photos by Jacob Blickenstaff

Dr. Ike

"Before Kansas City was recorded by everyone from the Beatles to Peggy Lee, the song was first released in 1952 as K.C. Loving by an obscure Houston pianist named Little Willie Littlefield.

The single became a regional hit in the Los Angeles area, where Littlefield was recording for Federal Records, but it would be up to Wilbert Harrison, Trini Lopez, James Brown and Hank Ballard to turn Kansas City into a top 25 hit on the national pop and R&B charts. Littlefield remained a fascinating, mysterious footnote to pop-music history.

The annual Ponderosa Stomp festival in New Orleans exists to bring such footnotes to life. This showcase for the semi-legends of rockabilly, blues and R&B was founded eight years ago by Ira Padnos, a local anesthesiologist and record collector who goes by the moniker of Dr. Ike and favors thrift-shop fezzes and Indian headdresses atop his unruly bush of dark curls. His extravaganza has grown from a local bar to this year's two-night stand at the French Quarter's House of Blues, with 37 sets spread out over two stages.

And so, on Tuesday, the first day of the eighth-annual Ponderosa Stomp, there was the 77-year-old Littlefield, dressed in a dark-blue brocade blazer and grinning with delight beneath his comb-over." [Jazz News]

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