Orleans

Celebrate like they do in The Big Easy with Chef Kevin Belton's newest cookbook.

Most claim that it all started with Buddy Bolden, a legendary figure who was the first trumpet king of New Orleans, and may have recorded a cylinder in 1890s. Certainly he slotted elements of spirituals, ragtime, marches and folk music together in a cohesive manner, forming what we now know as jazz. But how he really sounded will never be known because jazz didn't make an appearance on record until 1917, but what we can say for sure is that he inspired these artists to record the tracks heard on this compilation.

A magical mystery tour of the extraordinary historical characters that have defined the unique spiritual landscape of New Orleans.

A fusion of African, Caribbean and European cultures, New Orleans is a place unlike any other: the birthplace of jazz, home to a tempting food scene, and host of one of the world's biggest and best festivals.

For more than ten years Soul Jazz Records have been exploring and documenting the sound of New Orleans Funk. Now they turn their attention to the flipside of this musical coin - New Orleans Soul.
These two musical forms share a lineage that begins with the city's enormous rhythm and blues explosion in the post-war 1940s and 1950s. New Orleans Soul incorporated the soulful vocals of the gospel church, the driving beat of rhythm and blues, as well as traces of the second-line parade bands and the latinized rhythms of the city. Here you will find New Orleans soul in all its glorious variations - from the deep, deep soul of singers Aaron Neville, Willie Tee and Robert Parker to the storming northern soul of Maurice Williams and Eldridge Holmes, the funky soul of Eddie Bo, Lionel Robinson and Ernie K-Doe all alongside the Crescent City's finest soul sisters - Irma Thomas, Betty Harris, Jean Knight, Inell Young and more!