Coming in a moment on art rocks, Louisiana singer songwriter and Hall of Famer Doug Duffy gets the blues.

Off and on.

I've been doing I've been doing recording albums all this time, and I've always been a songwriter.

A very human world captured in black and white.

There's no window dressing.

There's no color.

It's just just the image and it's the person and it's the eyes that come through these stories.

Up next on Art.

Rocks.

West Baton Rouge Museum is proud to provide local support for this program on LP, offering diverse exhibitions throughout the year and programs that showcase art, history, music and more.

West Baton Rouge Museum Culture Cultivated Art rocks is made possible by the Foundation for Excellence in Louisiana Public Broadcasting and by viewers like you.

Hello.

Welcome to Art Rocks with me, James Fox Smith from Country Roads magazine, Monroe, Louisiana.

Musician, composer, record producer and poet Doug Duffy has been singing and playing the blues for half a century.

That's long enough to have gotten him inducted into both the Louisiana and the National Blues Halls of Fame.

Now in his seventies, Duffy is still playing and recording and writing poetry and making visual art to his dug to share the story of a lifetime in music.

This is a song that I had actually written before I went to Hollywood, and it's called The Delta Malady.

I'm thinking today of finding my way back to the Delta with some ears creeping and children are sleeping neath magnolia trees in the soft southern breeze.

I think of the times we sat and drank while I'm down by the river loving each other.

With night as I cover what Ma says, I bet as you thickly spread all your warm love.

Sang in church when everybody was singing, that was the kind of thing that's how I learned to sing, basically.

It wasn't like I sang in church, in a choir, anything.

I started studying classical piano when I was around 11 or 12, and I was really into classical music, which is unusual for where I come from.

And then suddenly the British Invasion hit and I decided, Well, I don't want to be Van Cliburn or somebody.

I don't know.

I'm just picking a name.

But anyway, I decided, No, that's not what I want to do.

I think I want to sing rock and roll instead.

My parents listened to blues records all the time.

They had Howlin Wolf, Jimmy Reed, Slim Harpo and Chuck Berry, but just a lot of blues.

When did I start singing solo or whatever?

Probably around the age of 14.

I started my first little band.

The teenage band was called The Secrets, and we were basically doing cover music of whatever the British rock bands were doing, but we were also covering everything in the Top 40, and I was playing at recreation centers around Monroe and occasionally private parties and for high schools, things like that.

Oh, I thought I was rich.

I think I was making like 40 or $50 a week.

So that was for me in 1960.

And being a teenager, that was great because I couldn't take all my money and go buy records and clothes.

With the White.

In that band dissolved.

As I age, I finally had a band that was mostly some of the best musicians in this area, and we were doing original music, but also some cover tunes.

We actually went to Colorado and we were in Colorado for about two or three years and then we came back and I had an offer to go to Little Rock to be the singer of a band called Merchant Traffic, who had had a national hit of bit by bit.

And I went to replace the singer and they had a recording contract to do another album or to do another single.

I'm not sure which that band ended up breaking up and I ended up having done the vocals on the next track that was supposed to be released.

And it was released, but it was under a different name and it was single.

It was called Marilyn Thompson, and it hit the Cashbox record world.

I was 20.

I had to have my parents sign for me to sign the record contract.

There's always been kind of a springboard between Louisiana and Colorado and Louisiana and Little Rock.

I was playing in a club in Little Rock and the managers from Parliament-Funkadelic came in and they heard me playing and they said, Well, if you ever come to Hollywood, give us a call.

And I went out to L.A. and I started recording and writing mainly for other people for Rare Earth with George Clinton did backing vocals with Nicky Hopkins, who's a very famous piano player and played with the Beatles and the Stones and the Kinks and the Who and everybody.

So I was kind of, you know, just breaking in out there and trying to get a record deal.

The management company was backstage management and they manage George Clinton, Bootsy Collins, Fred Wesley, Maceo Parker and Martha Reeves.

A huge amount of people.

And they had a huge roster.

I was the baby on the roster, the last kid on the totem pole.

It was a great experience.

I learned a lot and I wrote a lot for a lot of different people and wrote a lot of songs for myself.

I was there for about four years.

This next song is called Louisiana, and it was written in Hollywood in the early seventies when I was feeling a bit homesick and ready to come home.

And this is one of dance.

Sumner's favorite songs.

So we're going to do it for you.

Risk it.

Never be this guy.

Or even though near.

Transfer this to who.

Survive Treat me pretty man.

Why in the few Spanish was a group of other other people.

He never.

See and you know I speak of.

Us.

I had moved back to Louisiana during that time when I was writing for these other people.

I was writing with George Clinton.

Another synchronicity thing.

When I was 16, my girlfriend and I skipped school and jumped off the bus at Heads Palladium because we saw all these strange looking people and all these costumes in broad daylight going into this club.

And we were going out, you know, we weren't we were too young to go in the club, of course, but we got out and we got and it was sure enough it was Funkadelic, all right, on like a bed sheet and crazy clothes and all that stuff.

