Drummer Stanton Moore had an early start in music, watching and eventually drumming in the Mardi Gras parades of New Orleans.
"My mom would bring me to Mardi Gras parades. There's pictures of me dressed up in a clown outfit at the age of eight months old," he said.
Moore is best known as a founding member of the modern funk group Galactic. He also plays heavy metal, and he knows the foundations of jazz born in his hometown.
In 2015, Stanton Moore's trio with David Torkanowski on piano and James Singleton on bass came to KNKX.
During that visit, Moore said his career in music was settled before he even had a drum set. He was filled with rhythm and he had to get it out.
"Just eventually started hitting on, you know, Tupperware and boxes and Rubbermaid stuff and pots and pans and you know whatever I could get my hands on, and my parents eventually figured it'd probably be cheaper to buy me a drum than let me keep destroying all their pots and pans," he said.
Moore loves the jazz tradition, but his versatility has led him to a lot of modern jazz and genre-fluid styles. Singleton says that musical curiosity is at the center of how jazz was created in New Orleans and how it's evolved.
"It's always been a place of a fervent reaching forth for the new thing, and that still continues all the time. It's it's really the huge overriding story of living in New Orleans is the tradition and the forward-looking people who are trying to change it," Singleton said.
Moore explained that the formation of his trio was meant to bring together his varied tastes, but in a focused piano-based drums format. They honed their craft at weekly gigs at Snug Harbor Jazz Bistro on Frenchman Street.
"When I wanted to put together a piano trio, I wanted to put something together that we could swing out. We could play jazz, but we could also play funk and dip into the street beat stuff, the New Orleans stuff," Moore said.
Moore also explained a practical reason for touring with his trio. Unlike the funk band Galactic, this is the type of group that settles into a city, playing a few nights at a club like Dimitrio's Jazz Alley.
"I like coming here, getting a few days where I can, you know, assimilate into the into the community," Moore said.
Moore's trio plays "Magnolia Triangle," a song from the early days of New Orleans funk, written by fellow drummer James Black. It's a foundational odd meter New Orleans standard with a five beat groove that feels like a modern extension of traditional second line drumming.
"James, you know, could play anything. He was a great funk musician, was a great jazz musician and an incredible composer, and back in the early-'60s, he wrote a batch of tunes that are still challenging to this day, still very modern and looking forward," Moore said.
Moore is similar; in the New Orleans tradition, but always looking forward.
Songs heard in this episode:
- "Carnival"
- "Driftin'"
- "Magnolia Triangle"
