Louisiana R&B legend    winds up Shreveport tour

 Lex Talamo, alexa.talamo@shreveporttimes.com9:57 p.m. CDT August 22, 2016

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 A Louisiana rhythm and blues legend just wrapped up a week-long tour of Shreveport to promote songs on his band’s newly released album.

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Lynn Ourso, a Baton Rouge native and the guitarist for The Louisiana Riverfront Band, spent a week playing multiple venues in Shreveport to promote the band’s newest CD “Roots Rockin Blues.”  The CD features old-time Louisiana favorites, such as “Sugar Coated Love,”  while also including original songs such as “Ice House Blues” and “Rock Me [All Night Long].”

The CD showcases a variety of musical genres—blending roots, soul, rhythm and blues and “swamp pop”— as well as including bass, electric piano, guitars, saxophone, harmonica, percussion and even a cowbell.

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Ourso wrote the lyrics for four of the LRB originals and tracks for more than 20 of the guitar arrangements, in addition to handling lead vocals on the songs “Got Love If You Want It” and “Mother In Law Blues.”

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Lynn Ourso and Buddy Flett perform with the Bluebirds at the Stan Lewis Fest in Shreveport (Photo: Courtesy of Traci Thrasher)

Ourso previously played with John Fred and the Playboys and is best known for his guitar work and arrangements in the classic blues song “Boogie Children,” which was originally released nationally on Stan The Record Man Lewis’ Jewel and Paula Records and later became a worldwide hit.

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The newest CD includes performances by the Louisiana River Front band’s other two members, rhythms and blues singer Luther Kent as a principal vocalist and the late Harold Cowart on bass and electronic piano. The CD also includes the last recordings John Fred ever produced, Ourso said.

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Bruce Flett, who helped promote the CD and Ourso’s tour of Shreveport, said Ourso had a resume “longer than a 100 yard LSU football field.” Flett said Ourso had talked to him about the CD for a “long time,” but the death of Harold Cowart acted as a catalyst to finally pull the CD together.

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“This is blues at it’s finest,” Flett said. “I’ve been fans of all three of them for a long time. It’s a thrill for me to put out some of my heroes’ record that came out after so many years.”

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Ourso’s performances in Shreveport included both public and private events at the TIKI Bar&Grill and for the Stan ‘The Record Man’ Lewis Music Festival at Artspace.

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In between gigs, Ourso sat down with The Times to reflect on his musical career and his Louisiana roots.

Lynn Ourso performing with the Bluebirds at Stan Lewis Fest 

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What are some of your favorite memories from your musical career?

I remember the first time I had a chance to jam with the Bluebirds. We’ve been friends ever since. Another one of my biggest thrills was playing in Greenville, Mississippi. I still get chills just thinking about it. It was that thrill of hearing your record playing on the radio for the first time. We’ve toured Europe and been on T.V. Shows-- the Johnny Carson Show in New York, the Dick Clark show. Our New Orleans and Louisiana gigs also were big.

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How did you first become interested in music?

I grew up listening to the Louisiana Hayride and the Grand Ole Opry. I fell in love with country. My cousin played guitar, and that’s how I learned about rhythm and blues. At fifteen, I got really into R&B. I knew I wanted to record. I was dying to make records. My dad bought my first guitar, an acoustic Gibson. My parents were supportive to a great degree, but there was also the ‘You’re going to get your real degree, and that’s how it is.’  So I went to LSU and got a degree in business and marketing, and on weekends we’d go to this basement we called “The Cave” and record.

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Tell us more about “Roots Rockin’ Blues.

It evolved over the years. The three of us were very close. We would go, lay down tracks. The originals were the keys for us to start the project. Once all the songs were laid down, the rhythms, we started laying down the “sweetening”... the guitar and keyboard tracks. The rhythm tracks came together simultaneously, but the sweetening took time. We’re in our “soft” record launch now. We’re watching the response to the record to see how it goes.

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Anything unique for you about this CD’s release?

This was my first real experience in the digital world.  The best way for us to get a major deal is to release it ourselves. Bruce is helping with promotion.  Every radio station he’s been in touch with, to the letter, everyone is giving us glowing reviews.  The album has been played in Michigan, New Jersey, around the country from local stations. The first day, there was an order from Oxford, England. The digital world is able to expose it to a broader audience. That’s been a real pleasing experience.

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How was the tour of Shreveport?

I’ve been down this road many times, but there’s always excitement. The show seemed well received. Some ladies said we brought so much joy. I’m thinking, ‘That’s my job,’ so I’m happy.

“Roots Rockin’ Blues” is available at CDbaby.com or on the band’s website atwww.lrbmusic.com.

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    As a supergroup of local musicians, the    Louisiana Riverfront Band finally releases a                             debut album

                   John Wirt

  225 Magazine - ENTERTAINMENT

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Baton Rouge, LA - September 1, 2016

The debut album from the Louisiana Riverfront Band almost never saw the light, even though the recording process started in the late 1990s.

 

Roots Rockin’ Blues unites Baton Rouge music all-stars Luther Kent, Lynn Ourso and Harold Cowart with guests that include John Fred Gourrier and Mark “Cadillac” Cook.

 

Ourso, Kent and Cowart all have deep connections to the John Fred and the Playboys band. Ourso worked as the Playboys’ guitarist and manager. Cowart played bass in Gourrier’s band prior to his studio work in Muscle Shoals and Miami with the likes of Aretha Franklin, Brook Benton, Wilson Pickett and The Bee Gees. He plucks the irresistible bass riff in Fred and the Playboys’ hit, “Judy in Disguise (With Glasses).” And Kent and the late Gourrier were dear friends for decades. Gourrier, in fact, gave Kent his first chance on stage at age 15.

 

In the late 1990s, Kent, Ourso and Cowart regrouped at Cowart’s Bluff Road Studio in Prairieville to record four blues-rock compositions Ourso created, which would become the foundation of Roots Rockin’ Blues. They periodically reconvened to cut more tracks, such as classics by Slim Harpo, Jimmy Reed, Frankie Lee Simms and others.

 

Because the group’s members were busy with their individual careers, they got together whenever schedules allowed.

By 2010, Roots Rockin’ Blues co-producers Ourso and Cowart had finally decided to mix the album. But then, tragedy happened when Cowart died that year, and the project understandably stalled.

 

“One third of the energy went away,” Ourso says, sitting at a table with Kent recently at Gino’s Restaurant.

 

As months and years went by, Kent didn’t forget about the Louisiana Riverfront Band.

 

“I kept prodding Lynn,” Kent says. “I thought some good cuts happened in Harold’s studio. I told Lynn, ‘Look, the record’s not doing any good sitting in the closet. You need to put it out! See if something rears its head up.’”

 

Ourso always intended to release Roots Rockin’ Blues. “But Luther had a great role in convincing me,” he says. “There’s more to it, in the sense that we never want to waste an effort. And Harold had a saying. Whenever we finished a production—and we did many productions—he’d say, ‘Now, for the rest of the story.’”

 

The rest of the story translates to releasing and marketing the album, which came out in July. Physical copies of Roots Rockin’ Blues are available through the band’s website,LRBmusic.com, and CDBaby.com.

 

Ourso is thrilled that their debut is available at last. Radio stations in Baton Rouge, New Orleans, Houston and more regional cities have been playing it.

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“The radio stations that are responding are playing every song on the album,” Ourso says. “In all my 50 years-plus in this business, I’ve never seen such positive response to an album. And the feeling of the record, the performances, the mixing, that really works for me. I’m elated.”