{"id":3746,"date":"2018-06-02T03:00:37","date_gmt":"2018-06-02T07:00:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/?p=3746"},"modified":"2018-06-02T13:09:53","modified_gmt":"2018-06-02T17:09:53","slug":"hey-now-baby","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/hey-now-baby\/","title":{"rendered":"Hey Now, Baby (Professor Longhair)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Hey Now, Baby\" width=\"474\" height=\"267\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/CykSOrLdmaY?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>I first heard Professor Longhair on a terrific album of the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival &#8212; also the first place I heard Allen <img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-3815 alignright\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/jazzfest-lp.jpg?resize=250%2C243&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"250\" height=\"243\" \/>Toussaint and Earl King &#8212; and it was love at first listen. So I began acquiring his albums, and the more I heard, the more I wanted to hear. He tended to rework the same songs, but every version was different, and it&#8217;s up with <a href=\"http:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/brownskin-girl\/\">Joseph Spence<\/a> as the most virtuosically happy music I know.<\/p>\n<p>Longhair was a big part of my interest in Congolese guitar styles. I wanted to be able to play those New Orleans\/ Caribbean rhythms, and people like <a href=\"http:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/masanga\/\">Jean-Bosco Mwenda<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/lwa-kiyeke\/\">Edouard Masengo<\/a> had <a href=\"http:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/masanga\/\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft wp-image-3768\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/professor-longhair-245x300.jpg?resize=225%2C276\" alt=\"\" width=\"225\" height=\"276\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/professor-longhair.jpg?resize=245%2C300&amp;ssl=1 245w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/professor-longhair.jpg?w=350&amp;ssl=1 350w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 225px) 100vw, 225px\" \/><\/a>come up with a fingerstyle approach that felt to me like a bridge between rumba\/mambo and Mississippi John Hurt. My first attempt was the Mardi Gras Indian war song &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/iko-iko\/\">Iko Iko<\/a>,&#8221; which I play in a clearly Congolese style, but I kept being fascinated by Longhair&#8217;s piano and puzzled about how to get some approximation of it on guitar.<\/p>\n<p>Then, thanks to Washtub Robbie Phillips, I ended up with a band and a weekly gig at the Plough and Stars in Cambridge. We were called the Street Corner Cowboys &#8212; inspired by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/africa-to-appalachia\/\">John Storm Roberts<\/a>&#8216;s mention of East African country singers as\u00a0 &#8220;the street corner cowboys of Zanzibar&#8221; &#8212; and consisted of Robbie on one-string bass, Peter Keane and me on guitars, and Mark Earley on harmonica (plus, a lot of the time, Matt Leavenworth on fiddle by last set). Peter was singing pretty country songs, Mark was deep into <img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright wp-image-3769 \" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/Street-Corner-Cowboys-at-EW-cassette-release-Passim.jpg?resize=342%2C266\" alt=\"\" width=\"342\" height=\"266\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/Street-Corner-Cowboys-at-EW-cassette-release-Passim.jpg?w=470&amp;ssl=1 470w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/Street-Corner-Cowboys-at-EW-cassette-release-Passim.jpg?resize=300%2C234&amp;ssl=1 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 342px) 100vw, 342px\" \/>Chicago blues, and I took the opportunity to do all sorts of stuff that suited the band framework, from Nat King Cole&#8217;s &#8220;Call the Police&#8221; to &#8220;Great Balls of Fire.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>That gave me a chance to break the habits of solo fingerstyle, the concept of thumb playing bass while fingers play melody. I played a lot of single-string lead, and also came up with this arrangement, which is an attempt to play something like a standard Longhair left-hand pattern. Since Mark and Peter were there to play fills and solos, it was fine if I just played the left-hand part, and ok, there isn&#8217;t much to the lyric but it was fun to work around the rhythms.<\/p>\n<p>The Cowboys faded into the mists of time, but I kept fooling around with this and eventually came up with some kind of instrumental break, and it&#8217;s still a lot of fun to play. Which is not to say I&#8217;ve come up with a way to capture Longhair&#8217;s piano rhythms on guitar&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;because Longhair was a unique genius and no one has ever captured his piano rhythms&#8230; much less me, much less on guitar&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-3770 alignright\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/Fess-Up-224x300.jpg?resize=224%2C300\" alt=\"\" width=\"224\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/Fess-Up.jpg?resize=224%2C300&amp;ssl=1 224w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/Fess-Up.jpg?w=350&amp;ssl=1 350w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 224px) 100vw, 224px\" \/>&#8230;which seems like a good moment to mention that a great DVD,\u00a0<em>Fess Up<\/em>, was recently issued that combines Stevenson Palfi&#8217;s documentary <em>Piano Players Rarely Ever Play Together<\/em>, featuring Longhair, Tuts Washington, and Allen Toussaint, with an hour-long interview with Longhair. And there are all those great records (a personal favorite is his version of &#8220;Jambalaya,&#8221; with Gatemouth Brown on fiddle), and some rocking videos on the internet, and the wonderful chapter about him in Dr. John&#8217;s memoir&#8230; if you&#8217;ve never been on a Fess binge, I can recommend no greater musical pleasure.