Johnny Palazzotto on the state of the blues

If you have any connection with music in this town, whether as a fan or a player, you have crossed paths, and possibly swords, with Johnny Palazzotto, a tireless figure in promoting and producing the indigenous music of Baton Rouge for three decades now. Music writer Alex V. Cook sat down with the prickly music publisher at his Louisiana’s Music studio on Main Street to get his blunt take on the blues today and why it is important.

225: What is it about the blues in Baton Rouge? What is the special tie we have to it?

JP: I would say that there have certainly been dozens of artists born and raised around the area who have gained national notoriety. One that probably very few remember is Robert Pete Williams. I know Quint Davis had a personal relationship with Robert Pete, and Robert Pete played the first couple of Jazz Fests.

I didn’t know that. He’s buried up there by the airport, right?

That’s right. I had the pleasure of interviewing his wife before she passed away; she was peeling crawfish tails in Grosse Tete at one of the crawfish plants. But of course, the lasting legends we have today: Tabby Thomas, Henry Gray, Rudy Richard and James Johnson. In between those guys there were Silas Hogan, Whisperin’ Smith, Guitar Kelly and Schoolboy Cleve and Chewin’ Gum Johnson, and of course my all-time favorite, Raful Neal. Baton Rouge probably has had … some authentic blues legends. If you talk to Johnny Rivers or Jimmy Clanton or certainly John Fred when he was alive, they would all tell you they were influenced by bluesmen here and guys like Slim Harpo, who was not a traditional blues guy at all.

What would you describe Slim Harpo as being?

I would really define him as rock ’n’ roll. If you look at The Rolling Stones and Van Morrison, The Kinks and The Moody Blues, those guys are definite rock ’n’ rollers, and to record a traditional blues man’s songs, the songs lent themselves to early rock ’n’ roll.

But getting back to why Baton Rouge should embrace the brand of a blues city, I like to call it a stronghold. Memphis and Chicago like to call themselves the home of the blues, many people believe that, but a lot of people chuckle at that, most of the people they claim to have as natives and residents came from down here or down in Mississippi.

And then Highway 61, which starts at the corner of Claiborne and Broad in New Orleans and passes through here, the migration of blues artists didn’t start up in Minneapolis, where Bob Dylan wrote Highway 61 Revisited, it’s started down here and went up there.

I think there a number of obvious reasons and artists here why Baton Rouge is a notable blues city and will be for some time. We have Chris Thomas King, Lil Ray Neal, Kenny Neal, Elvin Killerbee, Chicago Al, Kenny Acosta, Luther Kent, Tyree Neal, the list goes on. Then we have young guys like Jonathon “Boogie” Long, who was close runner-up in the Blues Challenge.

What is his story? How did he get into this?

I guess it’s just ambition and desire. Luther Kent has appreciated his guitar work and let him sit in on gigs back when he was not 18. There is a healthy blues contingency in Baton Rouge, and always has been. There’s just as healthy a rock ’n’ roll contingency as well.

Actually when we get passed this next Blues Festival, I’m going to try to organize a rock ’n’ roll festival.

What’s the idea behind a rock ’n’ roll festival?

Again, there has been some significant rock ’n’ roll legends coming out of this town, and still are, but unfortunately a lot of them move away. There’s always talk about Baton Rouge being one of the great cities in America, and I’ve always thought it was one of those great cities, and I hope we progress accordingly, get rid of the blue laws so we can attract more conventions. Our venues are developing, and we are seeing more artists routed through here, but I know a lot of great bands in town that do not have a showcase for their work. I think a rock ’n’ roll festival will fill that gap.

For a while, the blues scene seemed to coast for a while but just in the past year, the interest in the blues seems to be growing, with Blues Week growing in scale, and more artists coming through town.

Baton Rouge Blues Week is entering its 13th year, and this is going to be the year we’ll mark the return of the Baton Rouge Blues Festival. There will be an actual, all-day outdoor festival, Saturday, April 26, in the park between the River Center and the Old State Capitol—thanks to Mayor Kip Holden, who has been a great supporter, ally and fan of music, especially the blues, and the city which is joining up with the Blues Foundation and the Blues Society to produce the event. It’s going to be all Louisiana blues artists, predominantly Baton Rouge blues artists, and we are using the catchphrase “In the middle of the most musical 125 miles on earth.” We have JazzFest in New Orleans that weekend, Festival International in Lafayette, and now the blues in Baton Rouge. No place on earth will have that much world-renown indigenous music going on.

