Some of the first public performances by alto saxophonist and composer Randal Despommier were at Mardi Gras parades in New Orleans alongside his father, a drummer who studied with Crescent City guru James Black and served a stint in the Big Easy rock band South. Although Randy grew up in Metairie, just outside New Orleans, and was steeped in the regional sounds of funk, R&B and jazz (not to mention digging punk and grunge), he would stretch his musical wings far beyond in subsequent years. He studied early sacred music in Italy, earned a doctorate at New England Conservatory, played the organ and led choirs in churches, and eventually settled into the bustling, ever-challenging jazz scene of New York City. Despommier’s 2021 album Dio C’è, his debut as a leader, earned praise from such outlets as All Music Guide for being a “wildly ambitious, genre-mashing” record that reflected his wide-ranging influences. After teaming with venturesome guitarist Ben Monder to explore the folk-inflected lyricism of Swedish composer Lars Gullin for 2022’s A Midsummer Odyssey — which Offbeat magazine touted as “fascinating” and “exquisite” — Despommier has returned to his New Orleans roots with the soulful album South, to be released digitally and on CD by Sunnyside Records on March 7, 2025, with a vinyl edition to follow.
For the bulk of the sessions for South, held at Marigny Studios in New Orleans, Despommier drafted in “heavy hitters” that aficionados of the town’s music culture know and love as the real deal: keyboardist David Torkanowsky, bassist James Singleton and always-in-the-pocket drummer Johnny Vidacovich; as a foursome, they recorded a jubilant take on Professor Longhair’s iconic “Goin’ to the Mardi Gras” and an enchanting version of super-producer Allen Toussaint’s FM-smash “Southern Nights,” as well as the Despommier-penned “Jelly Roll’s Living Room,” an homage to jazz godfather Jelly Roll Morton that showcases some blues-rich piano by Torkanowsky. A very special guest at the drum kit in New Orleans was the saxophonist’s father Phil, who came out of retirement to supply the ideal gospel rhythm for “Just a Closer Walk with Thee,” a New Orleans jazz-funeral standard. Despommier co-produced South alongside longtime collaborator Jason Yeager, who also played piano during additional sessions at The Bunker Studio in Brooklyn; they were joined there by their regular quartet compatriots on the New York scene, bassist Aaron Holthus and drummer Rodrigo Recabarren, for such numbers as clarinet/soprano-sax kingpin Sidney Bechet’s “Si Tu Vois Ma Mère” (If You See My Mother) and Despommier’s deeply felt fantasia on “Goodbye Pork Pie Hat,” Charles Mingus’s tribute to sax great Lester Young (who grew up across the Mississippi River from New Orleans, in Algiers).
“The music of New Orleans has a distinct sound and sensibility, like an accent,” Despommier explains. “You can hear it in the way Jelly Roll Morton bends those blue notes when he sang ‘I Thought I Heard Buddy Bolden Say.’ That sound intoxicated me as a kid — and it still does, no matter the different musical paths I’ve taken over the years, with classical music and ethnomusicology. I grew up hearing the funky ‘street beats’ in New Orleans, and they’re still very much the rhythm of the city. It’s easy to love because it’s a festive, celebratory sound, a music that pulls people in and brings them together. On Mardi Gras day, everyone’s moving and grooving — it’s not the Macy’s Day Parade, after all!”
About working with Vidacovich, Singleton and Torkanowsky, Despommier adds: “I’m truly honored that these representatives of New Orleans culture were so open and generous in the way they infused my album with their rare brand of spice, not only breathing energy into the arrangements but helping to pull out my own New Orleans accent. The music of New Orleans comes out of an oral tradition, one where feel is the essential thing, and these guys have that authentic feel deep in their bones. It was infectious playing with them. And just hearing their banter in the studio — that was music in itself.”
Another track recorded by the New Orleans crew for South was Edgar Winter’s ’70s Southern-rock gospel ballad “Dying to Live” — a favorite number for the band South when Despommier’s father was in the group. (Winter was regional kin for them, hailing from Beaumont, Texas, just over the border from Louisiana.) As for Phil Despommier’s presence behind the kit for “Just a Closer Walk with Thee,” it made for a double reunion: with him and the New Orleans cats he knew from years gone by, but also with Randal, who hadn’t played music with his dad for decades. “South is a homecoming album for me, musically and personally,” the saxophonist says. “Johnny and the guys had to help me coax my dad into playing drums again, and it took a couple of minutes for him to shake the rust off — but then he laid down the gospel groove for ‘Just a Closer Walk with Thee’ like second nature, in one take and complete with the snare pop of the street beat. That will always be one of my all-time favorite moments in a recording studio.”
Back in Brooklyn, Despommier and his fellow New Yorkers taped not only the Bechet and Mingus tunes but also two more of the leader’s compositions: the languid, Billy Strayhorn-inspired post-Covid ballad “Blues Rheumatica” and the lovely “ ’Round 3AM (A Blues Nocturne).” Beyond the latter’s sly wee-hours Monk allusion in the title, Despommier says: “It’s my blending of the blues and the nocturne. The blues evolved in the Deep South after the Civil War, from the voices and guitars of formerly enslaved people. The nocturne was a mid-19th-century genre of pensive piano music, popularized by Irish composer John Field, the first to use the term, and Frédéric Chopin, a Parisian from Poland. Although a blend of two disparate traditions, both are driven by a solo performer, have a lyrical, improvisational quality, and are imbued with the pathos of a minor key. The key of my piece is F minor — a nod to the first Chopin piece I learned on the piano, the Nocturne in F minor, Op. 55, No. 1.”
Along with his evocative, melody-minded attributes as composer, Despommier has a pure-toned allure as a saxophonist, one that’s evident whether he’s tracing serpentine lines through “Si Tu Vois Ma Mère” or singing mournfully in his extended coda to “Goodbye Pork Pie Hat.” But he can also wail, as he does in the galvanizing opener “Goin’ to the Mardi Gras.” He is very much the sinuous, animating voice of South. Characteristically, though, he’s quick to keep highlighting others, pointing to the contributions of his musical “kindred spirit” and studio enabler Yeager (who also partnered with Despommier for the 2018 duo album All at Onceness, along with being integral to Dio C’è and A Midsummer Odyssey). The saxophonist also credits the French Quarter photography and graphic design of Evie Wang for creating an album package that “really reflects the vibe of the music inside.”
Reflecting on the appeal of Crescent City sounds for music lovers the world over, Despommier concludes: “Whether it’s funk or gospel or traditional jazz or vintage R&B, New Orleans musical culture is the unique result of many types of music — Afro-Caribbean and European, the deep blues and Chopin-esque parlour music — coming together gumbo- or jambalaya-style over a couple of centuries or more. There’s a lot of things to like about New Orleans music, but it really does represent a very American cultural ideal of the melting pot, something that’s as precious now as it has ever been.”
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