Meditations on the Neville Brothers
By K. Curtis Lyle
For the St. Louis American
There is no question that the Neville Brothers – who play the Roberts Orpheum on Thursday, July 21 – are the first family of music in New Orleans. How this came about is a story filled with strange influences that grew from cultural shape-shiftings of an especially American kind.
Just for the hell of it, let’s begin with arguably the most famous and controversial man in Louisiana history, Huey P. Long. As a poor but ambitious young man, he walked the back roads of Louisiana selling Bibles and encyclopedias. He mingled with and made promises to the people that he would mostly fulfill when he later became governor. He became a hero to the people of one of the poorest states in the nation. As a thank you, thousands of poor Louisiana country folk named their young sons Huey. Two celebrated Louisiana Hueys who come to mind are Huey P. Smith, the leader of an R&B band called the Clowns, and Huey P. Newton, the legendary founder of the Black Panther Party.
What’s this got to do with the Nevilles? This is really about influences and how to change anything into your thing. That’s what the Neville Brothers are all about.
Aaron Neville had a cowboy fixation as a child. Add the melismatic yodeling of his cowboy heroes to his almost religiously sweet voice, and you’ve got the basis for his memorable versions of “Ave Maria,” “Everybody Plays the Fool” and the George Davis/Lee Diamond classic that put him on the map in 1966, “Tell It Like It Is.”
Then there’s saxophone brother Charles Neville putting in his apprenticeship at the Legendary Dew-Drop Inn with Jimmy Reed and Little Walter. Oldest brother Art was the first to feel the tug of music, having encountered a church organ when he was four. By the time he was a teenager, he was absorbing the complex styles of every local “Big Chief,” from Professor Longhair to Fats Domino. Art and his high school partners, the Hawketts, scored big with their first single, “Mardi Gras Mambo,” which became a million seller. Cyril would eventually compose powerful consciousness-raising pieces, like “My Blood” and “Sister Rosa,” the anthem honoring civil rights pioneer Rosa Parks.
All of these influences sit atop the underlying groundation – a rasta concept – of the Neville family. The heritage of African, American Indian, French, Spanish and Caribbean music and sensibility began with the Neville’s mother, Amelia Landry. She and her brother George formed a dance team called Landry & Landry. After Amelia married Arthur Lanon Neville, George Landry and his brother-in-law joined the merchant marine, the two would bring home records from the foreign ports they visited, and tell the kids tall tales.
The boys couldn’t help but pick up the sounds that were percolating in the street. As children, Art, Charles and Aaron would improvise on the classic street chant “Hey Pocky Way” while keeping time on cigar boxes. As they grew older, their uncle George would play an important role in opening the world of the black Mardi Gras Indians to them, thus creating a true basis for their mature art.
In 1966 someone gave George an old black and white Indian costume, which he wore for the 1967 Carnival season. He then took the suit apart and created a new costume from it, which he wore with the Black Eagle tribe the following year. In 1972 uncle George started the Wild Tchoupitoulas with men from his 13th Ward neighborhood. George Landry had become Big Chief Jolly – an uptown folk hero.
Big Chief Jolly brought Aaron and Cyril to his Indian practices and taught them to harmonize the chants. Art was working with a group called the Meters. He heard the Indian chants that uncle George was teaching Aaron and Cyril and thought they had commercial potential. Charles, then working in New York, was called home for the Wild Tchoupitoulas project. In 1976 producers Allen Toussaint and Marshall Sehorn were engaged, a recording contract was signed and an enduring sound was born.
The Wild Tchoupitoulas recording brought the brothers together as a group. They then decided to form the Neville Brothers as a band, and in the summer of 1977 they started playing a series of shows at Tipitina’s, a club right in their Uptown neighborhood. Word spread, and the place was packed every night. They hired a manager, who booked them to play the Bijou in Dallas for a one-month stretch. They got an apartment in Texas, and for the first time in twenty-three years they were united under the same roof.
Someone once defined a myth as a spiritual fact. Maybe now you can see Huey P. Long walking those back roads of rural Louisiana, selling his encyclopedias and Bibles, and watching his political promises changed, by the Neville Brothers, into musical history.
