The Stomp is officially dedicated to “unsung heroes” of rock and R&B: people like Wardell Quezergue, the arranger behind New Orleans R&B classics from the brass-band mainstay “It Ain’t My Fault” to Jean Knight’s “Mr. Big Stuff,” and the Green Fuz, credited as a five-man band that released one single, “Green Fuz,” a song that was revived by the Cramps. “Green Fuz” was recorded in 1969 in a diner under renovation, and reverberation from bare walls gave it a memorably murky sound. Band members didn’t like the recording and shot BB guns at part of their lone pressing of 500 copies. The Green Fuz was scheduled to be reunited, after 40 years, at Wednesday’s half of the Stomp.

Where a typical oldies show runs through familiar hits, the Ponderosa Stomp digs deeper. Tuesday’s set lists included a handful of well-known songs. But many more were known only to aficionados of figures like Barbara Lynn, a Texas R&B singer who had a 1962 hit with “You’ll Lose a Good Thing” and is also a stinging left-handed blues guitarist, or Travis Wammack, a frenetic, chicken-plucking, string-bending Memphis guitarist who has been recording since the 1950s.

Mary Weiss, who was the lead singer of the Shangri-Las, did get around to “Leader of the Pack,” but not before belting some of the group’s nonhits like the B-side “The Train From Kansas City.” Mac Rebennack, known since the late 1960s as Dr. John, did a set of songs from his days as a pianist working in New Orleans studios as the ’50s ended, among them “Bad Neighborhood” and “Storm Warning,” that he has rarely performed since. The drummer from the Meters, Ziggy Modeliste, was in the band, led by Mr. Quezergue.”

- bill 5-18-2008 11:35 pm




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