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Post by the Scribe on Feb 28, 2021 8:08:17 GMT
COLLABORATION: AARON NEVILLE Linda Ronstadt's Timeless Appeal
www.grammy.com/grammys/news/linda-ronstadts-timeless-appeal
Aaron Neville proclaims Ronstadt a "premier singer of any time" and recounts the making of their GRAMMY-winning hit "Don't Know Much"
AARON NEVILLEGRAMMYS OCT 12, 2016 - 1:00 PM
("GRAMMY Salute To Music Legends" — a special all-star concert honoring The Recording Academy's 2016 Special Merit Awards recipients — will air Oct. 14 from 9–11:30 p.m. on PBS. Linda Ronstadt, who received a 2016 Lifetime Achievement Award(opens in a new tab) from The Recording Academy, will be among the artists saluted.)
www.grammy.com/news/special-merit-awards-class-of-2016
www.grammy.org/recording-academy/awards/lifetime-awards
Linda Ronstadt is one of the premier singers of any time, and also a beautiful person. I'm so glad to have her music to listen to. It soothes me on long flights. From her songs with the Stone Poneys and her songs with Nelson Riddle to her mariachi music and Cry Like A Rainstorm — Howl Like The Wind, you can feel every emotion.
I'm thankful that we are on the planet at the same time and it was an honor and a privilege to record with her. She's a strong singer who could belt it out, and then come down to the sweetest most intricate part of her voice. It's like her voice is a painting meant to be here forever, and she made it so easy to sing with her. She told me that our voices were married.
The first song we actually sang together was "Ave Maria" in harmony. The Neville Brothers were playing at Pete Fountain's club during the World's Fair in 1984 in New Orleans. After her show with Riddle, Linda came to see us. Someone told us that she was in the audience and I dedicated a song to her and called her up to sing some doo-wop. She told the press that it was the highlight of her tour. She felt like Cinderella at the ball because we were her favorite band.
When I asked her to come back to New Orleans to join myself and Allen Toussaint for our annual concert to raise money for New Orleans Artists Against Hunger and Homelessness, a nonprofit I founded with Toussaint in 1985, she quickly agreed. We have so much respect for each other's voices.
She and Peter Asher said that we should record together, and now our songs are a part of history. I can remember being at the studio to record with Linda and I couldn't wait. I had fallen in love with the songs that we were going to record; I was ecstatic. It was five years from the night I called her onstage to sing with us in New Orleans. George Massenburg was the engineer and Asher and Steve Tyrell co-produced. Linda and I sang "Don't Know Much" and when we finished I said to her, "Meet you at the GRAMMYs." I was joking, and yet not joking because it was that great a song, and also a great performance. So, like I said, the rest is history.
I don't know much, but I know that Linda deserves to be honored with The Recording Academy's Lifetime Achievement Award.
(A co-founder of the GRAMMY-winning band the Neville Brothers, Aaron Neville has garnered four GRAMMYs, including two with Linda Ronstadt for Best Pop Performance By A Duo Or Group With Vocal for "Don't Know Much" (1989) and "All My Life" (1990). Neville's 1966 solo hit "Tell It Like It Is" was inducted into the GRAMMY Hall Of Fame(opens in a new tab) in 2015.)
www.grammy.org/recording-academy/awards/hall-of-fame[/font]
Aaron Neville Interview
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Post by the Scribe on Feb 28, 2021 8:12:15 GMT
Linda Ronstadt And Aaron Neville - Don't Know Much
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_Know_Much
"Don't Know Much" is a song written by Barry Mann, Cynthia Weil and Tom Snow. Mann was the first to record the song in 1980, gaining a minor chart hit in the US. The song was made famous when it was covered as a duet by Linda Ronstadt and Aaron Neville in 1989. Their version was a worldwide success, topping the Irish Singles Chart and reaching the top 10 in several territories.
The song first appeared on Barry Mann's self-titled 1980 album, released on Casablanca records. Bill Medley scored a Billboard Hot 100 chart success with it rising to number 88 in April 1981. The next month, the song hit number 29 on the Adult Contemporary chart.[2] Bette Midler recorded a version with changed lyrics under the title "All I Need to Know", charting at number 77 in 1983.[3]
In 2000, Barry Mann re-recorded the song with Brenda Russell on his album Soul and Inspiration, released on Atlantic Records.
