Secondly, this was a bit awkward at first because I was trying to wrap my mind around reverence I didn't immediately understand... because it wasn't all about the music. This guy is now over 80 years old and has been making music since he was a kid. And doing great things for New Orleans. Al "Carnival Time" Johnson is a cherished New Orleans musician...and yet it is hard to deny that, to most listeners, he has ONE GOOD SONG. Guess which song it is? It is in his name. Folks should definitely value and appreciate him for his contributions back in the day, but his offerings since that hey-day are slim. And yet he has been consistently continuing to rock out for years (at least at Carnival time). If I am going to be musically frank though, the handful of modern recordings are found to be wanting. These recent few albums sound rough and amateurish. It is like those Casio keyboards that you press "C" and get a beat and chord and a bass-line in C. Then play the blues. NOLA forgive me, that's what this stuff sounds like. Who are these New Orleans players backing him up? I'm not sure. Beyond Carnival from 2013 just can't hit the way it's supposed to or used to, but hey- why not? "Lower Ninth Ward Blues" needed to be sung, though there's not much to the song. "Jail Bird" is a sorry tale of domestic abuse. I appreciate the attention to the difference between Mardi Gras and Carnival in "Mardi Gras Strut," but the music isn't exactly The Meters- at least not anymore. It's a shame that the modern canned-sounding version was how I had to listen to his acclaimed 1958 hit, "Lena." That one later-day full length is the only such album I could find streaming other than repeated versions of "Carnival Time." There are lost albums then from 2006 and 2007 then too, but OK. He redoes "Carnival Time" as "Super Bowl Time" in 2013 when Mardi Gras coincided with the Super Bowl(?!)- thus his comeback album of sorts that same year. That was at least his second time with that trick, having trotted out "Who Dat Say?" in 2009, which was literally just "Carnival Time" again re-written for the Saints in the Super Bowl; that time he was excellently backed by modern New Orleans players, Egg Yolk Jubilee. Yet another version of "Carnival Time" featuring the Soul Rebels Brass Band even more recently ends up on the Treme Soundtrack, and that mix is genuinely great. I'd go see this guy live. So as far as I can tell, his entire discography consist of three extant albums, but there was session work and singles back in the late 50s and early 60s. And he's still out there! OK, I can see loving the guy. That one song is so good, and no Carnival playlist is complete without it.
Fairly recently, in this rare interview he sheds some light on the mystery. Some light is shed on the absurd lyrics of his one hit. One interesting tidbit is the revelation that the clubs named in the opening lines ("The Green Room is jumpin'...") were located in the part of the Treme neighborhood that got razed when I-10 came through. Another fun-fact is that he is Grand Marshall for Life of the Red Beans Parade, on Lundi Gras. The man is a legend, and fittingly so. Both of his old songs are absolutely fantastic on The Complete Ric & Ron Recording, Vol. 2: Classic New Orleans R&B and More, 1958-1965, recorded at Cosimo Matassa's famed French Quarter studio that was a home-base to Fats Domino and all those other guys. One of Johnson's two songs on that compilation is "Carnival Time." That's one great song.
He's still very much doing this and reinventing that song! Watch this too...?