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I first heard Professor Longhair on a terrific album of the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival &#8212; also the first place I heard Allen Toussaint and Earl King &#8212; and it was love at first listen. So I began acquiring his albums, and the more I heard, the more I wanted to hear. He &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/hey-now-baby\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Hey Now, Baby (Professor Longhair)<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3746","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>&quot;Hey Now, Baby&quot; -- Old Friends: A Songobiography - Elijah Wald<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Professor Longhair was the transcendent genius of New Orleans piano, and inspired me to explore African guitar styles in hopes of replicating some semblance of his rhythms. 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He had as good a claim as anyone, and better than most. In 1925, before any of the other great blues piano\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/cow-cow-card-300x186.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":5104,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/ella-speed\/","url_meta":{"origin":3746,"position":1},"title":"Ella Speed (A New Orleans murder ballad)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"April 6, 2024","format":false,"excerpt":"\u00a0 This is a new one in my repertoire, worked up in the course of researching my book, Jelly Roll Blues: Censored Songs and Hidden Histories. I had heard other versions of the song from Lead Belly, who recorded it several times, and Mance Lipscomb, and the Kweskin Jug Band,\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/Jellycover-e1710359243890.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1739,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/sadie-green\/","url_meta":{"origin":3746,"position":2},"title":"Sadie Green, the Vamp of New Orleans (5 Harmaniacs)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"July 18, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Working\u00a0 with a washboard player, I naturally played a lot of Kweskin Jug Band material -- \"Crazy Words, Crazy Tune,\" \"Borneo,\" \"Ukulele Lady,\" \"Beedle Um Bum,\" \"I'm Satisfied with My Gal\" (that was a call-and-response with Rob: \"She don't wear no--\" \"Yes, she does!\" \"Oh, no, she don't!\" \"Oh, yes,\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/Kweskin-greatest-hits.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1387,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/mamies-blues\/","url_meta":{"origin":3746,"position":3},"title":"Mamie&#8217;s Blues (219 Blues)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"June 15, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"In his notes to this song, Dave Van Ronk wrote, \"Jelly Roll Morton, certainly the greatest jazz composer before Ellington and a singer of incredible subtlety claimed to have invented jazz in 1902. There is little point in argument.\" This was one of Morton's most subtle efforts, and one of\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/BasinSt.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1057,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/my-creole-belle\/","url_meta":{"origin":3746,"position":4},"title":"My Creole Belle (John Hurt\/meanings of Creole)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"May 15, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"One of the first songs I learned from Mississippi John Hurt, with some background and a discussion of the multiple and confusing meanings of \"Creole.\"","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"Best of Mississippi John Hurt","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/Best-of-Mississippi-John-Hurt.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":5777,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/ace-in-the-hole\/","url_meta":{"origin":3746,"position":5},"title":"Ace in the Hole (Dave Van Ronk, among others)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"May 31, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"I first heard \"Ace in the Hole\" on Dave Van Ronk's 1963 album with the Red Onion Jazz Band,\u00a0In the Tradition. It was written around 1909 by a couple of obscure songwriters, James Dempsey and George Mitchell, and is a musical evocation of the New York\u00a0borderline underworld limned by Damon\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/In-the-Tradition-LP-e1729819363380.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3746","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3746"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3746\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3819,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3746\/revisions\/3819"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3746"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3746"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3746"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}