Well-known artists revive blues festival

• By JARED JANES
• Advocate staff writer
• Published: Apr 27, 2008 - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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The performers played for 12 hours Saturday on a stage set up around the fountains between the River Center and the Old State Capitol. Despite a persistent threat of rain, the  large crowd lounged in lawn chairs or in the grass or sat at tables set up in the concession area.

The festival, which was shuttered in 1995 after struggling financially, was brought back this year through the efforts of Mayor-President Kip Holden and the city’s music leaders such as Johnny Palazzotto, the president of the Baton Rouge Blues Foundation, who urged resumption of the event because blues music is an important part of the city’s culture.

Palazzotto worked with others from the foundation for about six months to line up a group of artists — including Marcia Ball, Phil Guy, Tab Benoit, Kenny Neal and Lazy Lester —  for the festival’s return.

Just like the festival itself, Baton Rouge music legend Lazy Lester was absent from the music scene for a time, too.

Lester, 75, who grew up in Scotlandville and began playing the harmonica at 19, walked away from his music in the late 1960s after he grew frustrated at the industry, he said Saturday afternoon in between short breaks to greet other musicians he recognized at the Baton Rouge Blues Festival. 

He took a variety of manual labor jobs — road construction, lumberjacking, trucking — and moved to Michigan, about as far away as possible from the Louisiana clubs where he made his name.

But after mostly staying away from music for 20 years, Lester went to England — at a friend’s encouragement — and recorded “Lazy Lester Rides Again,” which re-launched his music career.

“After that, I was all good,” said Lester, who was inducted into the Louisiana Blues Hall of Fame in 1998. “It was all uphill from there.”

An uphill return to the state’s music scene for the long-dormant festival would please Palazzotto.

Palazzotto said the crowd that came out to enjoy the Baton Rouge Blues Festival on a date conflicting with Lafayette’s Festival International de Louisiane and the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival indicates to him that Baton Rouge has its own place in what he called the “Most Musical 125 Miles on Earth.”

Baton Rouge is a “blues stronghold of Louisiana” that has produced artists such as  Neal and Lester, he said. Palazzotto said he expects the city’s musical culture to grow and become stronger, now that the Blues Fest has resumed.

“Baton Rouge is a significant music town,” he said. “We’re going to grow more and more.”

Baton Rouge — and specifically Tabby’s Blues Box and Heritage Hall — was where blues guitarist Tab Benoit got his start, the performer said while waiting in the artists’ tent for his turn to go on stage.