That was also very synchronistic that I ended up meeting them when I'm 16.

And then later in life in my twenties, I ended up meeting them again in Hollywood and we're managed by the same people and I ended up working on Bernie Farrell album as well in 19.

90 or 91 in New York.

I was in different bands in New Orleans, and I really wasn't making any money with bands in New Orleans.

We weren't traveling, we weren't going out on the road.

Luckily fell into a situation where I had a house gig on Bourbon Street playing piano and singing in this bar and they just let me do anything I wanted to do.

One of the songs I do a lot and have done for many years is an old New Orleans song that was written by and at Theo and Lisa moore called Let the Good Times Roll.

And everybody's heard that song, of course.

But, you know, I'll do my own version of it as well as can be expected.

But here we go.

I said, Hey, everybody, let's have some fun.

You know, you only live once, and when you're dead, let the good times roll you let the good times roll No matter if you, young or old, all get together, baby, let the good times roll.

Don't just sit there talking trash.

You want to have some fun, You got to spend some cash and let the good times roll.

Yeah, let the good times roll.

For no matter if you young or old get together, baby, let the good times roll.

Hey, mister.

Bartender, lock all of those witnesses.

Please come tell them this door is closed.

That the good time roll?

Yeah.

Let the good times roll.

No matter if you, young or old, get together, people, let the good times roll.

Everybody say let the good times roll.

Yeah, let the good times roll.

Let the good times roll.

Yeah, let the good times roll.

No matter if you gonna hold it together let the good times roll.

Well, all right.

Hey, everybody, I'm back in town.

I got so I did that for a couple of years, and that was it was great because I didn't have to travel.

I knew I was working five days a week, six days a week, whatever.

I had a schedule, I had a life.

I could pretty much live like normal people.

And then I got a call from an agent in Paris wanting me to go to Switzerland and and play for two months or three months.

So I said, okay.

So I went and pretty much stayed.

When I was first over there, I was working all over the place.

I worked in Berlin, Germany.

I worked everywhere in Europe except France.

France doesn't pay everywhere else, like Holland and Belgium.

And I was flown over just work on an album by Sony to work with a singer named B.J.

Scott.

Was originally from Alabama, but she had been wandering down Bourbon Street and heard me play and she said, Wow, I got to have you come and play on my album.

I said, Okay.

I double down here.

I love.

And then I eventually was in Switzerland again, which is where I started out and met my agent and have been working with her for the past 30 years.

People in Europe, they're very educated on the blues and on American music.

They literally study it.

They can tell you piano players names that I've never heard of were like back in the boogie woogie days and stuff like that.

And they're especially crazy for boogie woogie type stuff and that kind of older American music off and on.

I've been recording albums all this time and I've always been a songwriter.

I've never stopped writing songs.

My agent, Jacqueline Troxell, was here from Switzerland, and some friends of mine, Jeremy Davis and the fabulous Equinox Orchestra, were doing a concert, and they invited me to come sing some songs because they had recorded one of my songs, New Orleans Rain.

New Orleans Rain keeps pouring down matching matches as it falls to the ground.

And I'm all alone.

In the heart of the town longing for someone and who don't come around New Orleans Rain falls like matches, You know the tears I've been crying.

Little did I know that Mr. Daniel Sumner was playing guitar on that night with the fabulous Equinox Orchestra.

So later I got a call from him or a message I can't remember which it was, and he says, I want to go on the road with you.

I said, Well, hook it up.

I guess that would be history.

Because that was the exact phrase used.

And so we got together and started working together and did the Louisiana Soul Revival album.

And that's what we started out as the Louisiana Soul revival, because that's pretty much what we both had in mind to do.

The Louisiana Soul revival bands, a big band with horns, a big horn section, and sometimes with an organ player and Doug on piano and playing all of Doug's original compositions.

Irae and the horn parts and everything.

And then we decided to make a record.

There was this song from the similar and every.

Single person who made contact with Doug, and then to start to work together and to work together for the last seven years with him, it has been incredibly rewarding and artistically and friendship wise.

You know, Doug and I are close friends.

We work together.

We've we've might argue like brothers and but we create a lot of music together and we push each other in lots of ways musically.

And it's I find Doug's playing and writing to be incredibly inspirational.

And we've got another funk album because The Bad Started Out Bad is an acronym for Ben Adam, Dan and Doug.

And our first album was a total funk album of a total jam session that we ended up going in and editing and the B-roll and Arrow and all that stuff.

I have my picture of my induction into the Blues Hall of Fame, and the ambassador of Monroe and the mayor of the city gave us.

We have Louisiana Soul Revival featuring Doug Duffy Day every February 22nd.

That was the day we released our first album, Me.

My, He Don't.

You need to let your Cancer be your glory.

And Louisiana.

Inspiring art is everywhere.

The trick is knowing where to find it.

So here are some standout exhibits coming up in our part of.

The world in.

The.

For more on these exhibits and scores more cultural attractions, consult Country Roads magazine available in hardcopy or online.

Or to see or to share any episode of art rocks again visit LTV dot org slash art rocks.

