Happy Birthday, Dr. Michael White!

Jazz clarinetist, bandleader, composer, Jazz historian and musical educator Dr. Michael White was born in New Orleans on November 29, 1954, and he began his jazz musical career as a teenager playing for Doc Paulin's Brass Band. White is a classically trained musician who was discovered by Kid Sheik Colar while performing in Jackson Square in the French Quarter. He was a member of the Fairview Baptist Church Marching Band, played in the Young Tuxedo Brass Band since 1979, and led a band called The New Orleans Hot Seven during the 1980s.

In 1981, White founded The Original Liberty Jazz Band to preserve the musical heritage of New Orleans. The group has performed an end-of-year concert at the Village Vanguard every year since the early 1990s. He is a recipient of a 2008 National Heritage Fellowship awarded by the National Endowment for the Arts, which is the United States' highest honor in the folk and traditional arts. White is also a college professor who teaches African-American Music at Xavier University of Louisiana, and, he holds the Rosa and Charles Keller Endowed Chair in the Humanities of New Orleans Music and Culture. He has also served as guest director at several Jazz at Lincoln Center concerts relating to traditional New Orleans jazz, often working with Wynton Marsalis. White has also served as a commissioner for the New Orleans Jazz National Historical Park.

White is a celebrated and accomplished musician, historian and educator who shares his many gifts with students and audiences alike. Let’s all join together today to wish him a very happy birthday wishes!

Photo: Derek Bridges

Happy Birthday, DJ Khaled!

Producer, rapper, songwriter, and record label executive Khaled Mohamed Khaled, better known as DJ Khaled, was born in New Orleans on November 26, 1975. A popular radio host at a hip hop station in the 1990s, he DJ’d at Terror Squad’s live shows and eventually gained production credits on their recordings. His 2006 debut album “ Listennn... the Album” achieved gold, and Khaled founded his own label, We the Best Music Group. He has continued to achieve great success with his subsequent releases, even garnering a Grammy nomination in 2016 for Best Rap Album for his ninth studio album, “Major Key”. Subsequent releases have also achieved great commercial and critical success, with his 2019 album, “Father of Asahd” achieving number 2 on the Billboard 200. Khaled is also a prominent media personality, an actor, and he is a New York Times bestselling writer with his book The Keys.

Photo by: Meghan Roberts - DJ Khaled, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=46144938

Happy Thanksgiving!

Celebrating the Birthday of Dr. John

On November 20, 1941, New Orleans gifted the world with Malcolm “Mac” John Rebennack, better known as Dr. John, the Night Tripper. Rebennack was a singer, songwriter and musician whose unique “New Orleans Sound” combined blues, pop, jazz, soul, boogie woogie, funk, and rock n roll, and whose stage appearance was inspired by Mardi Gras Indians and voodoo shaman. He made his album debut with Gris-Gris in 1968, and had a hit single in 1973 with “Right Place, Wrong Time”. Over the following decades, Dr. John has released numerous albums and songs covering a wide range of styles and genres, becoming a six-time Grammy winner along the way. He was inducted into the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame in 2011. Dr. John passed away in his beloved New Orleans on June 6, 2019.

Happy Birthday, Tab Benoit!

Singer songwriter, guitarist, and drummer Tab Benoit was born November 17, 1967, in Houma Louisiana. A guitar player since his teenage years, he plays primarily Delta blues on his 1972 Fender Telecaster, but he’s skilled in a number of blues styles. Benoit learned from blues legends, and formed a trio in 1987, playing clubs in Baton Rouge and New Orleans. Two years later he began touring other parts of the South, and started touring more of the United States in 1991. He landed a  recording contract in 1992, and has been prolific since then, releasing 19 recordings between 1993 and 2012. In that time, he has collaborated and performed with countless legendary musicians including his regular crew, bassist Carl Dufrene and drummer Darryl White, Big Chief Monk Boudreaux, Cyril Neville, Brian Stoltz, George Porter, Jr.., Kenny Neal,  Debbie Davies, Jimmy Thackery, Charlie Musselwhite, Tommy Shannon, Chris Layton, Anders Osborne, Michael Doucet, Ivan Neville, and more.

In 2007, Benoit won his first B.B. King Entertainer of the Year award presented by the Blues Music Awards, the most prestigious recognitions afforded to Blues musicians. Benoit was inducted into The Louisiana Music Hall of Fame in 2010, and two years later, he won three separate Blues Music Awards: Contemporary Blues Male Artist; Contemporary Blues Album (for 2011's Medicine); and for the second time, B.B. King Entertainer of the Year. In 2013, the second year in a row, Benoit won the Blues Music Awards Contemporary Blues Male Artist.

In 2003, Benoit founded 'Voice of the Wetlands,' an organization promoting awareness of the receding coastal wetlands of Louisiana.He promotes the issues that plague Louisiana's imperiled coast to his national audience, and supports outreach and education about Louisiana's Wetlands loss and how Louisiana's rich culture is endangered as its wetlands disappear.In 2010, Benoit received the Governor's Award - Conservationist of the Year for 2009 by the Louisiana Wildlife Federation.

Photo: Bengt Nyman

Mardigramus - Twice A Year

Mardigramus the soothsayer dispenses pointless wisdom and useless observations every Tuesday. Today’s sooth is called “Twice A Year”. Click on the image to view his visionary video.