Digital Interviews: Before The Neville Brothers, what were your family's other groups?

Charles Neville: The first band we had was called The Turquoise. That was in the early 50s. From The Turquoise, Art joined The Hawkettes. Then later, I joined The Hawkettes. I went on tour for a while. First, with different blues bands -- rhythm & blues bands. Then I went into the Navy. After the Navy, I was in The Hawkettes. Then Art got drafted onto active duty in the Navy. Aaron became the singer with The Hawkettes after Art left. The Soul Machine was a band that Aaron and Cyril were with. The Meters started out as Art Neville & The Neville Sounds, which was all of us, but then the band got a gig on Bourbon Street that called for only four musicians -- so the rhythm section took the gig. I moved to New York. Art Neville & The Neville Sounds started doing the recording with Allen Toussaint's studio. They were the studio band. They did all of the sessions. They did some with Labelle; all the Dr. John sessions. They did some stuff with Paul McCartney & Wings. Then they recorded some stuff on their own, and they were called The Meters when they did that.

DI: Growing up on Valence Street, was there a musical atmosphere?

CN: It was a musical atmosphere all over New Orleans. Valence Street was just one little part of it.

DI: Did your parents encourage your involvement in music?

CN: Music was a part of everyday life. Everybody in the family sang, or played some kind of instrument.

DI: What music did you listen to as a kid?

CN: We listened to Billie Holiday, Big Maybelle, Nat King Cole, Muddy Waters, Lonnie Johnson, Jimmy Reed. All of the blues. Bobby Bland, Junior Parker, B.B. King, and others. Louis Jordan was another one we knew a lot of. Also, Gene Autry, The Riders Of The Purple Sage, we all were fans of those cowboy singers. We listened to Mahalia Jackson, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, and another gospel singer, a preacher in New Orleans, Reverend Utah Smith. He had a church called the Two Wing Temple, and the song that he recorded was "I've Got Two Wings." [laughs] It was a really rocking gospel song. We listened to Fats Domino, Guitar Slim, Professor Longhair -- we heard some of everything.

DI: You were the one brother who really left New Orleans.

CN: When I first left, I was 15. I went on tour with a band that we started in Florida, a band called Gene Franklin & His Houserockers. We were basically a blues and rhythm & blues band, but we played jazz also. At that time, any blues or rhythm & blues artist had a band of jazz musicians. The first half hour of the show was the band doing their thing, then the artist would come on, and then the last half hour of the show would be the band. They were be-bop musicians, mostly. So I played with that show. We did a stint with The Rabbit's Foot Minstrel Show. That was really one amazing experience. They set up tents, and it was like a Black circus. We had one tent; it was the blues tent. There were acrobats and dancers -- and sideshows, you know, all kinds of stuff. I remember seeing the girl with four legs on the sideshow. She really had an extra set of legs growing from her hip. The wild man, the really heavy woman, and this man who was seven feet tall -- all that kind of stuff.

On that show, I met a man who was called Iron Jaw. Iron Jaw was a tap dancer. He tap-danced barefoot, but he would take beer bottle caps and stick them in the bottom of his feet. Those were his taps. He ate glass. Like those old, fat, green Coca-Cola bottles -- he'd eat one of those like a chicken leg. He ate those Gillette double-edged blades. He ate a box of thumbtacks like it was a box of raisins. He ate light bulbs. He ate fire. He did a dance that was the climax of his show. He did this tap dance and he had an assistant, a girl who danced with him. First he would sit her in a chair, and pick up the chair in his mouth and dance around with her in the chair. Then, he'd pick up a table, put the corner of the table in his mouth, and dance holding the table. Then, he'd put the chair with the girl in it on top of the table and pick that up in his mouth and dance with his arms out. That's why they called him Iron Jaw. [laughs] I did play with the Three Tons of Fun, or Three Tons of Joy -- these three great big women. One of them was Jackie Mabley, who later became known as Moms Mabley. And she was a really good singer.

DI: You also played with a lot of well-known blues artists.

CN: Well, during that time I played with Jimmy Reed, Bobby Bland and Junior Parker. I played with B.B. King. I played with Big Maybelle, Johnny Ace and others.

