It is nearing 100 degrees as I write this, oppressively humid. I have Doreen’s Jazz New Orleans, vol. 33 “Walkin’ Through The Streets,” her latest release, wafting gently off my porch, and it all feels very much like Louisiana late in June. But three weeks ago it was barely breaking 40 degrees here in central New York when the TST team headed down the road to hear Doreen Ketchens. I had almost missed our last excursion from forgetfulness, but I was ready early for this one. It was the joy in seeing the Paragon Ragtime Orchestra the month before that had me so eager to be back in the cozy vintage seats of the restored Capitol Theatre and experiencing live music. There is nothing like being there, among people, and taking it all in.
Doreen has been a New Orleans fixture since the 1980s. I am not sure exactly when I first saw her playing on Royal Street. It may have been one of my trips in the late ’90s, before moving there in 2004. What I do remember is whoever I was walking with said, “That’s Doreen Ketchens, she’s big time, she plays festivals in Europe when she isn’t here.” As we entered the lobby a full hour ahead of the show, Doreen and her daughter, who is in the band, were manning the merch table. There was a huge crowd around them and everyone reaching her said something to the effect of. “I first saw you in New Orleans in 1996 and we look for you every time we go.” I wasn’t about to tell her the same story!
I don’t consider Central New York to be particularly enamored with jazz or New Orleans, but somewhere in the range of 50 people in that lobby had discovered Doreen while just walking down the street and become lifetime fans. Many of them a decade before Tuba Skinny, with a big boost from YouTube, began converting tourists into jazz lovers.
Doreen has always been good about self promotion and reaching out to her fans. She is on vol. 33 of her Doreen’s Jazz albums, and beyond those has been releasing videos of her band on VHS/DVD since before YouTube. She wants her fans to have an experience, a performer in the old sense, someone willing to close out a show with Saints, even in her own way. That is why she was greeting everyone ahead of the show, and listening to that same story about walking down the street for the millionth time in a nearly 40-year career.
We show up to shows with our own promotion of the paper in mind. Leaving a stack of them for people to find. We had brought some of the recent issue featuring my Final Chorus entry for Doreen’s late husband, Lawrence Ketchens, who passed at the end of January. My Mother, who owns a stack of Ketchens’ CDs, while I cannot claim to, is far more assertive than Andy and I. She is the one who approached Doreen, and her daughter, and showed her the obituary. They embraced and we ended up talking for a good ten minutes as people waited.
From the beginning, Lawrence had been just as big a part of the band as she was, many times you might have even caught them as a duo, so him not being there for a show, in a venue they have played several times over the decades, was still unusual. Fortunately for shy little me, we got through talking to her without anyone alerting her that I was the one who had written the obituary. The Final Chorus is, by design, rather impersonal and focused on the jazz life of a person. Everyone is multifaceted, but we don’t have room to describe what kind of family man someone was, and often, we don’t know. In this case we do know it was very much a family band, and became even more so as their daughter Dorian Ketchens-Dixon joined them on drums. Even if Doreen is frequently invited to perform with groups like civic orchestras on her own.
Some new CDs in hand, we found our seats to catch an opening act that had me curious. I truly had no idea what to expect, a six man funk troupe with electric guitars would not have surprised me.
The Rising Stars Fife and Drum band has been on my radar for decades, if not closely, and I wasn’t sure what they had become in the modern era. I was into folk, blues, and other American roots music as a teenager before finding my way to jazz, and somehow in the late ’90s I discovered Otha Turner. When I heard that his band was now led by his granddaughter, and saw that she was only around 35, I assumed that it had passed to a third generation. Nope. When Otha Turner died in 2003, Shardé Thomas, then 13 but already experienced on the stage, took over the band herself and began hosting the annual goat picnic that will celebrate its 75th Anniversary this August 29th and 30th in Coldwater, Mississippi.
Fife and Drum predates the blues, and was widespread across the South in the 1800s. Featuring a bamboo fife, and a drum or a few, it was portable, readily accessible accompaniment to the many gatherings people had in the pre-air conditioning Reconstruction South. It continued in small pockets into the modern era and became an interest of musicologists and blues researchers. It grew out of martial music with African rhythm and improvisational feeling added. To me, the fife suggests the brass lead that became so important to jazz from Buddy Bolden on, and differentiated it from formal bands of the time playing marches and mazurkas.
Otha Turner’s area of North Mississippi, just south of Memphis, held to the tradition better than anywhere else, and he is a major reason we can hear it today. The best book on the style, Following the Drums: African American Fife and Drum Music in Tennessee, is focused on that state but does cover Otha Turner and the preservation in North Mississippi.
Shardé Thomas has also done her part. In the years following her grandfather’s passing, she added an s to his Rising Star band to become the Rising Stars, and while they have been open to experimenting with adding the traditional fife and drum to other sounds at blues festivals, they always keep the old ways alive. They have traveled the world, turning people on to a form of American music few have ever heard of. The full band remains two snare drums, one bass drum, and her fife, as her grandfather’s had been, but on this night, and many recently, it was a duo, which is all you need for fife and drum.
