300 Songs For 300 Years

Keyboardists

- Brett Milano

The piano is an enduring constant in New Orleans music, and this month’s installation of classic songs features four of the city’s cornerstone keyboardists—six in fact, since the Dr. John track includes Allen Toussaint and Art Neville. Most of these songs went into the standard repertoire: Dr. John’s was a high-water mark for local music on the charts; Booker’s was the miracle moment of a fraught session, Newman’s is a song that, for better or worse, is now ingrained with local history. Finally we have a latter-day Cleary classic informed by all the above.

—Brett Milano

“Louisiana 1927” Randy Newman, 1974

It all depends on whether you’re talking about “Louisiana 1927” before or after Katrina. The song itself never really changed, but the context irrevocably did. As originally recorded for Newman’s Southern concept album Good Old Boys, “Louisiana 1927” was an historical period piece—certainly a poignant song, and with one of Newman’s most haunting melodies, but still a song you could listen to dry-eyed. The original lyric was indirectly about Huey Long, who used fallout over the 1927 flood to stoke local resentments and help get himself elected; so it’s as much a campaign song as a lament. But after 2005, the issue of government inaction after a natural disaster became a lot more resonant.