Talkative horns, mutes and friendship

This week, Craig Klein joins me on the show virtually from New Orleans to talk about his new sweet record made in homage to his friend, fellow trombonist Lucien Barbarin who died of cancer early last year. In the spirit of his record Talkative Horns – A Musical Conversation with Lucien Barbarin, the show also features other songs with muted horns and trombones.

The opening track is “Lily of the Valley” from a record Leroy Jones produced in memory of the Fairview Baptist Church Marching Band — a group that both Jones and Lucien Barbarin performed in during their youth. Craig Klein, who was not part of that seminal band, did play on the record.

On the show, which you can start up with the player above, Craig talks about his friendship with Lucien, the Barbarin family and the origins of the record that they were to produce together. Craig is a ubiquitous site in the New Orleans music scene. Aside from performing on countless albums and touring with Harry Connick, Jr., he’s a founding member of Bonerama, the New Orleans Nightcrawlers (which just won a grammy) and the Storyville Stompers and performs at Preservation Hall and with the New Orleans Jazz Vipers. After the loss of his friend, Craig landed on a concept of a musical conversation using short solos and mutes to simulate communication — performing with trumpeter Kevin Louis who performed regularly with Lucien at Preservation Hall.

The result is a playful, interplay of long cornet and trombone that sounds very much like a musical conversation held together by Steve Detroy’s casually swinging piano. Molly Reeves on guitar, Michell Player on bass and Gerry Barbarin Anderson (Lucien’s nephew) on drums round out the record’s sound. Stick around for his description of recording “Swing Low Sweet Chariot.”

Craig was generous with his time so I’ll include more of his conversation in next week’s show and play a few more from his record which is available on Bandcamp. Also included in today’s show is Lucien Barbarin and the Palm Court Swingsters doing “Just a Little While to Stay Here” where Lucien uses a mute on his trombone.

I also include some other fine trombone performances by Trombone Shorty, Kid Ory, Corey Henry, Big Sam Williams and Russell Ramirez.

Later in the show Vanessa Niemann gets on virtually with an introduction to a song she wrote about her grandfather “In My Dreams Again.” You’ll hear two other tracks by Vanessa who performs under the name Gal Holiday.

Thank you for listening to the show. You can subscribe to this blog and get alerts when new shows arrive. By the way, this week’s show is the KMRE version. There’s really no difference between the KAOS and KMRE recordings aside from station identifications.