Professor Longhair

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Professor Longhair
Image of the artist © Leni Sinclair
Background information
Birth name	Henry Roeland Byrd
Also known as	Fess
Born	December 19, 1918
Origin	New Orleans, Louisiana
Died	January 30, 1980
Genre(s)	blues
Occupation(s)	musician, songwriter
Instrument(s)	vocals, piano
Years active	1930s-1980
Website	professorlonghair.com

Professor Longhair (nee Henry Roeland Byrd and aka Fess) (December 19, 1918 - January 30, 1980) was a legendary New Orleans blues musician. He was born in Bogalusa, Louisiana. He was noted for his unique piano style, which he described as "a combination of rumba, mambo, and Calypso", and his unusual, expressive voice, described once as "freak unique". He was called the Bach of Rock and Roll.

His career in music began in the 1930s, dancing for tips. "The very first instrument I played was the bottom of my feet, working out rhythms, tap dancing. We used to dance all up and down Bourbon Street."

He learned guitar and piano and began to take music seriously when he found he could get out of work by playing piano for his fellow members of the Civilian Conservation Corps. He also worked as a boxer, cook, and professional card player.

In the late 1940s, he sat in on piano at the Caledonia Club while Dave Bartholomew's band was taking a break. He was an immediate hit and Bartholomew, later famous as Fats Domino's bandleader and collaborator, was fired. The band all had long hair and were dubbed Professor Longhair and the Four Hairs.

He began recording the following year. His signature song, "Mardi Gras in New Orleans" (still the theme song of New Orleans Mardi Gras) was recorded in 1949 under the name Professor Longhair and the Shuffling Hungarians. "I had one Hindu in the band, but there weren't no Hungarians," he explained.

Longhair's only national R&B hit was 1950's "Bald Head". In the early 1950s, he released several more minor hits, including "Tipitina" and "Ball the Wall".

He appeared under many names, including Roy Byrd and his Blues Jumpers, Roy "Bald Head" Byrd, Roland Byrd, Professor Longhair and his Blues Scholars, and Professor Longhair and the Clippers. These name changes were often related to problems with recording contracts.

His career greatly slowed down in the 1960s, with "Big Chief" his biggest hit. He returned to card playing and even worked as a janitor in a record store until located by Allison Miner, Parker Dinkins and Quint Davis, who rehabilitated him and prepared him for a performance at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival. The 1971 New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival marked a comeback, and he began making a series of critically acclaimed albums throughout the 1970s. Dr. John (Mac Rebbenack) was an important booster. He also appeared in the documentary Piano Players Rarely Ever Play Together with Allen Toussaint, and Tuts Washington, three generations of New Orleans keyboard men.

He was the headliner at the Montreux Jazz Festival in 1973, and in 1975, Paul McCartney flew him to play a private party on the Queen Mary.

He died of a heart attack in 1980, and was subsequently inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The famed New Orleans night spot, Tipitina's, is named after one of his songs. Albert Goldman recorded Longhair at Tipitina's in 1978.

[edit] Quotations

"Professor Longhair put 'funk' into music; he's the father of the stuff." Dr. John
"He's the Satchel Paige of the piano." Albert Goldman
"He's the Bach of rock." Allen Toussaint
"He's a seminal force, a guru, an original creator of the New Orleans piano style ... the teacher of great players like Fats Domino, Allen Toussaint, Mac Rebbenack, James Booker, and Huey Smith. All acknowledge him as The Great Master." Jerry Wexler

Apart from joining Earl King on his 1965 recording of New Orleans Mardi Gras classic Big Chief, Professor Longhair dropped out of sight and by 1970 was presumed to have either disappeared or died. This was the year that three New Orleanians in their late teens, Allison Miner, Parker Dinkins and Quint Davis, set out to find Fess to put him in their first New Orleans music festival.

They didn't find him in time for the first festival in Congo Square but in 1971 Davis tracked him down to the One Stop record store on Rampart Street where the now 52 year old Byrd swept the floor, packed goods and made deliveries as well as his limp and labored breathing would allow. Through depressing disillusionment and abject poverty, he hadn't touched a keyboard in years. He said "I got a piano sitting up in the corner that I can't even work because I can't (afford to) get it fixed". So Davis, Dinkins and Miner got it fixed for him, fixed his health and got him ready for the second New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival.

Professor Longhair's return to the stage was literally a show stopper. As he played, the entire festival audience, the food vendors and even the musicians playing on other stages stopped what they were doing and came over to listen. The festival came to a complete standstill and Professor Longhair began what was to become the most fertile, recognized and rewarding years of his career.

(Grant Morris)