Ash Wednesday: The Day After Mardi Gras

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Ash Wednesday: The Day After Mardi Gras

HEY DUDE, WHERE'S MY CAR?

WHY ARE THERE BEADS & MASKS IN MY TOILET?

WHY IS THERE GLITTER IN MY FRIDGE?

UH OH, WHAT'S THAT ON THE FRONT LAWN?

WHY DO I HAVE A TATTOO OF A MONKEY ON MY STOMACH?

Here's a song by one of my favorite New Orleans songwriters,

Alex McMurray

Another great New Orleans songwriter is the one & only

Anders Osborne

I highly recommend Ander Osborne's COMING DOWN album which is available @ M.C. Records. That album is magical! My favorite track on the album is Summertime in New Orleans!

Memphis Slim

Memphis Slim spent most of the 1930s performing in honky-tonks, dance halls, and gambling joints in West Memphis, Arkansas and Southeast Missouri. He settled in Chicago in 1939 and began teaming up with the guitarist and singer Big Bill Broonzy in clubs soon afterwards. In 1940 and 1941, he recorded two songs for Bluebird Records that became part of his repertoire for decades, Beer Drinking Woman and Grinder Man Blues. These were released under the name "Memphis Slim," given to him by Bluebird's producer, Lester Melrose. Slim became a regular session musician for Bluebird. Many of Slim's recordings and performances until the mid-1940s were with Broonzy, who had recruited Slim to be his piano player in 1940.

After World War II, Slim began leading bands that generally included saxophones, bass, drums, and piano, reflecting the popular appeal of jump blues. Early in 1950, Slim started using two tenor saxophones instead of the alto and tenor combination, and he made a trial of adding the guitarist Ike Perkins.

Slim first appeared outside the United States in 1960, touring with Willie Dixon, with whom he returned to Europe in 1962 as a featured artist in the first of the series of American Folk Festival concerts organized by Willie Dixon, which brought many notable blues artists to Europe in the 1960s and 1970s. The duo released several albums together on Folkways Records, including Memphis Slim and Willie Dixon at the Village Gate with Pete Seeger (1962).

In 1962, Memphis Slim moved permanently to Paris, and his engaging personality and well-honed presentation of playing, singing, and storytelling about the blues secured his position as one of the most prominent blues artists for nearly three decades. He appeared on television in numerous European countries, acted in several French films and wrote the score for À nous deux France (1970), and performed regularly in Paris, throughout Europe, and on return visits to the United States. In the last years of his life, he teamed up with the respected jazz drummer George Collier. The two toured Europe together and became friends. After Collier died in August 1987, Slim rarely appeared in public, although he reunited with Matt ‘Guitar’ Murphy for a gig at Antone's in Austin, Texas, in 1987.

Two years before his death, Slim was named a Commander in the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of France. In addition, the U.S. Senate honored Slim with the title of Ambassador-at-Large of Good Will.

Here's a Memphis Slim song called Havin' Fun

that I use every Ash Wednesday to close out my Mardi Gras week