Shardé Thomas Mallory was accompanied by her husband and long-time bass drummer Chris Mallory. Like her, he is from Tate County, Mississippi, and she tells the story of recruiting him during the show. You could say she does all the talking during the show, while Chris, a big grinning bear of a man stands behind his drum with a warm supporting presence.
I could find no evidence that the Rising Stars have performed with Doreen’s Jazz before or after this night, but the parallel of the husband & wife working relationship was striking, and for an hour before Doreen went on stage, had me thinking about her experience traveling and performing with her late husband. I think she must have also felt that from her seat near the front.
Like Doreen, Shardé is the star of the band. An entertainer since childhood she can carry the crowd in the palm of her hand. To modern ears fife and drum is a rough and primitive music, but the context of her stories, humor, stage presence, and likable personality draws you in close enough to appreciate what generations of people in the rural South enjoyed at picnics and other gatherings. A crowd that didn’t know what to expect was thrilled as they played entertaining tunes like “Shimmy She Wobble.” Most of the Fife and Drum standards they played, acquired from her grandfather, are also frequently played by traditional jazz bands, but the style is very different. While I can posit influences on the development of jazz, it isn’t jazz, or the blues it is more often associated with, fife and drum has a distinct set of musical principles.
The Rising Stars were far more enjoyable than I had expected, even as someone primed to like traditional fife and drum. As an hour or so of entertainment, there were stories within stories; the story of the music, the story of the Turner family, the story of the Mallorys and their love and support for each other as the travel the world and pass on the legacy of the county they grew up in. You couldn’t help but be happy for them and with them. Shardé is a natural entertainer, and so in his way is Chris, who knows what he is doing standing there, holding the beat and being radiantly likeable. If you have the chance to catch the Rising Stars, even if you don’t think you can handle fife and drum, make the trip.
Let me pause to tell you about the rest of the crowd. The night was a benefit for cancer survivors sponsored by the YMCA, and many were there because of their association with that program, including an unusual number of young children. The kids loved Shardé, who has a cool aunt vibe. They also loved Doreen, who at this point could be seen as grandmotherly, but the fun kind. Kids standing at their seats screaming along with a call and response jazz, or a fife and drum refrain, is worth the price of admission, and it made for a full room even without much promotion. If your group is hosting a jazz show, figure out how to get kids in the room for a special night.
After a short break, Doreen and her band took the stage. She was joined by her daughter Dorian on drums, David Hammer on guitar, and Christian Mitchem on bass. Her husband had played sousaphone, trombone, drums, and other instruments, and I do wish there had been something brass in the band, even though Doreen’s Jazz, as a band, is a vehicle to highlight Doreen’s unique talent on the clarinet.
Doreen Ketchens is really and truly one of the greats on the instrument. One of the people we knew at the show, someone into a more straight ahead sound, described her playing as “volcanic.” She was classically trained on clarinet before coming to jazz and it has given her unique range but she has also brought her soul into it and the soul of New Orleans.
In the past she has been referred to as Miss Satch or Lady Louie, and she does take a lot of vocal cues from Mr. Armstrong, but in a good way. She can get away with it more than a man can, and she has the right energy for pulling it off. Alas, I do not have a set list, as I had expected to write about this show the next day, and my memory has been made worse by listening to her recent album. But I did jot down a couple tunes that will give you an idea. She sang “When You’re Smiling” to the delight of the kids and parents, and performed “House of the Rising Sun,” calling it her most requested tune. It is also a good showcase for her clarinet. As I mentioned previously, they went out on a modified version of “Saints.”
If you want to build up a global fan base of normal people who like jazz but don’t necessarily live for jazz, play the hits, and play them where everyday people can hear you. After 30 something years and thirty-three albums she does have a deep book, and you will hear those too. The new album features “Clarinet Marmalade,” “Limehouse Blues,” “Royal Garden Blues,” “Back Home Again in Indiana,” and even an original from Lawrence.
About the band; her daughter is an excellent drummer and has presence of her own. She has played for the band since she was four, appearing on more than 15 of their albums.
David Hammer, the long haired young white boy playing guitar, seemed out of place at first, but he’s pretty darn good, so she can keep him. He led on a tune called “Palm Court Strut,” which means he’s around the right people. He is also on the most recent albums, and in a six year old YouTube video of the band on Royal St., so he seems well established with the group. The bassist, Christian Mitchem, I could not find very much about, but he provided solid support for Doreen.
It really does all come back to her. Her presence, her singing, her incredible clarinet. She has become about as successful as a New Orleans jazz performer can be in 2025, but had her career started in the ’30s or ’40s instead of the ’80s, she would have been a star.
I spent most of the show wondering if she would mention her husband’s passing, which would be unknown to most in the audience, even longtime fans. At one point early on I thought she was going to say something, but then she diverted into talking about her prior trips to this venue. Later in the show she finally talked about Lawrence as an intro to “Caravan,” which she said was a favorite of his. I believe she was crying as the solo passed around to the other musicians, but then she took yet another volcanic turn on her clarinet. You keep going, it’s what you do.
Joe Bebco is the Associate Editor of The Syncopated Times and Webmaster of SyncopatedTimes.com
