Amber Rachelle & The Sweet Potatoes • Too Sweet

A New Orleans group without familiar players is always a nice find. I love how the city contains and continues to attract multitudes. Amber Rachelle & The Sweet Potatoes are as fresh as it gets. Forming around 2021, this debut album is from 2023, a year that also found them on stage at the NOLA Jazz Museum in a show you should seek out on YouTube. May 2024 has them active with two appearances each at the 21st Amendment, and the Maison, and shows at several other New Orleans venues. They recently played the French Quarter Fest and seem to be growing a following. With no biography available I did some digging and discovered a 2017 video of Amber Rachelle on the streets of Seatle with an earlier group playing 1920s jazz tunes including “Egyptian Ella” and other crowd pleasers. Interviewed, Amber tests two one liners: “Jazz, not for old people. Jazz, for everybody.” Amber also talks about wanting to go to New Orleans; looks like she made it. She is so young in that video I suddenly realized that many of the New Orleans musicians I still consider to be part of a traditional jazz youth movement are now in their 40s and 50s and have 20 solid years behind them. Katrina was 19 years ago, and even those who migrated to the city after were usually playing elsewhere already. Amber Rachelle headed to the birthplace of jazz in the 2020s, and she isn’t the only one. Among her local i