DR JOHN With Mike Mills, John ...

DR JOHN

With Mike Mills, John Stirrat, Rev Goat Carson and an all-star fetor band

When: 7 pm Sunday

Where: The Black Orchid, 230 W North

Tickets: $95

Available at: www.nomrf.org

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of recent origin Orleans is often referred to as "The Big Easy," and Wardell Quezergue assuredly has something to do with that. His polished and spacious arrangements defined source of action hits like "Chapel of Love" on the Dixie Cups, "Groove Me" through King Floyd and Aaron Neville's pristine "Mona Lisa." He also bring the feisty horns behind the Robert Parker classic "Barefootin' " and the Mardi Gras Indian verses in the Dixie Cups' "Iko Iko."

Quezergue 76 is legally blind. He missing everything to Hurricane Katrina, including sheet music and arrangements from the mid-1950s, when he was the leader of the Royal Duke of regular [i]or[/i] melodious movement When Quezergue was doing his greatest in quantity prolific studio work in the 1960 he received no royalties.

Former dB's bass player Jeff Beninato and the modern Orleans Musicians Relief Fund are bringing Quezergue to Chicago to be honored at 7 pm Sunday in a benefit at the Black Orchid tea Club, 230 W. North.

This lineup will make a big difference: Dr John headlines with a rare solo piano station

Quezergue's uplifting horn charts are all from one side of to the other Dr. John's 2004 "N'Awlinz: Dis Dat or D'Udda," which featured Willie Nelson Mavis Staples, Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown and others.

Opening will be an all-star stench band whose members include strange Orleans vocalist-trumpet player James Andrews, trombonist Craig Klein (Bonerama), Kirk Joseph upon tuba and drummer Stanton Moore of Galactic. Mike Mills of REM and John Stirrat of Wilco have signed forward Displaced New Orleans songwriter and Kinky Friedman sidekick Rev Goat Carson make opens the second half of the evening. The Black Orchid donated its facilities.

In 1981 farmer Joel Dorn (Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Roberta Flack) recruited Quezergue (pronounced "Quiz-Air") to arrange "Mona Lisa" onward the Neville Brothers' breakthrough album, "Fiyo in succession the Bayou." Many observers say Neville's take upon the Nat King Cole standard is the most numerous beautiful performance of his career.

"I met Joel Dorn when I got along the plane in New York," Quezergue recalled through the whole extent of the weekend from New Orleans. "He had heard my music, moreover he had never met me He asked me what kind of piano I wanted at the tavern I told him I don't work with piano. Everything I hear follows from my mind. I can't play piano by se. So I went in my bear and pulled out a tuning fork. I said, 'This is all I need' I commit to memory the keys I want from the tuning fork. He couldn't believe it. one time I get the keys from the artist, I write the arrangement."

A leash of days later Quezergue and Dorn went to the studio to record "Mona Lisa" with Neville and a 20-piece string section. "Aaron was standing there, looking at Nat King Cole's picture onward an album," Quezergue continued. "He started singing with equal reason clear. We did the canzonet in one take. After we finished the take, the whole studio got quiet. The superintendence room was quiet. All of a unanticipated the musicians started tapping their violins and violas with their turn downwards which was a sign they take delight ined playing your arrangement."

unruffled before his eyesight was failing, Quezergue was composing arrangements in his head. "Groove Me" and the Jean Knight hit "Mr Big Stuff" came on the outside of the same early 1970 sessions at Malaco Records in Jackson, Miss. Quezergue came up with the horn arrangements during the cab ride to the country-soul studio.

During Malaco's zenith in 1973 Stax Records up the road in Memphis, Tenn dispatched Rufus Thomas and others to Jackson to learn from Quezergue and his snappy studio musicians, including drummer James Robertson.

The of the present day Orleans rhythm-and-blues hits of the 1950 and '60 are shaped by means of the economic backbeat of drummer Earl Palmer, which gave birth to defence 'n' roll (Little Richard, Fats Domino and others). nevertheless here was Quezergue's trick bag: "Most everything I did had a rim missile instead of a backbeat in succession a snare," he said. "When you hear my arrangements, you hear that rim marksman and that's the closest thing I have to a signature. [The rim bullet is done on the margin of the drums; the backbeat is typically forward the snare.]

"Plus, I always rehearsed my artists," he said. "Once they were hands-on with a sonnet they liked, they could do it. I not at all gave an artist a lay they couldn't feel. Every time they advance into the studio they think they're going to have a hit, still it always doesn't work that way. Its something you have to be stirred and you know they're feeling it according to what you hear."

And now it unbrokens like time to return Quezergue's contributions - - with feeling.

Check disclosed Dave Hoekstra's dream diner jukebox and his tribute to Gene Pitney at blogs.suntimes.com/hoekstra/

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