Spotlight: Willie Tee

Wilson "Willie Tee" Turbinton wears his New Orleans backstory like a plumed headdress on Fat Tuesday. The jazz pianist and soul veteran, best known for 1965 hit "Teasing You," pioneered the translation of Mardi Gras Indian chants to electric funk during the mid-Seventies as musical director of the Wild Magnolias.

"Having grown up in the Ninth Ward," Turbinton reasons, "it was natural for me to want to see my neighborhood culture gaining worldwide exposure."

Moving from work with saxophonist brother Earl to regular solo sessions with Harold Battiste at AFO, Turbinton ended the Sixties as a leader of psychedelic funk outfit the Gaturs and initiate of the Cannonball Adderley/David Axelrod camp at Capitol Records. Spreading the Calliope Projects' Old World traditions across the map, the Magnolias unveiled chiefs Bo Dollis and Monk Boudreaux in 1974 as the literal grandfathers of a gritty, glamorous street scene gone tribal.

Tee's "Smoke My Peace Pipe" and "Cory Died on the Battlefield" assume the perspective of soldiers preparing their entire lives for combat. Unfortunately, the Indians got more than they bargained for in 2005 when Hurricane Katrina crippled their rustic stomping grounds along the banks of the Mississippi River.

"We evacuated to Memphis and soon learned that we lost everything back home," laments Turbinton. "I was fortunate to be offered a chance to teach at Princeton, and nowadays I spend a great deal of time shuttling my family back and forth between Baton Rouge and New Orleans."

With Willie Tee at the helm, SXSW's Ponder-osa Stomp sounds more like an old-fashioned New Orleans street party.