an album review for SF Station I wrote:
SF Station: Our New Orleans: A Benefit Album for the Gulf Coast
Our New Orleans puts together venerated musicians such as Dr. John, Alain Toussaint, Irma Thomas, Charlie Miller and many others in the first of what will likely be a series of Katrina benefit albums licensed and arranged by Habitat For Humanity.
This album takes it back to the old school, with a wide variety of styles from hoodoo rock-n-roll to Creole Soul to (of course) jazz and blues, bringing together New Orleans heavies with standards such as Davell Crawford’s soul-searing rendition of “Gather By The River”, or Dirty Dozen Brass Band with a Mardi Gras second-line (http://www.mardigrasdigest.com/features/Origins_of_the_second_Line.htm) favorite “My Feet Can’t Fail Me Now”. The Preservation Hall Jazz Band’s reinterprets the theme “Do You Know What It Means To Miss New Orleans” from the Louis Armstrong/Billie Holiday movie New Orleans, which has since become the jukebox rallying cry for locals to whom this old standard has poignant new meaning.
All artists, studios, and engineers donated their time and love to putting this compilation together, with all proceeds going to Habitat, including a portioned earmarked especially for musicians who lost their livelihoods in the hurricane. If you want to help out while at the same time also gaining understanding of why we need to save the musical gumbo that is New Orleans, get this album.
Ginevra Kirkland 