The first stop on a Soul and R&B musical tour of the United States must begin with New Orleans. Why? Because New Orleans was, I believe, the first US city to create a large body of significant recordings that helped develop R&B and Rock ‘n’ Roll, producing several major million-selling records.
New Orleans is a beautiful city located on the Gulf of Mexico with a diversity of ethnic groups and cultural elements forming its brilliant and dynamic culture. The history of the city goes back as far as the 1700s, when it was formed as a French colony in 1718 and later colonised by the Spanish for a period of time. It later reverted to French colonial rule before finally becoming an official part of the United States in the Louisiana Purchase of 1803. It soon grew to become one of the largest cities in the USA.
The cultural dynamic of the city is remarkable with input from French, African, English, Spanish, West Indian, Cajun, and Creole. This diverse group of people created and nurtured a fertile environment for musical experiment, out of which the New Orleans sound developed. The African influence on New Orleans music can be traced back to the 1850s in Congo Square in New Orleans, where slaves would gather to play music and dance on Sundays, as well as buying and selling in the market.
The city enjoyed a cultural independence that set it apart from the rest of America, having been a slave port. It can lay claim to being the place where jazz was born and is often known as the home of the Blues. But in the 1960s and early 1970s it was best known for the funky, soul music to which the city gave birth. The origins of New Orleans R&B go back to the 1940s.
LaBranche House, New Orleans
Photo: Pedro Szekely 2018 (Wikimedia Commons)
The most important people at the heart of this development were a bandleader called Dave Bartholomew and a recording studio owner called Cosimo Matassa. Between them they provided the space, the technical ability, and the musical know-how to enable a new post-war form of popular music to flourish and spread. The spearhead was Fats Domino, working closely with Dave Bartholomew to create songs that people could sing and dance to, hitting the national charts in 1949 and enjoying huge success through the fifties. Other local New Orleans singers were signed up during the post-war years by Bartholomew and helped put the city on the R&B map, including Lloyd Price, Frankie Ford, Shirley & Lee, Guitar Slim, and Huey Smith.
In the sixties, a new group of artists carried the New Orleans R&B banner. Chris Kenner, Ernie K. Doe, Lee Dorsey, and Barbara George all had big hits in 1961, later followed by Irma Thomas, The Dixie Cups, Robert Parker, and Aaron Neville. The guiding hand for most of these artists came from Allen Toussaint, who had taken on the mantle of Dave Bartholomew. The seventies saw further development of the New Orleans R&B sound, with hits from another group of singers, led by The Neville Brothers, Jean Knight, King Floyd, and Dr. John. After that, the spotlight moved on. Other cities, other recording studios and other artists took R&B music in new directions.
Header Image: Parade (Antisocialtory, Wikimedia Commons)