The song was covered on Linda Ronstadt's triple-platinum 1989 album Cry Like a Rainstorm, Howl Like the Wind. It was introduced to Ronstadt and Neville by Steve Tyrell. Co-produced by Tyrell and Peter Asher, it was released as a single in the United States in 1989, peaking at number 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 in December 1989,[4] and number 1 on the Hot Adult Contemporary Tracks chart. The single was Ronstadt's tenth top 10 hit and was certified Gold, eventually selling over 900,000 copies in the United States. In the United Kingdom, the song peaked at number 2 on the UK Singles Chart. The song also hit number 1 in Ireland, number 2 in Australia, and reached the top five in Austria, Belgium, Canada, the Netherlands, and New Zealand.
"Don't Know Much" won Ronstadt and Neville the 1990 Grammy Award for Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal and was nominated for Song of the Year.
The song received favorable reviews from music critics. Billboard said it is "a strong send-off."[5] Swedish newspaper Expressen called it "heavenly". They commented, "What a lovesong."[6] Cary Darling from Orange County Register labeled it as a "soaring, wide-screen ballad."[7] Jan DeKnock from Orlando Sentinel described the song as "a killer ballad."[8] People Magazine wrote that "their voices fuse like sunlight beaming through a stained-glass window."[9] James Hunter of Rolling Stone said that it is "brilliant".[10] Santa Cruz Sentinel called it a "tender love ballad duet."[11]
In the music video, both Neville and Ronstadt portray a middle-aged couple that are remembering their past and all the difficulties that they seem to have faced together.
Personnel
Linda Ronstadt - Vocals
Aaron Neville - Vocals
Don Grolnick - Piano
Mike Landau - Electric guitar
Lee Sklar - Bass
Carlos Vega- Drums
Michael Fisher - Percussion
Robbie Buchanan - Keyboard
Skywalker Symphony Orchestra - arranged and conducted by David Campbell
Chart (1989–1990) Peak
position
Australia (ARIA)[12] 2
Austria (Ö3 Austria Top 40)[13] 3
Belgium (Ultratop 50 Flanders)[14] 4
Canada Top Singles (RPM)[15] 5
Canada Adult Contemporary (RPM)[16] 1
Europe (Eurochart Hot 100)[17] 10
Germany (Official German Charts)[18] 34
Ireland (IRMA)[19] 1
Netherlands (Dutch Top 40)[20] 6
Netherlands (Single Top 100)[21] 6
New Zealand (Recorded Music NZ)[22] 4
UK Singles (OCC)[23] 2
US Billboard Hot 100[4] 2
US Adult Contemporary (Billboard)[24] 1
Linda Ronstadt & Aaron Neville Don't Know Much |
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Post by the Scribe on Feb 28, 2021 8:24:31 GMT
Linda Ronstadt Aaron Neville All My Life & When Something Is Wrong With My Baby - Tonight Show 2/22/90
"All My Life" is a hit song written by Karla Bonoff and originally performed by Bonoff on her album New World (1988).
The following year, Linda Ronstadt and Aaron Neville performed the song as a duet on Ronstadt's triple platinum-certified album Cry Like a Rainstorm, Howl Like the Wind (1989); this was the second global hit from Ronstadt and Neville.
The song was released as a single in early 1990 and hit number 1 on the Billboard Adult contemporary chart (where it held for three weeks) as well as number 11 on both the Cash Box Top 100 and the Billboard Hot 100 chart.[1] It was another international hit for the duo. It reached #10 in Canada and Ireland.[2]
"All My Life" won the award for Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal at the 1991 Grammy Awards.
Personnel
Linda Ronstadt - Vocals
Aaron Neville - Vocals
Don Grolnick - Piano
Andrew Gold - Electric guitar
Michael Landau - Electric Guitar
Lee Sklar - Bass
Russ Kunkel - Drums
Michael Fisher - Percussion
Robbie Buchanan - Keyboard
Skywalker Symphony Orchestra arranged and conducted by David Campbell
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Post by the Scribe on Feb 28, 2021 8:34:41 GMT
If I remember correctly Linda first offered this song to Smokey Robinson to do as a duet but he declined. In steps Aaron Neville. Just as well.
Linda Ronstadt and Aaron Neville "I Need You"
"I Need You" is taken from Linda Ronstadt's 1989 album "Cry Like A Rainstorm, Howl Like The Wind". This duet with Aaron Neville is one of several songs featured on this Grammy winning album.
