Many of his friends, neighbors, music lovers and music moguls in New Orleans gathered this morning to pay their last respects to one hell of a great musician and sweet soul, Wilson "Willie Tee" Turbinton. We had last seen Willie Tee one month before, at the church for his brother Earl's funeral. Earl was an extraordinary alto and soprano saxaphonist, who had played with Nat Adderley, Joe Zawinul, and many others, but had never achieved the wide recognition he deserved. Willie Tee had cared for and taken care of his brother Earl for a long time.
At Earl's funeral, Willie looked great and seemed in good spirits, despite the obvious hard toll of the preceding 2 years. A month later, we celebrated Willie Tee's life at the same church.
Although Willie Tee is remembered for his contributions to the Mardi Gras music tradition and for authoring "New Suit" a standard, he was also a phenomenal jazz player, comfortable and conversant in all idioms. He had played with Nat and Cannonball Adderley, Joe Zawinul, taught at Princeton, and invented the Wild Magnolia sound, later developed by the Neville Brothers.
Following is the article about Willie Tee from our local newspaper, The Times Picayune. What they don't mention is how much Willie Tee loved his wife and family. Married for over 40 years, everyone who knew Willie Tee well, spoke at the funeral and mentioned that before music, Willie Tee loved and cared for his family and God first.
Having lived a good life and having been a roll model for others, we will have a hard time saying goodbye. You will be well missed.
Way to go, Willie Tee...
Funeral Today for Musician Who Helped Introduce Mardi Gras Indian Funk to the World
by Keith Spera, Music writer
Saturday September 22, 2007, 9:10 AM
Before Aaron Neville hit the road to promote "Tell It Like It Is" in 1966, he stopped at a club called Gloria's Living Room and sang soul standards with Wilson "Willie Tee" Turbinton's band. Neville and Turbinton had first met as boys in the Calliope housing development, where Turbinton's cousins lived a few doors from the Neville family.
"He had a great voice, was a great musician," Neville said. "He was a wizard on the keyboard. He could play anything. He created his own thing, his own style. He didn't copy anybody. It was him."Over the next 40 years, Neville and his brothers went on to worldwide fame while Turbinton toiled as the quintessential New Orleans music jack-of-all-trades, blurring the lines between funk, soul and jazz.
Touring Europe with the Neville Brothers, Aaron occasionally encountered Willie Tee fans. But mostly, "like a lot of New Orleans guys, he was under the radar," Neville said. "He didn't get his due."
Turbinton died Sept. 11 of colon cancer; he was 63. His funeral Mass is today at 11 a.m. at Our Lady Star of the Sea Catholic Church, 1835 St. Roch Ave. Visitation will begin at 9 a.m. Burial follows in St. Louis Cemetery No. 3.
Turbinton is perhaps best known for arranging, co-writing and leading the band on the Wild Magnolias' self-titled 1974 debut. That landmark recording -- and the subsequent "They Call Us Wild" -- introduced Mardi Gras Indian funk to the world.
Philippe Rault is officially credited as the album's producer, but by all accounts Turbinton was the driving creative force.
"Willie always told me that, in his heart of hearts, he produced the two Magnolias records," longtime friend Leo Sacks said.
Sacks, a noted producer of reissues from Earth, Wind & Fire, the Isley Brothers, and Teena Marie, is an ardent Turbinton admirer. He wrote the liner notes to a CD reissue of "The Wild Magnolias."
The original "Wild Magnolias" album dropped two years before the future Neville Brothers collaborated with their uncle, Big Chief George "Jolly" Landry, on the Wild Tchoupitoulas project. The Wild Magnolias had supplied a blueprint for grafting traditional Mardi Gras Indian street beats and chants to an electric funk band.
"It was fantastic stuff," Aaron Neville said. "When it came out, it was like, 'Oh, yeah, this is some funk.' We'd play it on gigs. Cyril still does 'New Suit.' "
Turbinton first launched his career as a teenager via the local AFO Records. In 1965, he scored a national hit for Atlantic Records with the soulful "Teasin' You." In the late '60s, Willie Tee & the Souls toured from the Apollo Theater in Harlem to the Ivanhoe on Bourbon Street. In the early 1970s, he fronted the Gaturs on a string of locally popular funk-soul singles.
Rappers later would raid the Turbinton catalog. Houston's Geto Boys sampled "Smoke My Peace Pipe," which Turbinton wrote for the Wild Magnolias. Sean "Diddy" Combs nicked the Gaturs' "Concentrate" for his 1997 album "No Way Out."
More recently, New Orleans rapper Lil' Wayne sampled "Moment of Truth," from Turbinton's 1976 album "Anticipation," for "Tha Mobb," the opening track on Wayne's multimillion-selling "Tha Carter II."
Turbinton reaped a financial windfall from rap royalties, but his fortunes took a turn for the worse when the breached levees of Hurricane Katrina flooded his Lakeview home.
Weeks after the storm, he joined the New Orleans Social Club, an all-star ensemble of displaced musicians assembled by Sacks in Austin, Texas. He and the Social Club recorded the Gaturs' "First Taste of Hurt" with new lyrics.
In late 2005, Turbinton was thrilled to accept a four-month appointment as a visiting lecturer in the music department at Princeton University in New Jersey. In January 2006, he returned to Louisiana and settled into post-Katrina exile in Baton Rouge.
On May 3, he headlined a free Lafayette Square concert sponsored by the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival and Foundation. Backed by nouveau funk band Galactic -- a stylistic descendant of the Gaturs -- he performed to an estimated crowd of 4,000.
"He's known to those in the know, but too many people are unaware of his contributions," said the foundation's Scott Aiges. "That show was an opportunity to raise his profile. I didn't realize it would be one of his last performances."
Willie Tee's death was the second suffered by the Turbinton family in as many months. On Aug. 3, his older brother Earl, a modern jazz saxophonist, died after a long illness.
At Earl Turbinton's funeral on Aug. 11, Willie Turbinton appeared to be in good health. A few days later, a nagging lower back pain compelled him to see a doctor.
"He thought maybe he had an infection and needed antibiotics," his daughter, Racquel Turbinton, said.
The terrible diagnosis came as a shock: advanced colon cancer. Barely four weeks later, Turbinton died at Touro Infirmary, in the same hour as his friend, jazz keyboardist Joe Zawinul.
Days earlier, Neville called Turbinton at the hospital.
"I told him I loved him," Neville recalled. "He said, 'Man, I never thought I'd be in this predicament.' It happened so fast, you know? It was a sad thing."
Sacks considers Turbinton a victim of Katrina.
"What happened to the city broke his heart," Sacks said. "I'm no doctor, but I'm sure you can make a case for the physiological toll that it took."
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