We’ve booked Phil Guy, Luther Kent, Tab Benoit, Larry Garner, Chris Thomas King; we’re working on the Neals. We are hoping to get Queen Ida. She was the first zydeco artist 25 years ago to win a Grammy and now this year is the first where there is a Grammy category. I’m really looking forward to getting the Blues Festival back. When it started back in 1980 and ran until 1994, it was one of the oldest blues festivals in the country, and some of our predecessors were very short-sighted in letting that slip off our agenda. Since that time, there are 180 blues festivals that have cropped up, and you see that Des Moines, Iowa, and Syracuse, N.Y. having blues festivals.

And we don’t have one…

That’s right. It’s pretty ironic that there can be such a great affection to our indigenous music, and we didn’t have one.

What is your connection with the Blues Society and the Blues Foundation, and what is the difference between the two?

I’m the president of the Baton Rouge Blues Foundation. I founded the Blues Foundation with Sherry McConnell, Maxine Crump and Rob Payer. Our mission is music education in the state of Louisiana, presenting music in the schools. Our artist roster includes Deacon John, Bobby Campo, Mike Esneault, Herman Jackson, Buddy Flett and, sad to say, we do not have Alvin Batiste anymore. He was our guiding light and my inspiration for starting the foundation, which is five years old now. I’ve been presenting music in the schools for 12 years now and making presentations about the history of the indigenous music of Louisiana that started with the blues. It’s probably the most gratifying thing I’ve done in my career, seeing kids become aware of things they never were before.

Our sub-subject is recognizing individuals who have been contributors to the legacy and importance of the music. We have a Legend, Ambassador and Pioneer award. We try to recognize people who fit those titles.

The Baton Rouge Blues Society is a sister organization preserving the blues heritage as well but also focuses on securing health care for musicians, working with the New Orleans Musicians Clinic and working on establishing a clinic. It’s a complicated process which involves getting doctors to do pro bono work and things like that.

What does it mean that Baton Rouge is competing in the Blues Challenge in Memphis in January?

To me, not much. I say that because I think it’s a marketing effort by the city of Memphis. What we try to do to with Blues Week here is to attract visitors to the talent we have here, while in Memphis it involves bringing people in to see groups not from Memphis, to rah-rah at a Battle of the Bands. If you look at the people who have won the Blues Challenge—with the exception of Larry Garner who won it about 15 years ago—not a lot of them have made a huge impact on the genre. I would hope Lil Ray Neal would change all of that; he certainly has the talent and legacy to do so. But in my opinion, he’s going from the major leagues to the minor leagues.

People have preconceptions about blues and blues clubs—and that it’s a dying art, that it had relevance in the 1950s and ’60s—but after rock ’n’ roll it has been hanging on as an anachronism. Why should people care about the blues now?

The blues genre is the beginning and roots of all American music. Gospel, folk, rock ’n’ roll, jazz, country music and certainly hip-hop and rap—they are all offshoots of the blues. It’s like if you’re at all into music and you listen to any of what I just mentioned, you are going to recognize the blues in that. You talk about The Rolling Stones, The Kinks, Van Morrison, Led Zeppelin; they were all English and Irish bands looking at us. Anyone into music at any one point in time has to recognize its importance.

The idea that the blues is outdated is highly inaccurate. It’s not what it was in the 1940s and ’50s or even in the ’60s, but any musician now is still going to recognize its importance. I think it is evolving and continues to evolve. Things come and go in cycles, and the blues cycle is never going to cease.

What would you say about the health of the music scene in Baton Rouge as a whole?

