johnny-sansone

I just wanted to tell you a little story about those banana plants.

See, we didn’t have any when we moved here. And one day, many years ago (95? 96? Don’t remember), through a series of very fortunate events, I began listening to a musician by the name of Jumpin’ Johnny Sansone.

Johnny lived in New Orleans that Was, and I learned through the then-shiny-new internet (this was BG, or Before Google) that he was playing a joint called Vics Kangaroo Cafe. So I called up ol’ Johnny and said ‘hey, I’m a fan, and we’re coming to town to see you. Know of any good hotel rooms?’

He called me back a few minutes later and asked why we didn’t just stay at his place. So, we did. Now if he were a blogger I wouldn’t have thought twice about this, but since he was a musician (who I had shaken hands with exactly once) it seemed a little strange to just crash at his pad. But we drove out and had a blast and enjoyed some excellent hospitality (his wife was wonderful, too) and great food and tunes. And we stayed in the Jungle Room, which if I recall right was a futon on a screened in porch, and you had to walk around outside to the shower.

And they had these banana trees. They were everywhere, kinda like weeds. Johnny said we could take one, so we found a plastic bag and took it with us. And planted it.

And now, we have lots of them.

That I actually know this cat. Really! I stayed at his house, once, the second time my wife and I visited New Orleans. We even stayed in the “Jungle Room” - which was complete with an outdoor shower (really really).

Anyway, here’s a recent interview. He’s playing around different places, go see him if you can - he has always been a working class musician, even before the bitch named katrina wiped out his home.

Almost two weeks after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, Johnny Sansone snuck back home to save his cat. What he saw made him never want to go back again.

Everything was coated in a white, disgusting sheen of water, destruction and eerie, creepy quiet. There were no birds, no animals, no flies, even.

“I was breaking down,” he said in a phone interview. “I thought there was no point in ever coming back here. Everything was dead.”

But now Sansone and a growing group of blues musicians want to bring it back to life.

Read the rest of the story at the link. And, they left out that he is a kick ass accordian player…

I was looking for news on Johnny Sansone and tripped over this:

“This benefit concert was scheduled to happen in Louisiana in September, but Hurricane Katrina put an end the event. The promoter of the event contacted Resort Events in Vail, and together with 30th Street production the event was rescheduled in Colorado. It is ironic that these musicians and volunteers were bringing light to the problems of erosion and potential storm damage to the Gulf Coast at a time when the coast was virtually destroyed.”

Musicians including Cyril Neville, George Porter, Anders Osborne, Tab Benoit, Henry Butler, “Big Chief” Boudreaux, Waylon Thibodeaux, Jumpin’ Johnny Sansone and Herman Earnest…