...I had been familiar with Fess' carnival songs that always got beaucoup airplay as soon as Shrovetide would be about a month away. "Big Chief" and "Go to the Mardi Gras." I remember the first time I heard "Tipitina." Quint Davis played it for me. Quint's parents lived out on Bamboo Road and Quint was a wild child and he stayed in this glass and stone cube surrounded by a moat and he used to play his phonograph so loud, you'd just jump out of your skin, you'd want to die it was so loud. And we had a ball listening to everything under the sun in this remote magical cube. This back in the sixties, late sixties. And Quint's phonograph was old and bold and it had a 78 speed and he somehow got hold of a 78 of "Tipitina" by Fess on Atlantic, that old black and yellow label from the early fifties and when Quint played this thing by Fess at this nuclear reactor kind of volume, I thought I'd gone to musical heaven - nothing could feel better than this drunken precision mambo shuffle.

I made him play it in 75 times in a row. We played it till we couldn't stand it anymore. We were screaming and yelling and laughing. And when I couldn't stand it anymore, he'd play it again. And when be couldn't stand it anymore, I'd play it again.

Now the first time I heard Fess play live, it was the second NOJH in Congo Square. 1970? Along one side are tents, little tents lined up, gospel music, maybe some folk, right next to each other. And in the square is Snooks Eaglin on one stage playing his "Funky Marlequena." Less than twenty yards away, the Wild Magnolias, all decked out in their finery, feathers, and beads, singing one of their Indian chants, shaking their tambourines, spilling over the little stage like crazy beautiful birds. Right next door is another stage with something going on - Willie Tea? Roosevelt Sykes? James Rivers? It escapes me now but this little stage is adding a little more meat and fire to this congo cauldron. And then, like in the middle of it all, here's Fess with what - a tiny group, Uganda on congas, maybe Will on bass and Sheba on drums, and everybody in this square for all practical purposes is playing with everybody else because all the music is in the same ear space. But cutting through it all is this masterful, militant piano rhythm - Fess. His hands playing that piano like he's taking it apart and putting it back together at the same time. So strong and precise but so graceful, rippling and hammering. If somebody could dance like Fess' hands could play, they'd be an angel because they would not be bound by any known gravitational laws.

So, in the heart of this joyous cacophony, the master spoke with his daemonic hands. It's one of those things, you know - it's alright to die because I got to hear that and dance to it, there in Congo Square, I got to hear him play. There was so much power in him and it was all love and he never lost sight of his task of trying to make you feel good.