The music scene has always been undercurrent to everything else going on without getting the same level of recognition. Everyone now is saying, “Films this, film that,” but we are missing out on nurturing the locals that produce television shows and movies rather than have the state worrying about brining in folks from L.A. and spend $5 million or $10 million because that money comes and goes. I’m not going anywhere; the others guys like me are not leaving. We live here, and money given to us gets circulated back into the local economy. We need to build a music community and film community that are based here on the talent we have, that doesn’t depend on anyone else. The start of the art is such that allows us to distribute music and films on the Internet; we don’t need anyone in New York to do it, anyone in Nashville anymore to do it for us. I think the state has always been more interested in the petroleum and chemical industry, in things not good for the environment or our people. If you look back to the 1950s—Huey “Piano” Smith, Little Richard and Ray Charles—they weren’t going to L.A.; L.A. was coming here for them. We had the opportunity to develop the industry and had the opportunity to become what Nashville and Austin became. And I don’t like to dwell on the negatives, what we should have done, but sometimes there is a very fine line between being negative and being real.

That’s a very important point, about not only nurturing what we have at home but also making sure artists get the royalties they are due. You hear plenty of stories about how Motown artists, who wrote songs that everyone knows, die penniless. How does making sure people get their due factor into what you do?

I’m a music publisher and have been since the early 1970s, and I pride myself on being accountable. Regardless of anything anyone has to say about my ego, arrogance or difficult personality, I’ve never been accused of being dishonest. Making sure artists get their due has always been a huge concern of mine. For instance, when Raful Neal passed away, I signed him up as a BMI writer. He was not signed as a writer for either the Alligator or Ichiban album he did, so I registered him under his own Raful Music. When he passed away, I told Shirley (Raful’s wife) to be on the lookout for some paperwork and it didn’t come for a while. I called BMI and did the paperwork, and after eight months, she ended up getting a sizeable check. They had been holding royalties, but if you don’t come after that and have the right paperwork after two or three years, that money goes back into the general fund. So I do things like that to make sure people don’t get ripped off.

Let’s get back to the blues and some of the big names you’ve worked with over the years. I’m sure you have some stories.

My first jobs were working for music publishers in Los Angeles, and that’s where I learned about the business. I actually sat on the floor in front of Son House in the Gold Star studios on the corner of Santa Monica and Vine in Hollywood to watch him record. I drank for two days with Son House. We tried to drain off a gallon of Jim Beam, but we didn’t quite finish it. I was also there for a recording, still unreleased, of Bukka White, “Mississippi” Fred McDowell, Johnny Jackson and John Shines. I worked for a producer that recorded all those guys. That turned me onto the blues more than anything else because growing up in Baton Rouge, I wasn’t all that into it. I knew who Johnny Adams and Slim Harpo were, but I never knew about Tabby Thomas and Henry Gray.

Where do you see the blues going? What’s the next evolution of the blues? What’s going to keep it alive?

What I hope will keep it alive is the next wave of hip-hop artists using live musicians instead of samples. Now I can only speak for myself and what I’m involved in, I’d have to say, Chris Thomas King has done some of this, using live musicians with the rap stuff he’s done. More specifically here, Baton Rouge Blues Week has grown, more out of town folks coming on for them. The Blues Festival is going to be a boost to our nightlife and economy.

Maxine Crump is going to do a lecture at the State Museum on the history of Baton Rouge blues during Blues Week. Her dad used to own a blues club in Maringouin. There is a tremendous legacy that a lot of us know; there’s stuff out there I don’t even know.

That’s one of the things that led me to start writing for 225 is trying to find these things out, wanting to know that rich history we have at our fingertips before it is gone and forgotten. You are not going to go to another town and see someone with the legacy of a Lil Ray Neal playing in clubs.

Right. Morgan Freeman can build all the blues clubs he wants, but they ain’t going to be as real as Teddy’s Juke Joint. Take the blues jam at Phil Brady’s that has been going on for 21 years. There is no club in Chicago or Memphis that has had a continuous jam going for 21 years in a row every Thursday night. It started at Byronz in Catfish Town and then moved on to Phil Brady’s. And Brady’s has moved with the times as being one of the only clubs in town that does non-smoking shows. Kenny Neal has had his health problems, and so it was a comfort to him to be able to play someplace where he could breathe, you know? And it helps get people out to see things they wouldn’t go to if smoking was allowed.

It’s true. It’s hard to get people out to try something new, so anything helps. I don’t know how many people I’ve told about Teddy’s that say, “Man, I’ve always wanted to go out to a place like that.” Well, just go.

That’s right. That’s the most important thing. If we don’t go out and support the culture we have, it will just fade away.

To find out more about the Blues Foundation and Johnny’s studio, visit louisianasmusic.com.