There's also an archive of all the Louisiana segments of the show available on LP B's YouTube page.

Photographer Sal Patz Alano has been described as a master street portrait artist.

And when you see the images that Pat Alano, who left a career in corporate America and took to the streets with camera in hand, you'll understand why.

Let's go to Florida, where Pat's Delano spent six months each year to see how he captures astonishingly revealing black and white portraits of the people he meets on the streets.

These images have the ability to leave a lasting impact.

So watch.

My name is Sal Pat Alano.

I retired two years ago from corporate America and I started photographing people on the street and I fallen in love with it.

My recent work has been about Heber City.

Today I thought we might take a ride down to even more.

It's part of Tampa.

I just think it's a great little area and I love to walk around, you know, seventh Avenue.

I'll try to approach a couple of people and see if they allow me to take their photograph.

But it sounds like a documentary.

My mother bought me my first camera at the old W.T.

Grant in Somerville, Massachusetts, and it cost $0.99.

So I think it's always been in my blood to do that.

Believe it or not, I know it's going to be hard to believe, but growing up, I was always shy.

I've never had my picture taken in my high school yearbook or my college, never wanted my picture taken.

But I think I can approach people.

You know, I don't mind that rejection.

I'm very fortunate.

I think that if I ask in, I approach, you know, 20 people, I might get maybe one rejection.

One thing that that kind of I think breaks the ice is I tell them that, you know, I'm retired.

My doctor tells me that I have to walk.

So what I do is I use my camera.

I walk up and down the street and I take photographs of people that I meet on the street and everybody says, that's good, you know?

And then what I try to tell them is try to tell me something about yourself just by using your eyes.

And a lot of times I think that comes through.

Probably sometimes they trust a stranger more than they do, you know, a family member of a friend.

There is a a photographer by the name of Ted Grant, and he was a photojournalist.

And he said that when you photograph people in color, you photograph their clothes.

He said, But when you photograph people in black and white, he said, You photograph their soul.

And I think it's very true.

You know, there's no window dressing, there's no color.

It's just just the image and it's the person and it's the eyes that come through.

The experience of just so I'm pulling you over and saying, Hey, real quick picture, that's it.

And like, here's my information.

Like, it's cool because you don't experience that everyday.

It's just like, why not?

And I mean, it also gives him an opportunity to spread more of his work out.

What I do is I give him my card and I tell him, you know, if you send me an email and, you know, just describe a little bit who you are, because I photograph a lot of people, you know, I will send them images via email, always free of charge and never I never charge a penny.

I have a couple of exhibitions coming up.

So that's that's what I like to do with them.

I like to exhibit them.

You know, the money goes either to a food pantry or a homeless shelter.

So I don't, you know, make any money.

Alex Out of my family.

I walk now.

I see.

And they were already second businesses in the picture.

Now, I really don't have no problem with taking pictures.

I'm an artist myself.

I see beautiful faces on the street.

You know, I see people that are well-to-do and then I see people that are not as well-to-do.

But I think if you look a little deeper, they're all the same.

I saw this gentleman with a hat sitting a little window in Ybor, and I first approached him one day and he didn't want to be bothered and I could understand.

So I went back the next day and he was sitting there and I said, Do you remember me?

And he said, Yeah.

And I said, You know, can I take your picture?

He said, Yeah.

And I said, What's your name?

And he said, William.

So it's little stories like that that really touch me.

Another one, there's a woman that was sitting on a bench and I started talking to her and I found out that she spent her entire career in the Navy.

And, you know, this is where she ended up.

How how does somebody end up like that?

And, you know, that's another kind of like little story that really touched me.

I'll tell you just one third one.

It's one of my favorite right at the end of Ebola.

There's a little pizza shop.

And there was a lady there and I found out that she was actually hard of hearing and she couldn't speak.

And I motion to her and she allowed me to take her around her photograph, you know, So so those are the type of stories that I think really mean a lot to me.

I can't some socks I had heard some time ago at a homeless shelter that one of the things that they ask for most is a clean socks.

So, you know, I try to to accommodate that.

I just gravitate to people that might have been walked over or people that, you know, that nobody may want to see.

And sometimes I may go overboard.

But it's important for them to be seen.

You know, I photographed people in Florida, you know, all the way up the East Coast, New Hampshire, New York City.

The thing is, is that, you know, again, you see a million different faces.

You see a million different people.

But you know what?

When it's all said and done, we're all the same.

And that'll be that for this edition of Art Rocks.

But that's okay because you can see and share episodes of the show at LP Dawgs Rocks any time.

And if these sorts of stories crank your creative tractor, remember that Country Roads magazine is a great resource for making the most of Louisiana's boundless cultural treasures each and every month.

So until next week, I've been James Cox Smith.

And thanks to you for watching.

West Baton Rouge Museum is proud to provide local support for this program on LPI, offering diverse exhibitions throughout the year and programs that showcase art, history, music and more.

West Baton Rouge Museum Culture cultivated Art Rocks is made possible by the Foundation for Excellence in Louisiana Public Broadcasting and by viewers like you.