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Post by the Scribe on Feb 28, 2021 8:37:03 GMT
Please Remember Me
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Post by the Scribe on Feb 28, 2021 8:38:21 GMT
The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face
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Post by the Scribe on Feb 28, 2021 8:39:29 GMT
Song Of Bernadette
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Post by the Scribe on Feb 28, 2021 9:31:21 GMT
Linda Ronstadt & Aaron Neville Interview on Johnny Carson 1990
Here Linda announces that she will be producing Aaron's next album. Aaron Neville
Warm Your Heart
Produced by Linda Ronstadt
and George Massenburg
1991
playlist: www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLxe1uoOYt5Se2N8fGxSsuMT6MuxTkt5-T
1. Louisiana 1927
2. Everybody Plays the Fool
3. It Feels Like Rain
4. Somewhere, Somebody
5. Don't Go Please Stay
6. With You in Mind
7. That's the Way She Loves
8. Angola Bound
9. Close Your Eyes
10. La Vie Dansante
11. Warm Your Heart
12. I Bid You Goodnight
13. Ave Maria
Linda Ronstadt and Aaron Neville
Ron Givens
August 17, 1990 AT 04:00 AM EDT
On the face of it, Linda Ronstadt and Aaron Neville couldn’t be more dissimilar. She’s a pale, diminutive Arizonan of Mexican and German heritage. He’s a dark, barrel-chested Louisianan, an African-American steeped in the rich musical traditions of New Orleans. At 44, Ronstadt has sold millions of albums as a rock singer and tackled an array of musical genres, from heavily orchestrated pop to country-western to Mexican mariachi to light operetta. At 49, Neville has been more successful with critics than record buyers, consistently producing, as part of the Neville Brothers, the sinuous funk that has made New Orleans R&B famous. These distinctions are forgotten, however, once Ronstadt and Neville begin to sing together. Something magical happens when Ronstadt’s buttermilk soprano meets Neville’s creamy falsetto. ”We don’t sing the same style at all,” Ronstadt says, ”but when we sing up high together we just blend.”
Those sweet harmonies soared to unexpected heights last year. Ronstadt and Neville recorded four duets for her solo album Cry Like a Rainstorm — Howl Like the Wind and became the First Couple of pop music. In 10 months Cry has sold nearly two million copies, and three of the Ronstadt-Neville tunes have been chart hits: ”Don’t Know Much,” which peaked at No. 2 before winning a Grammy for the duo in February, ”All My Life,” and ”When Something Is Wrong With My Baby.”
Since then the collaboration has deepened. Ronstadt is making her debut as a producer on Neville’s upcoming solo album, half of which was recorded in New Orleans this spring. And last week Ronstadt and Neville were reunited in concert, on her first rock & roll tour since 1981. Neville is singing duets with Ronstadt on the tour, as well as performing with the Neville Brothers as her opening act.
Ronstadt has been an Aaron Neville fan for a long time, but she didn’t meet him until 1984. ”I was in New Orleans singing with Nelson Riddle,” she remembers, ”and we went to see the Neville Brothers — what else do you do when you’re in New Orleans?” Neville dedicated a song to Ronstadt and invited her onstage to sing along on a doo-wop medley. ”I was just sort of oohing on top,” she says. Afterward, she asked for Neville’s autograph. ”She told me, ‘I’ll sing with you and record with you anytime,”’ says Neville. Getting into the studio was easier said than done. Despite frequent attempts to coordinate their busy schedules, Ronstadt and Neville didn’t manage to record together until last year.
Choosing songs for the duets proved nearly as difficult. Ronstadt won’t record any type of music she wasn’t familiar with ”by the time I was five or six,” she says. ”That’s what I can authentically express. I’ve had a lifetime to use it and have it go through my neurological patterns and mean something in my life.” As the variety of her work in the ’80s indicates, she did a lot of listening when she was a kid. After an extensive search for material that would be true to both herself and Neville, Ronstadt called upon a variety of composers — a California singer-songwriter, British pub-rockers, New York songsmiths, and old-fashioned soul masters — for four tender love songs.
DUETS - LINDA RONSTADT AARON NEVILLE
www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXpPxMNrJk_u11pRXf9vtky53kC2AwIkO
For the Neville solo album, Ronstadt studied the music of New Orleans. ”Aaron asked me to help him find material,” she says before launching into a discussion of his hometown. Ronstadt speaks eagerly of the blend of French, Spanish, and West African cultures in the Crescent City, and tosses off references to the importance of music in such rituals as Mardi Gras. At times she even sounds like a musicologist: ”I’m convinced that (New Orleans singer- pianist) Professor Longhair is the beginning of rock & roll.” While scouting for Neville tunes, Ronstadt has also been researching her next two solo projects: a second album of mariachi music and an album of big-band R&B, à la Ray Charles’ ”Drown in My Own Tears.”
