Prof. Longhair

[ll-xn!uwvax!astroatc!gtaylor (G.N. Excelsis-Deo)]

Enquiring Minds wonder about life beyond Pop Culture....
>
>Professor Longhair is dead???!!! Say it ain't so, Greg.  Say it ain't
>so ... 
>
>Who was Professor Longhair and why does he  merit comparision with Kate Bush?

I was thinking of someone else besides KB who did what they did in a
particularly idiosyncratic way (not that that betokens goodness or
badness, mind you....) and the Professor just popped into my head.

Professor Longhair *is* indeed deceased. He was an extremely unusual
New Orleans-style piano player who influenced the daylights out of
everybody from Fats Domino to Alan Toussaint and Mac "Dr. John"
Rebennac. His style crosses this crazy left-hand driven syncopation
with a kind of standard "whomp those key clusters and whistle" barrelhouse
right hand that you can spot a mile off. Little Feat and the Meters
both have that kind of stop-time gumbo in their stuff. I know it's
stupid and unexact and whatever, but this is honest-to-G*d the way
that I understand the phrase "toe-tapping." The Professor is probably
not real popular these days also because the stuff if *unbelievably*
snappy...happy in that way that less moderate drinkers than myself
may define as the "excuse me, I seem to have slipped..." party out
of bounds whoop it up happy. Very outre in these days of cynical
dissonance and power tool solos in the dub version.

Anyway, George "If I get any more mellow, my heart will stop" Winston
took some of his megabucks and re-released a great record of the 
professor's stuff recently-I'm almost sure that it's on Dancing Cat.
The album was rescued from a French production and given the standard
Windy Hole custom cut and press. I sounds great, and is a fantastic
record.

It ain't for everybody, but then neither is....

A laugh for the sun red falling/through the thermal inversion haze/A
laugh for the nuclear good-time boys/numbering all our days.........
Gregory Alan Taylor / gtaylor@astroatc / Astronautics, Madison, WI