Fresh Loaf

David Booker-Earley is a 13-year-old jazz percussionist at Jean Childs Young Middle School. The school’s band won this year’s Youth Jazz Competition at the Atlanta Jazz Festival.

Why did you start playing percussion instruments?

It started a long time ago when my older brother came home one day, twirling his sticks, playing a lot of stuff I didn’t know what was. So it just looked pretty cool to me and I thought I’d try it out.

Do you bang on the table when you’re eating dinner?

Oh, yes. Anything I can use to beat on is my instrument. I even played on the concrete with my hands one time. It hurt, but I made a cool song there.

How does your family feel about you banging on things all the time?

My brothers, they bang along with me. My sister, she sings with us. All of us are really percussionists inside. But sometimes they might tell me to stop because they’re trying to watch TV.

Are there any obsessed girl fans at school?

Kind of, sometimes.

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This is actually a great idea. I just hope a bunch of buskers don’t get involved and start overrunning the experience a la the New York subway system — pirated DVDs, preachy sermons, mariachi bands and all. But that was half the charm. Oh, Big Apple, how I miss thee.

In celebration of Georgia Open Arts Month, MARTA will be hosting live jazz music on Wed., Oct. 24 at several stations around town to mellow the scene, hep cat. The press release doesn’t state whether it’s on the train platform or in a public area before you enter the turnstiles. Regardless, if you’re a fan, it’ll be a cheap ticket. Here’s a rundown of who’s playing where.

11 a.m.-2 p.m.
Five Points – Honey Bone

5:30-6:30 p.m.
Dunwoody – Ryan Strickland Trio
Peachtree Center – William Green Arts Center – ETQ
College Park – Roberto Goncalves
Decatur – Just Ahead
Hamilton E. Holmes – Ron James

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In some ways, Oliver Morgan was like many of the other evacuees from Hurricane Katrina. Floodwaters from the levee breach in the Industrial Canal engulfed his Lower Ninth Ward home, and so he and his wife, Sylvia, went to stay in Atlanta where two of his five children lived. To Atlantans, he may have been just another evacuee who decided to make the city his new home. They even bought a house.

To New Orleans, he was better-known for his lone but huge 1964 R&B hit, “Who Shot the La La,” a curious take on the then-recent death of another New Orleans R&B star, Lawrence “Prince La La” Nelson. (Nelson actually died of a drug overdose, not a gunshot wound, but the song turns the death into a mystery.) Morgan himself passed away July 31 at the age of 74.

Morgan never matched the success of “Who Shot the La La,” a jaunty, syncopated tune filled with loads of local references but with a melody so catchy it became a favorite during Mardi Gras. He also became a fixture at Jazz Fest, often parading around in the New Orleans “second line” style, waving an umbrella and leading the crowd in a line.

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