.