Smithsonian Folkways Brings Sounds Of New Orleans To Life

Videos by American Songwriter

Smithsonian Folkways, the Smithsonian Institution’s nonprofit record label, is set to release Classic Sounds of New Orleans, a twenty-six-track CD that hits the highlights of what Folkways calls “America’s most musical city.”

The new disc, out July 27, aims to capture and preserve just how “integral music is to everyday life in New Orleans,” by including not just jazz, blues and brass band music, but the rawer sounds heard on the streets, like those of vendors, a “down-and-out jazzman blowing his harmonica,” and a street-corner evangelist.

Beyond the city, the compilation acknowledges New Orleans’ music as a point of origin for many influential artists of the present and past decades, like Louis Armstrong, Jelly Roll Morton, or Dr. John and the Marsalis family.

Classic Sounds of New Orleans Track List:

1. Just a Little While to Stay Here – Eureka Brass Band

2. Shoe Shine Hambone – Shoe Shine Boy

3. Tiger Rag – Freddie L. Small

4. Blackberries! – Dora Bliggen

5. Red White and Blue Got the Golden Band – Mardi Gras Indians

6. Times Done Changed – Sister Dora Alexander

7. Dark Was the Night – Rev. Lewis Jackson & Charlotte Rucell

8. Back to the Time – Choir of Pilgrim Baptist Church

9. We Shall Walk through the Streets of the City (Dirge) – Doc Paulin

10. We Shall Walk through the Streets of the City (March) – Doc Paulin

11. Bucket’s Got a Hole in It – Punch Miller with Samuel B. Charters