NRR Project: 'Tipitina' (1953)

NRR Project: “Tipitina”

Composed and performed by Professor Longhair

Released 1953

2:15

The evolution of Henry Roeland Byrd into Professor Longhair (1918-1980) was a blessed and vital happenstance. He made his own unique music out of a disparate array of styles he absorbed as he grew up in New Orleans, Louisiana. Precocious, he worked the piano since childhood, unlocking its harmonic mysteries on his own. He picked up blues, rhumba, barrelhouse tunes and started crafting his own.

“Tipitina” is a wild, exuberant nonsense song. It’s a hybrid, part blues and part rhumba, somehow meshing in a frenzied crash of chords. Longhair’s raucous, rangy playing style is matched by his rasping, slurred vocals. Read Per Oldaeus’ essay at the National Recording Registry for more info on him!

He was so obscure, music producers had to hunt him down to record him. He was backed by various pickup groups, labeled with monickers such as the Shuffling Hungarians and the Blues Jumpers. He enjoyed mild notoriety in the R & B scene in the mid-1950s, but it was his great reappreciation in the 1970s that brought him the most fame, and a second performing career.

Professor Longhair wrote upbeat, life-affirming music that proved influential to new generations of music makers in New Orleans.

The National Recording Registry Project tracks one writer’s expedition through all the recordings in the National Recording Registry in chronological order. Next time: Fritz Reiner conducts Also Sprach Zarathustra.