DI: Didn't you also teach for a brief time?

CN: That was later, after I moved to New York. I taught at Goddard. That was like '69 and '70.

DI: Tell us about the Mardi Gras Indians, and your uncle Big Chief Jolly.

CN: That was in the 60s. He had been masking with the other Indian tribes. I think he started with The Wild Magnolias, and then later, he was with somebody else. Then he started The Wild Tchoupitoulas. Each group of Mardi Gras Indians was from a particular neighborhood. The name reflected something -- like The Wild Magnolias were from Magnolia Street, and the Magnolia Project. So, The Wild Tchoupitoulas -- their base was on Tchoupitoulas Street. That was a tradition that had been part of Mardi Gras for as long as I remembered. There were a lot of different stories about how it began. The way they got "Wild" into most of their names was the Buffalo Bill Wild West Show came to New Orleans, and the Wild Indians were a part of the show.

DI: How did Chief Jolly help bring the brothers together musically in the 70s?

CN: He decided he wanted to record some of the traditional Mardi Gras Indian music. He asked us if we'd all come to New Orleans and record with him, and we did. We just went in the studio and did this stuff. I had been living in New York -- playing with a band in New York required at least two weeks rehearsal. We went to New Orleans with no rehearsal, and just went in the studio and did this incredible music. I realized, "Wow! This is the way it's supposed to be." We talked about it then. The band was The Meters and the rest of us. We talked about all of us playing together. He said, "That's something that your parents always wanted to see -- you guys working together as a family." We said, "Maybe now is the time for that to happen."

DI: But you'd played together before in smaller combos?

CN: Art, Aaron and I performed together. Cyril wasn't old enough yet. But when Cyril did start, that was when we had Art Neville & The Neville Sounds, and that was all of us together. We split up because of that other gig, which was a really good gig but only for four musicians, then we all went our separate ways for a while. Cyril went back and joined The Meters. For a while Aaron and Cyril were in New York, and we all worked together up there. To actually have a band with us all together -- '76, '77 was when we started it. Originally what we wanted to do was just combine with The Meters, the band we had for the Wild Tchoupitoulas session. But the guys in The Meters felt they would be overshadowed by the Neville Brothers, so we got another band together.

DI: Did you know right away that this would become the main project?

CN: It's still like that. That's the main thing. In between, we do the other things.

DI: Although many people knew of The Neville Brothers throughout the early 80s, it took the release of Yellow Moon in 1989 to reach the level of popularity you enjoy now.

CN: Before that, we were much more popular in Europe and other countries than we were here. The first album that we did on Capitol was really popular in Europe and Asia. It just didn't get the airplay here. Fiyo on the Bayou was a big hit in Europe.

DI: Were you touring at that time in Europe?

CN: Yes, we were. We toured all over Europe, Japan, Australia, New Zealand and Hawaii. The stuff was getting played on the radio in those places. Yellow Moon, because of [producer] Daniel Lanois, got airplay, and that's how we got more recognized here in the U.S.

DI: Did the record companies not know how to "market" you?

CN: It wasn't the record companies, it was radio -- American radio. You have to fit a category in order to get played, and we didn't fit any of those categories. But at the time that Yellow Moon was out, there was a category for that. World Music was really being recognized as a mainstream thing. That happened at the right time. The one after that, "Fly Like An Eagle," was one of the tunes on it. We tried to get airplay for that, and we got some spot airplay. We talked to program directors on rock stations, and they'd say, "Well, we can't add this song to our play list, because this is not a rock album. This is a rock tune, but you guys are not a rock band." When we did the CD with the song about Rosa Parks, it was a hip-hop song, and Black radio wouldn't play it, because we were not a "Black act." With each recording, we're hoping to get it played. This last one, there's a lot of really great radio stuff, but they won't play it, because none of the stations thinks we're in their category.

DI: You're known for your fast-paced touring schedule. What drives you guys to get up on that stage?

CN: We love doing it. [laughs] You know, our schedule is not grueling. B.B. King works 300-and-some days a year, and he's older than we are. [laughs]

DI: Before your current side project, the Charles Neville Quartet, you had a project called Diversity?