Neville wants his new album to remain true to his New Orleans roots, while flexing some musical muscles away from his family band. ”There’s a lot of stuff inside of me that I want to get out,” he says. The religious song ”Ave Maria,” for example, is something that he can sing in the bathtub, but not in the middle of a funky Neville Brothers show. As producer, Ronstadt says, ”I’m trying to serve two masters, because I would like to make a record that could get played on the radio. But I’ve never made any of my records that way.”
Ronstadt hopes that the Neville solo album will be a commercial success because he’s never made much money from his recordings. ”Even when ‘Tell It Like It Is’ was a big hit (No. 2 in 1967), he was loading coffee into ships,” she says. Ronstadt also wants him to become famous: ”I’m surprised when people say I uncovered this man. It never occurred to me that housewives in Cincinnati have never heard of him. I thought I was following on his coattails.” Neville’s guest appearance on her album introduced him to more listeners. The Grammy Awards, which included a Ronstadt-Neville performance just before they won, also helped. ”It was one of the greatest feelings in the world,” Neville remembers. ”I was thinking about all the people back home. I felt like I was winning it for New Orleans.”
Maybe that sounds sentimental, but that’s the way Neville sings. ”Sometimes I want to make it so tender it can wipe out anything negative in people’s lives,” he says. When Neville sang the theme from The Mickey Mouse Club on Stay Awake, a 1988 Disney tribute album, he made that sappy number a heartbreaker. ”It makes me feel like a child when I’m doing it,” he says.
Neville follows his instincts, and so does Ronstadt. ”Music for me is the personal thing that goes on in my living room, or someone else’s living room, or when my hands are in the dishwater,” she says. ”It’s something I do to organize the more chaotic aspects of my life into something meaningful. It’s how I try to understand life. When I was a little child, I didn’t wonder if anybody was listening.”
Neville isn’t surprised that he and Ronstadt have harmonized successfully. For him, the differences between them aren’t great at all. ”I think our singing together was meant to be,” he says. ”We have the same type of heart.”
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Post by the Scribe on Feb 28, 2021 9:46:23 GMT
Aaron Neville Christmas Special
Linda Ronstadt & Aaron Neville-Song of Bernadette
Linda Ronstadt & Aaron Neville-Silent Night
Linda Ronstadt-I Wonder as I Wander
Linda Ronstadt & Aaron Neville-Ave Maria
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Post by the Scribe on Feb 28, 2021 19:26:55 GMT
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Post by the Scribe on Mar 1, 2021 2:23:52 GMT
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Post by the Scribe on Apr 18, 2021 14:11:52 GMT
 Neville and Linda Ronstadt perform on Saturday Night Live in 1989. Credit: Raymond Bonar/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank.
tidal.com/magazine/article/aaron-neville-at-80/1-76504
Linda Ronstadt was crucial to the success of your solo career. You released your first solo disk in nearly 20 years in 1985 with Orchid in the Storm, but it didn’t do well. Things turned around in 1989, when you paired with Linda for four tracks on her Cry Like a Rainstorm, Howl Like the Wind album, which contained the international hits “Don’t Know Much” and “All My Life.” Then she produced your 1991 album, Warm Your Heart, which went Platinum. How did you hook up with her?
[The Neville Brothers] were playing at the World’s Fair in New Orleans in 1984. She was there with Nelson Riddle at the amphitheater. She came to see us and I asked her to come onstage and sing some doo-wop with us. And she said she never does anything impromptu like that, but since it was me she said she couldn’t say no. After that, she was signing an autograph for me and it said, “To Aaron with love, I’ll sing with you anytime, anywhere, in any key.” So the next year, me and Allen Toussaint came up with a program for Artists Against Hunger and Homelessness in New Orleans, and we asked her to come down and do the benefit and she came. That was 1985, but it took until 1989 for us to get into the studio and do something together. After we recorded “Don’t Know Much,” I said, “Meet you at the Grammys.” I was joking but not joking because it was such a great song.
Then you won the next year too with “All My Life”!
I didn’t think I would win, so I didn’t go that time. I was in the grocery store and this guy comes out and he said to me, “Hey man, you won again!” And I said, “What you talking about?” He said, “You and Linda won with ‘All My Life.’” So we got two Grammys out of that [album].
