12.08.05 (AP) Saxophone player BRANFORD MARSALIS is working with Habitat For Humanity and singer Harry Connick Jr. and to create a "village" for New Orleans musicians who lost their homes to Hurricane Katrina. More than $2 million has been raised for the project dreamed up by Marsalis and Connick - a neighborhood built around a music center where musicians can teach and perform, said Jim Pate, executive director of New Orleans Area Habitat For Humanity. The first $1 million came from benefit concerts in New York three weeks after the storm, said Quint Davis, the New Orleans Jazz And Heritage Festival producer who helped arrange the concerts. "The money being used to build these homes for New Orleans musicians was raised by New Orleans musicians. Our pact with them was to help New Orleans' musical community," Davis said at a news conference Tuesday. In a telephone interview Monday, Connick said he and Marsalis - both honorary chairs for the national Habitat's hurricane rebuilding program - returned to their hometown several weeks after the storm and were trying to think of ways to help. "I had been kind of coming up blank. The problem is so massive, it's hard to know where to begin," Connick said. "As we talked, we both realized we should really stick to what we know, which is music." Connick said four or five of the 16 musicians in his own band lost their homes. "There's a ton of musicians who have no place to go," he said. Pate said Habitat For Humanity hasn't decided on a location for the village, but is looking at three older, predominantly black neighborhoods in New Orleans. He said $7.5 million to $15 million is needed for the project, which would include a music center named for Ellis Marsalis, the Jazz pianist, educator and patriarch of the musical family that includes Branford, Wynton, Delfeayo and Jason. "Ellis has been kind of a rock for music in this city," Mayor C. Ray Nagin said. Branford Marsalis said the project is a thank you to the musicians "who made it possible for people like me and my brother Wynton and Harry Connick Jr. to get out and spread the word." Habitat For Humanity cannot reserve houses for a specific group, and non-musicians would also live in the village, Pate said. However, musicians who lost their houses and have no or too little insurance - and will provide labor for a Habitat house - will be asked if they'd like to live there. "We'd hope some of our musician partner families could do some of their sweat equity by doing performances or concerts for some of our volunteers who are coming from all over the world," Pate said. It's a fantastic idea, said Banu Gibson, who sings '20s and '30s Jazz. "So many musicians have moved out of town, and a lot of the good ones, too, which is really depressing," she said. Gibson is back in her own house, but two of the seven musicians in her band lost homes they had bought in the last couple of years. "All the money they raised to put down as a house payment, $25,000 to $35,000, is gone," she said. Bassist Peter "Chuck" Badie, 80, would love to see the dream become reality, and to live in a Habitat For Humanity home. "I'd be tickled to death," said Badie, who's staying at a Jazz enthusiast's home after floods destroyed his house in the Lower Ninth Ward.

12.01.05 (MusicPortal.com) Following up last year's highly acclaimed "Top Ska" album, legendary Ska Selector GAZ MAYALL returns January 16th via Trojan Records with "Gaz's Rockin Blues - Club Classics," a new collection in celebration of the 25th anniversary of his popular London club night of the same name. Having first made his mark on the London club scene in the early eighties playing a wild selection of vintage Jamaican and R&B sounds, his aptly named "Gaz's Rockin Blues" nights -- London's longest running one-nighter held every Thursday night at St Moritz Club on Wardour Street in Soho, where he occasionally plays live with his Ska band THE TROJANS -- continue to draw huge crowds. Comprised of celebrities, dreads, mods and skins, everyone is united by their desire to hear and dance to GAZ MAYALL's latest selection of killer tunes. Now, for the very first time, a wide selection of his club favorites stretching from early Blues and R&B from the 1950s through to classic Ska and Rocksteady from the 60s and 70s have been brought together on this deluxe 2-disc set, which includes tracks from the likes of THE KINKS, THE SPECIALS, GAZ'S REBEL BLUES ROCKERS (Mayall's first band), THE 101'ERS (featuring Joe Strummer from THE CLASH), Nina Simone, John Mayall (Gaz's father), and Desmond Dekker. GAZ MAYALL originally launched "Gaz's Rockin' Blues" nights on July 3rd, 1980, following a stint at the now-legendary Two-Tone club on Oxford Street (1979). The eldest son of British Blues legend John Mayall, Gaz was raised on a healthy diet of R&B, and frequented every Beat, Pop and Rock festival he could. As a child, he first discovered Reggae on the football terraces during the skinhead era (1968-1972). By the time he was 17, GAZ MAYALL regularly purchased entire Reggae and Ska record collections for dirt-cheap prices at street markets that included Portobello Road and Brick Lane. A passionate and devoted fan of Rock 'N' Roll, Boogie Woogie, traditional Irish music, World Music, Soul and Funk as well, Mayall was heavily influenced by family friend and mentor Alexis Korner, Radio One DJ and Blues musician. These days, GAZ MAYALL owns a world renowned collection of predominantly black dance music, ranging from tribal drum beats to the latest sounds in Drum 'N' Bass. For the past twenty years, Mayall has run his own record label, Gaz's Rockin' Records, producing Ska acts and recording artists around the world. The label launched in October of 1985 with the debut release of 7" and 12" singles from POTATO 5, which inevitably led to the imprint's first album release, "Floyd Lloyd & Potato 5 Meet Laurel Aitken" (1987). The record label was conceived alongside the promotion of the "Gaz's Rockin' Blues" club, and was based on the sound system style of 1960's Jamaican Ska labels that included artists such as Prince Buster, Coxsone Dodd, and Duke Reid.

[Ethnic News: October 2005]
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