Consumer Guide Album

The Wild Magnolias: The Wild Magnolias [Polygram, 1993]
Like The Wild Tchoupitoulas, where Allen Toussaint hung vocals on the Meters, The Wild Magnolias is a producer's record. What's made it legendary isn't its documentation of Mardi Gras Indians but the myth Willie Tee hangs on his guitaristic funk. It jams on and on, a pseudofolkloric Get on the Good Foot, yet it's as taut as the Magnolias' later faux field recording with Ron Levy is slack. This digital version adds five tracks for 11 in all, including carnival songs the Tchoups took over and the astonishing nine-minute call-and-response Monk Boudreaux builds off "Shoo fly, don't bother me." In 1974 I might have found it repetitive. Now I think it jams on and on and on. A-