I spent the last several days discussing bioethics in New Orleans. That, and eating crawfish etouffee. I managed to catch some 'Nawlins style jazz at a small club that I won't name because it was hard enough to get a seat. I also made it by the Louisiana Music Factory, a little record store on Decatur Street in the Quarter. If you want to sound like a local when you visit the Big Easy, don't say "French Quarter," just say "the Quarter." The Music Factory looks like a mushroom growing on one of the downed logs of history: old wood, aging hippies behind the counter, and creaking stairs. When I was there they had a quartet, the Blues News, belting out Delta blues like nobody's business. The harmonica player was three kinds of good, but don't call it a harmonica when you get there, or even a blues harp; just call it a "harp".
Upstairs is where they keep the jazz discs. It's not a big collection, but whoever stocks it knows what he is about. If there are two discs hiding behind the piece of plastic labeled "Eric Dolphy," they will be his two most celebrated documents. It was a jazz nerds idea of a good afternoon to comb through those stacks. Just before the Blues News tuned up, they guy behind the counter put on a disc and then went out to smoke in the soft rain. It was entrancing. It was also used, and a bargain at $6.95.
I have been relying heavily on the Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings, but at about 1500 pages it is anything but portable. So I couldn't look up Ike Quebec (pronounced Kyoo-beck), whom I had never heard of. But hearing is believing, and besides he had Grant Green on guitar, Paul Chambers on bass and Philly Joe Jones on drums. That is company that connects him with Miles Davis across the lines of jazz.
The disc was Blue & Sentimental, a very accurate title. It is very soft and sweet, playing Green's sharply punctuated notes against Quebec's sprawling, romantic, tenor. I found it just the right container for my memories of Decatur Street.
Ike Quebec was born in 1918 and died forty-five years later of lung cancer and the charms of heroin. If I hadn't heard of him, it wasn't for lack of Quebec revivals. He has been rediscovered several times, I learn, only to fade again. He killed himself off before he could leave a substantial body of work. But Blue & Sentimental is fine jazz. Listen to it on your iPod as you walk down Decatur toward the Cafe Du Monde. Maybe all true stories are sad, maybe not. But if you can't enjoy being blue and sentimental in New Orleans, you have come to the wrong place.
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