A Festival of One-Shots and Shoulda-Beens

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A Festival of One-Shots and Shoulda-Beens
April 30, 2009
By JON PARELES
The New York Times

NEW ORLEANS — “You’ll be back again,” sang Barry & the Remains, starting their headlining set on Tuesday night at the eighth annual Ponderosa Stomp. It’s a song about a straying girlfriend, but the Remains could have been singing about themselves and many of the four dozen acts — rockabillies, bluesmen, R&B shouters, swamp-rockers, honky-tonkers, psychedelic bands — playing the House of Blues here in the Stomp’s two nights of nine-hour shows.

Among the old-time soul singers appearing at the Stomp was Sir Lattimore Brown.

In the mid-1960s Barry & the Remains toured the United States with the Beatles and made an album of crafty, surly garage-rock. Then they broke up, becoming one more rock-history footnote.

But there are lives beyond the footnotes. Musicians turn to other groups or jobs, and recordings linger, awaiting rediscovery. The Ponderosa Stomp finds the musicians behind the vinyl relics, and on the Stomp’s two stages many of its performers defied gray hair and wrinkles to belt 50-year-old songs with rowdy intent.

This year, on Wednesday night, the Stomp reunited the singer Roy Loney and the guitarist Cyril Jordan, the two original songwriters of the Flamin’ Groovies, a fuzz-toned, post-psychedelic, pre-punk San Francisco band; they had not performed a full set together since Mr. Loney left the band in 1971.

Backed by the garage-rock revivalists the A-Bones, along with the guitarist Ira Kaplan from Yo La Tengo, their songs summed up the Stomp: steeped in older rockabilly and R&B and, in songs like “Teenage Head” and “Shake Some Action,” hopped up on hormones, noise and anarchic glee. Mr. Loney and Mr. Jordan embraced after the set.

The Stomp’s long lineup also included the 80-year-old Alabama bluesman and harmonica player Jerry McCain; Lady Bo, who played guitar in Bo Diddley’s band when he made his hits in the late 1950s; Wanda Jackson, a rockabilly singer who had Elvis Presley as a mentor; the gospel-charged soul singers Otis Clay and Howard Tate; the organ-driven garage psychedelia of ? and the Mysterians; the swamp-pop drummer and singer Warren Storm; and the rambunctious rockabilly singer and guitarist Ray Sharpe.

Lazy Lester, the harmonica-playing Louisiana bluesman who released “Pondarosa Stomp” as the B-side of a 1966 Excello Records single, was also on hand, with Presley’s longtime guitarist James Burton and the organist Stanley Dural, a k a Buckwheat Zydeco, among his backup musicians.

The Ponderosa Stomp festival was started in New Orleans by a record collector devoted to the obscure and the untamed: Ira Padnos, an anesthesiologist who also calls himself Dr. Ike and who introduced bands on Wednesday night wearing scrubs and a fez. (On Tuesday he wore an American Indian headdress with horns.) Now a nonprofit foundation, the Stomp in the last two years has presented daytime conferences in which musicians and experts delve into memories for discussions and oral histories.

The foundation has also produced shows in Austin, Tex.; Memphis; and, this year, New York City. Midsummer Night Swing and the Lincoln Center Festival have engaged the Stomp to book a night each of Memphis soul (July 16), rockabilly (July 17) and New Orleans R&B (July 19th). Dr. Ike doesn’t just choose musicians; he also, often, persuades them to revive songs they haven’t played in years or decades.

Concentrating on lesser-known tunes and performers, the Stomp can stir thoughts about careers, genres, songwriting and luck — not to mention the catalytic effect of ex-girlfriends in the history of rock ’n’ roll. Heartache and smoldering lust filled set after set. Dan Penn sang the hymnlike hits he wrote for others (“I’m Your Puppet,” “Do Right Woman,” “Dark End of the Street”) in a duo with the keyboardist Bobby Emmons, revealing a rich, hickory-cured voice of his own.

Little Joe Washington, a Texas bluesman, got intensely physical with his guitar, squealing in falsetto “Daddy, don’t stop!” between solos played with his mouth on the strings.

Both nights were full of performers citing dates and reminiscing over recording sessions and regional hits and misses. Mr. McCain, the Alabama bluesman, introduced one song by saying that when he recorded it in 1959, his manager hadn’t gotten it played on radio stations. Then the Fabulous Thunderbirds recorded the song, “She’s Tuff,” in 1977: “Worldwide hit,” Mr. McCain said with a shrug.