The funky beat of musical New Orleans

For the city's best music — jazz, blues, bluegrass, R&B, rock — Frenchmen Street is where it's at, darlin'.

September 30, 2012|By Jessica Gelt, Los Angeles Times

As luck would have it, we were sitting next to one of the guest stars, a beautiful young vocalist named Nayo Jones who sang a sultry cover of "Route 66." Jones, who made her New Orleans Jazz Fest debut earlier this year, was sitting at a table with her father, Doc Jones, and Travis "Trumpet Black" Hill, who was gearing up for a gig at the Hollywood Bowl opening for the Neville Brothers.

"That's the beautiful thing about New Orleans," Nayo Jones said. "There's music everywhere, and we just sit in with each other."

We spilled out of the Maison in a kind of trance. It was close to 2 a.m., but discordant strains from club after club hung in the swampy air. We walked into Cafe Negril, a tiny bar where Ruby Moon and her Vicarious Pleasure Band wrestled "House of the Rising Sun" to the ground. Then it was off to the Spotted Cat, where Pat Casey and the New Sound played a mix of modern and classic jazz spiced with Latin swing and funk from a tiny stage. I had never seen a drummer hit as hard or as well.

I ended the night in line for the bathroom at the Cat. I waited for what seemed like forever until a young tattooed girl with neon red hair emerged, smiling shyly.

"I'm sorry, it's just that there's a piano in there," she said, pointing to the bathroom. "And I couldn't stop playing."

jessica.gelt@latimes.com

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