New Orleans music legend Art Neville dies

Art Neville performs with The Meters during the 2015 New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival. Photo:...
Art Neville performs with The Meters during the 2015 New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival. Photo: Getty
Art "Poppa Funk" Neville spent a half-century shaping the sound of New Orleans music. The keyboardist and singer was a founding member of the Meters and the Neville Brothers, and was the voice of the enduring Carnival season anthem "Mardi Gras Mambo".

In the latest blow for a New Orleans music community that had already lost Dr. John and Dave Bartholomew this summer, Neville died on Monday (local time) after years of declining health. He was 81.

"It was peaceful," said Kent Sorrell, Neville's longtime manager. "He passed away at home with his adoring wife Lorraine by his side. He toured the world how many times, but he always came home to Valence Street."

Arthur Lanon Neville was born on December 17, 1937, the same day as New Orleans piano legend James Booker. As a boy, he lived in the Calliope housing development and Uptown on Valence Street. He was drawn to the Orioles, the Drifters and other doo-wop groups, as well as the piano-driven music of Professor Longhair and Fats Domino.

He attended St. Augustine and Booker T. Washington high schools before earning his GED from Walter S. Cohen, where he'd hang out in the music room with fellow members of the Hawketts, the group he joined in 1953.

He was barely 17 when, in 1954, he sang lead on the Hawketts' remake of a country song called "Mardi Gras Mambo." Local deejay Jack the Cat convinced the Hawketts to record "Mardi Gras Mambo" at his radio station. Little did they know that, more than 60 years later, the song would still be a Carnival staple.

"I was so happy to record," he recalled in a 2013 interview. Jack the Cat "had this song. It sounded good to me. We cut it in the station, with two or three microphones. I knew it felt good to do it. But I had no idea that it would still be around."

Neville served six years in the Navy, including two on active duty. During three months at sea aboard the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Independence, he worked as a cook.

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, he recorded a slew of New Orleans rhythm & blues singles that are classics of the era, including "Cha Dooky Do" and "All These Things."

In the mid-1960s, he anchored a band called Art Neville & the Neville Sounds. The Neville Sounds featured several younger musicians from the local scene, including bassist George Porter Jr., guitarist Leo Nocentelli, drummer Joseph "Zigaboo" Modeliste and saxophonist Gary Brown.

They held down a residency at an Uptown bar called the Nite Cap before moving to the Ivanhoe on Bourbon Street. Brown left the group before producer Allen Toussaint recruited them to be the house band for his recording studio. Under Toussaint's tutelage, they would record with Lee Dorsey, Dr. John, LaBelle, Robert Palmer and many others.

By 1968, they'd been rechristened the Meters and were releasing singles of their own, including the instrumentals "Sophisticated Cissy" and "Cissy Strut." Neville's playful, sing-song organ, Nocentelli's slinky, chicken-scratch guitar, Porter's deep, rubbery bass and Modeliste's crisp, syncopated rhythms forged a template for much New Orleans music that would follow.

In the 1970s, the Meters recorded songs destined to be New Orleans standards, including "Hey Pocky A-Way," "Fire on the Bayou," "People Say" and "Africa." Art's youngest brother, Cyril, joined the band as a percussionist and vocalist before the Meters embarked on long tours of North America and Europe with the Rolling Stones. In March 1975, Paul McCartney, a fan, hired the band to perform at a party celebrating the release of his "Venus and Mars" album aboard the Queen Mary; the show was documented on a live album.

By the late 1970s, the Meters had splintered, frustrated by their lack of commercial success and bedeviled by personal conflicts and substance abuse.

"We had some tragedies happen with the group," Art said of the Meters' tumultuous history. "Blame it on who you want to, it don't make any difference. Because we didn't have the wisdom that Mick Jagger or Paul McCartney had. 'It's New Orleans, man. Let's have fun.' I had fun doing all of it."

The prolific keyboardist and singer was also was awarded a Grammy for lifetime achievement.

He and his three younger brothers backed their uncle, Mardi Gras Indian Big Chief George "Jolly" Landry, on a 1976 album called "The Wild Tchoupitoulas." By the following year, brothers Art, Charles Aaron and Cyril had resolved to move forward as their own band, dubbed the Neville Brothers.

The Neville Brothers released their final studio album in 2004. The band's last concert was at the Hollywood Bowl in 2012; they later reunited to perform several songs at the "Nevilles Forever" tribute show at the Saenger Theatre during the 2015 Jazz Fest. The possibility of any future reunions died when cancer claimed 79-year-old saxophonist Charles Neville in April 2018.

Art Neville battled health issues over the years, including persistent complications from routine back surgery in 2001. More recently, he suffered at least one stroke. His back problems limited his mobility and required him to use a cane, walking stick or wheelchair, though he continued to perform and tour through 2017, sometimes with his nephew, Dumpstaphunk's Ivan Neville, backing him up on keyboards.

He is survived by his wife Lorraine and his three children, Arthel, Ian, and Amelia.

Funeral arrangements are pending.

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