You have such rapport with Linda as a singer. Can you talk about the connection between you as vocalists?
She said that our voices are married and we probably sang together in another life. We respected each other’s voice. She can belt out a song. But when she sang with me, she came down to my sweet sound and it was like twins singing. |
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Post by the Scribe on May 22, 2021 7:12:59 GMT
Aaron Neville - interview - Later 4/25/92 - on Linda Ronstadt Bill Graham and jail
clevelandlivemusic
7.19K subscribers
AARON NEVILLE is interviewed on the April 25th, 1992 episode of LATER WITH BOB COSTAS. Topics include Neville's musical kinship with LINDA RONSTADT, his upbringing and going to jail where he wrote his first song "Everyday", getting ripped off for "Tell It Like It Is", the impact of Bill Graham (who had just died) on his and the Neville Brothers career.
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Post by the Scribe on Aug 30, 2021 7:17:47 GMT
Aaron Neville | Louisiana Legends
Louisiana Public Broadcasting
11.7K subscribers
This episode of the series “Louisiana Legends” from June 16, 1994, features an interview with Aaron Neville conducted by Gus Weill. Neville, a native of New Orleans, is a Grammy Award-winning Rhythm and Blues singer. He discusses: growing up in the Calliope projects of New Orleans; his relationship with his brothers; being part of a show business family; his Grammy win; life on the road; his work with singer Linda Ronstadt; his social activism work on the issues of hunger and homelessness; playing a show at Tipitina’s; and the New Orleans audience.
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Post by the Scribe on Feb 27, 2023 6:16:13 GMT
Los Angeles Times
On the Brink Again : Linda Ronstadt has put the Neville Brothers on a course toward fame--a destination that’s eluded them since the ‘70s
www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-10-07-ca-3189-story.html
BY CHRIS WILLMAN
OCT. 7, 1990 12 AM PT
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Aaron Neville and his three brothers have been telling it like it is for decades now. And fans have been telling friends, and those friends told more friends--but it took a friend in high places, Linda Ronstadt, to help turn the word-of-mouth trickle about the Neville Brothers into a torrent.
Predict that they’re gonna be huge, though, and you might be accused of being the boy who cried wolf. Together or individually, the brothers have been poised on the apparent brink of the big time many times before now--even before Aaron Neville had a Top 10 hit in 1967 with “Tell It Like It Is,” an R&B; ballad of unforgettable poignancy.
Since Art and Aaron hooked up with brothers Cyril and Charles to form their family band in the late ‘70s, they’ve had a series of breaks--a management contract with industry heavyweight Bill Graham, a slot on the Amnesty International revue with U2, an acclaimed album with hip producer Daniel Lanois--none of which turned out to be the big break.
If this really is the Nevilles’ time, as many say it is, there are two good reasons: the coming together of world beat and Ronstadt.
“We’re lucky that the world is changing in its appreciation of Third World music,” says Graham. “Even though they’re from New Orleans, that music, you mix the Cajun and the Latin and the soul. . . . When I say Third World, in the last 10 years, the feel of our country has changed tremendously because hundreds of thousands of Third World people live here now. . . . And the fact that Aaron has had such a wonderful success with Linda hasn’t hurt either.”
Indeed it hasn’t.
The success Graham speaks of was in the series of balladic duets that prime fan Ronstadt recorded with Aaron Neville last year for her million-selling album “Cry Like a Rainstorm, Howl Like the Wind,” including the smash hit “Don’t Know Much.”
Ronstadt has now taken the Neville clan out on tour as her opening act, with Aaron joining her for the appropriate duets in her segment of the show. The tour hits the Universal Amphitheatre this week for seven nights--on Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday, next Sunday, Oct. 16 and 17--and one night at the Pacific Amphitheatre in Costa Mesa on Oct. 20.
So far, audiences on the tour--many of which, primed for Aaron’s soothing, angelic voice, might be unprepared for the Nevilles’ propulsive sound--seem to like the gumbo as well as the bubble-gum.
Charles Neville, the group’s saxophonist and prime spokesman, notes that sometimes Ronstadt’s older fans in the front rows look a little baffled when the brothers do their first up-tempo number. “But once Aaron begins to sing, which is with the second number of the set, ‘Brother’s Keeper,’ you can see them saying, ‘Oh yeah, this is what we came for.’
“Another good thing is looking at some of their faces when they realize which one of us it is that has that voice. . . .”
