Mambo Four The Neville Brothers

Rip It Up, Issue 144, 1 July 1989, Page 16

Mambo Four The Neville Brothers

New Orleans has always been one of the cradles of black music, responsible for the evolution of some of the most distinctive sounds ever.

It more or less spawned jazz, with the likes of Louis Armstrong and Jelly Roll Morton, and it was in New

Orleans that Roy Brown, Huey

“Piano” Smith and of course Fats

Domino began to turn R&B into the beast we know as rock n’ roll.

The Crescent City natives added their own distinctive stamp to their music, drawing on the many local influences — adding Caribbean,

African, Hispanic and even French rhythms to the jazz and Jump Blues stylings. To top it all off, they have the Mardi Gras where, for a few days each year, the locals dress up like George Clinton’s worst acid nightmare, call themselves Indians and walk around singing— it’s heady stuff.

And into this musical melange that is New Orleans came the Neville .

Brothers. Raised in a musical family (one of their uncles is a Mardi Gras - chief) they simply kept the family tradition alive. Saxophonist Charles Neville, friendly and chatty despite a gruelling interview schedule, seems amused that anyone in New Zealand would have heard of Big Chief Jolly. “Yes, George Landry, who was Big Chief Jolly of the Wild Tchoupitoulas was my uncle. He was one of the people who was always around when I'was young, singing and playing the piano. There was always music around, and he was one of the people who brought it to us.”

The Nevilles’ involvement in New Orleans music has beenalong and fruitful one. In 1954 Art Neville’s vocal group the Hawketts released their first single, ‘Mardi Gras Mambo’ (which eventually went gold ) and the family have never looked back. Aaron Neville was soon to follow.

Possessing one of the most achingly beautiful voices of all time, he scored anumber of local hits before big time came with ‘Tell It Like It Is’, a

national N 0.2 in 1967. Meanwhile Charles had been serving his time touring with an impressive array of livinglegends. “Yeah, I played with Piney Brown, Jimmy Reed, Little Walter, Bobby Bland, BB King — I played with a lot of bands.”

In the mid-60s Art left Aaron and percussionist brother Cyril (who would later rejoin him ) to form the Meters. Under the guidance of

producer Allen Toussaint, the Meters created some extremely fine funk, until a Wild Tchoupitoulas

reunion brought the Brothers back together again.

“I'had lived in New York from ‘67 to‘77,and in 1976 we were really inspired to put the Neville Brothers band together the way it is now. So the next year Art and Cyril left the Meters, I moved from New York to New Orleans and Aaron left his band, and we became the Neville Brothers band again.” And so the lineup has remained, building up an awesome live reputation that until now has never really been adequately captured on vinyl. Producer Daniel Lanois, who first encountered the band live, is well known for his adeptness at creating moody albums and seems to have a great feel for the Neville Brothers.

“Yeah, his sound really works with our stuff ‘cause our music has this real strong rhythmic foundation to it, with all these polyrhythms, and he was able to work with that and

enhance it. He didn’t take anything away from that.” Lanois even created a special studio for the album.

“That’s right. We rented a house on St Charles Ave. Daniel moved in, soundproofed it, set up his recording equipment and we set up our recording equipment and just

experimented with the sound of the room—playing and experimenting with mikes and speakers and baffles to get agood sound. And that’s part of what affects much of the album:; it

was recorded live, in such a way that the room sound was recorded as well. Instruments weren’t plugged directly into the board. We were playing in the room and he would have mikes that would just record the sound of the room.”

The album definitely has that live feel, where it seems like the band just has picked up ona groove and flowed with it.

“Right, that’s one of the important things about trying to catch our feel onrecord. Our live performances are where our music really shines - because so much of our spiritual energy goes into it. What we did with this album with everyone being in this room, was to get everyone’s

spiritual energy into each song at the same time.”

Spiritual is one of the best words I could think of to describe the Neville Brothers sound on Yellow Moon, right down to the choice of COvers.

“Aaron chose ‘A Change Is Going To Come’, ‘With God On Our Side’ and ‘The Ballad of Hollis Brown’, and Artsuggested ‘Will The Circle Be Unbroken?.” y

It’s an amazing version of ‘Circle’ —Yyou turn it into a pure soul song. “We’ve been told that song is usually associated with country music, but we just thought it wasa good meaningful song with real feeling.”

- Which would be an ideal description of ‘Sister Rosa’, which has to be the best civil rights anthem

written in the 80s. It’s about one of the ordinary people who made the whole thing happen, yet you never hear much about them.

“True, and Sister Rosa was a great woman. The song is a tribute, to her and the movement, and that’s the

way we presented our tribute — by thanking her for having the courage to oppose the oppressive customs that were happening at the time — actually they were the laws of the time.”

The song’s power seems to liein theway thatit laysout thefacts simply. “Itwas intended to give that information in a way that kids would hear it and be willing to listen to it, because of the way that it was :

presented, and be able to absorb the information that was onit aswell.” = ‘Sister Rosa’ also seems tofitin - with the resurgence of black : historical pride that a lot of bands are beginningto show. “That’s something that is slowly growing. Bands are looking back to the old musical stylesand doing something new with them, and radio is getting more and more willing to play songs that make some kind of statement rather than just the usual kind of boogie beat stuff that has been promoted as black music fora while.”

The Neville Brothers have no fear of ever being labelled mindless boogie. With Yellow Moon they have reached anew level of musical and political maturity, even by their own exacting standards. These New

Orleans natives have once again helped the progression of soul as we know it, and as Charles Neville says, “We’re just gonna keep evolving I hope!”

Listeningadvice: Everyhome should own some Nevilles albums. Yellow Moon is a good place to start, along with the excellent Rhino Records compilation Treacherous— A History Of The Neville Brothers 1955 to 1985. The latter features

both the solo and the band work of the Brothers from the early R&B

days up to the present. The more

dedicated listener can seek out the number of fine re-releases of the

Brothers’ early solo work, usually on labels such as Ace or Charly (who have also released some early Meters material — conspicuous by itsabsence from Treacherous).

Some of the more recent albums are worth investigation as well, especially Fiyo On The Bayou and the live Neville-ization, an inspired set recorded live at the legendary Tipitina’s in 1982. Enjoy yourselves! KIRKGEE