New Orleans Will Rise Again

Night Train's program of New Orleans reissues has always had a character distinct from other labels mining the treasures of New Orleans music with its orientation towards the deepest recesses of soul, funk, and rhythm and blues, and any local idiom through which the rhythms of the second line music pulse. With this anthology New Orleans Will Rise Again, a relief effort set for release in the wake of hurricane Katrina, Night Train brings this aesthetic into high relief. Subtitled "songs of faith, hope, and New Orleans-ness" New Orleans Will Rise Again covers broad territory, with the anticipated expressions of faith and hope interspersed with the most idiosyncratic expressions of New Orleans: celebration, invocation to party and humidity-drenched primitivism. Songs like Luther Kent's "We're Gonna Make It" and George Perkins' "(Crying For A) Helping Hand", apropos to the yearnings and hopes of the current state of New Orleans' mind, are compiled alongside songs like "Mardi Gras Party" and "My Mother In Law (Is In My Hair Again)", giving vent to the always existing impulses to party and not worry about it. All proceeds will be donated to the esteemed charity the New Orleans Musicians' Clinic (NOMC).