For Brother Danny Barker

Release Details

This is one of over seventy releases from Silent Way projects. To explore audio, video and stories please visit the discography.

Artist: 
David Torkanowsky
Format: 
Track
Track Album: 
Smokin: The Sounds of New Orleans II
Year: 
1994
Genre: 
Jazz and Classical
Tony Brooke's Role: 
Audio Recording Engineer

Recorded 4/27/94 at the 6th Annual Piano Night at Tipitina's, New Orleans, by Tony Brooke with Cory Smith. Six of the twelve tracks on this compilation were from a series of New Orleans Jazz Festival live broadcasts and recordings for WWOZ-FM by Tony Brooke.

From the liner notes by John Sinclair:
"[Wednesday] we moved uptown to Tipitina's for the Professor Longhair Foundation's 6th Annual Piano Night, a gala invitational concert that had long been promised to our listeners. But the WTUL broadcast kept our transmission from Tipitina's off the air all night, and we had to be content with the recording of the evening's proceedings which was captured by Tony Brooke and Cory Smith and eventually produced for actual broadcast in June.

Piano Night yielded three selections for this CD: the opening rendition of his 1955 hit, "I'm Wise", by the great Eddie Bo (recorded the next year as "Slippin' and Slidin'" by Little Richard); the premiere solo piano performance ["For Brother Danny Barker"] by David Torkanowsky, who improvised this emotional tribute to the late Danny Barker as the opening salvo in an extremely powerful performance; and the soulful Jon Cleary reading of his composition "Been and Gone," initially featured by Marva Wright on her CD Born With The Blues and positioned here to close out the program."

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