CN: Yeah, Diversity was something thought of by myself and the woman who is the lead harp player with the New Orleans Symphony Orchestra. We talked about combining jazz musicians and classical musicians, and make arrangements that suited both sets of musicians. We had the harp, cello, violin and then a regular jazz rhythm section. We did arrangements of Charlie Parker & Thelonious Monk tunes, other jazz standards, and some Coltrane tunes with those other instruments. We'd take a Charlie Parker song with one of the symphony instruments playing the melody, and then go into the time and play it like a jazz piece. It turned into some really unique stuff.

DI: What's your quartet's latest release?

CN: Safe In Buddha's Palm -- and it can only be purchased through the Neville Brothers' Web site in New Orleans. [laughs]

DI: How did The Meters become The Funky Meters?

CN: They broke up and they weren't doing anything. There were so many requests for The Meters to do something. Art asked the guys, "Do you all want to get back together?" At first, George and Leo said yes and Zig said no. They got another drummer, and the other three guys played. Then, after a while, Leo, who had his own band and was living in LA, decided he didn't want to do it anymore. Then they got Brian Stoltz, the guitar player who had played with the Neville Brothers band. Now it was Art and George, two of the original Meters, and the two other guys.

DI: Tell us about Cyril's project, The Uptown All-Stars.

CN: The Uptown All-Stars was the band that Aaron's son Ivan played in. Our drummer, Willie Green, was in that band. The bass player, Nick Daniels, was in that band as well. For a while, we had most of the cast of that band in the Neville Brothers Band. Then that wasn't happening anymore, and Cyril put it back together, mainly focusing on doing Caribbean and African music, but with a New Orleans flavor.

DI: Even Aaron is playing some spotlight shows?

CN: Yeah, he's got a band. I'm in it, and sometimes he uses our bass guitar, drum, keyboard and guitar. We're going to be doing some dates late this year, playing some jazz clubs.

DI: When you play together, there are so many types of music represented.

CN: One of the reasons we don't get airplay, is because the four of us have individual influences, as well as influences that we have in common. We all have a gospel background, and blues, and rhythm & blues. We all were influenced by that. But then, Aaron was more influenced by pop music, country music and doo-wop. Art was more influenced by the original rock 'n' roll, as well as the gospel and the doo-wop and the New Orleans funk. Cyril was more influenced by the gospel. His coming-of-age, musically, was during the soul period, when James Brown and Otis Redding and Aretha Franklin were the big names. Marvin Gaye, and those guys. So he got his main influence from that period, and then the Caribbean and African influence. And my main influence was be-bop and blues. So, when we play together, none of us tries to do anything different from what we do individually. We just do it the way we do it, and when we do it together, it makes this other thing.

DI: Concert-goers never can predict who'll take the lead on any particular night.

CN: When we go on a tour, we don't have a set show that we do. It changes, depending on how we feel each night.

DI: Tell us about the next generation of Nevilles.

CN: Aaron's son Ivan is on tour now with the Spin Doctors. He's been performing for years, and has his own band and his own recordings. My daughter Charmaine has her band and she's touring. Art's son Ian plays guitar and he had a band on tour with us. Cyril's son Omari is playing percussion with Cyril, but he has a band in New Orleans called The Jazz Babies. Omari is eleven. The trumpet player, Shorty -- who also plays trombone -- is 14 or so. I had seen Omari on the tours with us, playing percussion with Cyril, but Omari is the drummer with this band, and they've got three horns and a rhythm section. They opened for us at the House Of Blues, and I was amazed. I thought they were going to sound like kids, but they don't. They're just some other musicians.

DI: Art has recorded professionally for 45 years. You've all really become the "grand old men" of New Orleans music, and you're known all over the world.

CN: When we started doing music, we never even thought of anything like this. We did it just because it was something good to do. That's one of the main differences between New Orleans music and music from other places in America. People get into music in New Orleans as a labor of love, rather than something to do for money and fame and fortune. A lot of the great recording artists from New Orleans never left New Orleans, and never quit their day jobs, because the music was the thing they did because they loved to do it. That's how we started, and that's still why we do it.