Aaron Neville, 49, is the most physically imposing of the four brothers, looking more like an NFL linebacker than a sweet-voiced songbird. It’s his overwhelming size that makes the video for “Don’t Know Much,” in which he and the nearly dwarfed Ronstadt get very cozy, a little surprising--although the ability of the video’s steamy interracial romance to shock middle America probably shouldn’t be underestimated.
“Yeah, it started rumors,” says Aaron with a laugh, about the video. “Nothing like that happened. We were just friends.”
On the video shoot, he and Ronstadt needed a little coaching to get less “friendly” and more sexy. “The producer called us together and told us if we weren’t gonna make it look real, there was no sense in doing it. So I guess that was the idea, to start rumors, huh?”
Neville and Ronstadt first met in 1984 when she was in New Orleans for the World’s Fair.
“Me and my brothers were playing at Pete Fountain’s club and somebody told me she was in the audience, so I dedicated a song to her and called her up on the stage to sing some doo-wop,” he said.
“Later she told the press she felt like Cinderella at the ball because she got to play with her favorite band and sing with me. I asked her for her autograph and she wrote ‘To Aaron, love, and I’ll sing with you any time, any place.’ ”
He took her up on that offer about a year later, asking her to come join him at an annual benefit for the hungry and homeless held in New Orleans.
“The first song that we both agreed upon and liked was from both of our Catholic backgrounds, the Ave Maria,” he recalled. “We harmonized on it, and it sounded so sweet we started talking about trying to get together to do a record. Over the years it evolved and (finally) we got together.”
For someone whose strong, clear, high voice is the most recognizable of the Nevilles’, Aaron is a man of few words in person, his surprisingly low and undistinct speaking voice talking only reluctantly of personal matters.
Asked about any lingering bitterness over the barren years in the record business, he says: “I ain’t got time for nothing like that. That was yesterday and you can’t be holding things in your heart. You gotta make room for good. . . . There’s a couple times in my life I wasn’t too optimistic, but my belief in my spirituality, I guess, gave me an incentive to keep on, you know.”
The Neville Brothers’ latest album, “Brother’s Keeper,” features several gospel-oriented songs, including “Jah Love” (co-written by Cyril and U2’s Bono). Many of the album’s lyrics came out of a book of poems Aaron had been compiling since 1980, which seemed to mark a turning point in his own personal battles against drugs and other demons.
“I feel like God inspired me, so I write a lot about him,” says Aaron.
The socially aware, religious and compassionate component of this album and its predecessor--the Daniel Lanois-produced “Yellow Moon,” the group’s biggest commercial breakthrough to date (400,000 sales)--might seem almost at odds with the partying New Orleans spirit once associated with the group.
Says Charles, “There’s one or two tunes on each one that are more or less a good dancing party tune, but even with those tunes, there’s a message in with the party.
“We all really feel a heavy spiritual influence in our lives, that through the kind of lives we’ve led and things we went through, we survived and still do what it is we really love to do, and we have this collective gift. . . . We feel really blessed and that the gift should be used to acknowledge its source, rather than just use it to try and make money.”
Making money has always been an iffy proposition in the Nevilles’ long and varied career.
Other projects the brothers have worked on individually or collectively have often steered well clear of popular commercialism. Seminal funk and soul groups the Soul Machine (formed by Cyril and Aaron) and the Meters (headed by Art) never caught on big.
When the brothers finally got together in 1975, it was first as the Wild Tchoupitoulas, who dressed in Mardi Gras outfits and played regional music heavy on the celebration and voodoo vibes.
Even now, other labors of love take up much of the brothers’ time outside the group. Art has reformed the Meters as a part-time outfit. Charles has just released his first album with an eclectic band appropriately dubbed Charles Neville & Diversity.
Cyril’s side project is the Uptown All-Stars, who play “New Orleans second-line reggae.” And Aaron will enter the studio in December to begin work on a solo album to be produced by--surprise--Linda Ronstadt, about which he says little other than that, yes, it will include at least one duet.
The Neville Brothers are diverse enough, it seems, to handle just about anything but compromise.
“We feel that being true to ourselves musically and being true to our spirits is the best thing to do with the music,” says Charles.
“It’s definitely what makes it special to me, the fact that of all the years of our playing live performances--and we’ve played New Orleans funk and New Orleans rhythm & blues, which is a combination of jazz, doo-wop, gospel, blues, Caribbean, African, all of the Deltas--we see the impact that it has at the gigs on the audiences.
“And then when it’s happening, we feel what it does to us. We know this is something that is worth something. And it should be recognized.”
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