-
-
Eliot Kamenitz/New Orleans guitar and banjo player Detroit Brooks got a start touring with his musical family, including father George Brooks Sr. of the gospel group Masonic Kings, and his sister, gospel singer Juanita Brooks. Detroit grew up downriver, living four blocks from Fats Domino, and was greatly influenced by the late Creole banjo and guitar player, Danny Barker. He created a festival in his memory. In addition to his career in music, Detroit worked as a barber and for Amtrak. He's well versed in traditional jazz, R&B, soul, and funk. He's here as bandleader of the Syncopated Percolators at the New Orleans Jazz Museum, playing “Hindustan,” on American Routes Live.
-
-
Evan Christopher began playing clarinet in junior high school in Long Beach, CA. His first introduction to New Orleans music was hearing Louis Armstrong's Hot Fives and Sevens with Johnny Dodds and Artie Shaw on his dad’s records. Evan moved to New Orleans in his early 20s. Here he worked as a steamboat clarinetist by day and explored the music scene on Frenchmen Street by night. He went on to collaborate with Tom McDermott, Al Hirt, the New Orleans Nightcrawlers, Galactic, and others. His “Clarinet Road” led him from Socal to New Orleans, San Antonio, Paris, and he now resides in New York City. Evan told us how he came to understand the music of New Orleans.
-
-
Soul Queen Gladys Knight grew up in Atlanta with R & B, gospel, doo-wop and soul. At 79, she’s on her farewell tour. We caught up with Gladys Knight in the lobby of the Saenger Theater in New Orleans in 2000. Our conversation started out down home, where the music begins for her.
-
-
This is American Routes live for Labor Day weekend with some favorite performances from our series of concerts created with the New Orleans Jazz National Historical Park. To kick it off, we asked the Pine Leaf Boys to make a big journey across the Atchafalaya swamp from Lafayette and their South Louisiana Cajun prairie homeland down the Mississippi River to New Orleans to play on a live stream as the pandemic closed the dancehalls of French Louisiana. It’s “Pine Leaf Boy Two-Step” on American Routes.
-
-
This is American Routes, and you can’t do a show about the blues without stopping by a juke joint, and I know a great one. It’s Teddy’s Juke Joint, right along Blues Highway 61 in Zachary, LA. It’s a small double shotgun house, at the end of a gravel road, lit up by Christmas lights all year round. Inside you’ll find good times and good blues music served up by Lloyd Johnson Jr., a well-dressed bear of a man in a red suit, sporting a large cowboy hat, and better known to the regulars as Teddy.
-
-
The following is an American Routes encore presentation featuring our interview with the Band’s Robbie Robertson, who passed away on August 9th, at age 80. The Band, and Robertson in particular, were always on the search for “authentic” American music, and around this time they began to incorporate the sounds of New Orleans into their eclectic mix. Songwriter and guitarist Robbie Robertson picks up the story.
