One of the frustrating things about living in a treasure chest is seeing perfect jewels get overlooked because there’s just so much wealth.
Whether or not the average person is familiar with the name and astounding talent of Johnny “Alligator” Vindigni, who passed away this week, you’d be hard pressed to find a New Orleans musician who didn’t rank him among the great vocalists.
Just a small sampling of the comments I’ve read from friends who worked with him:
He always made the stage shine. One of the most talented singers I know.
So many Johnny stories but my favorite to tell. Exemplifies the depth of his talent and just how big his ears were. We had a 4 horn book for most of the time I worked with him. Quite often we’d be missing one horn . Didn’t matter what horn was missing , he’d sing the missing part. Always blew my mind.
Nobody sang like him.
Johnny’s career began at age 9, when he appeared on the stage of the Blue Room at the Roosevelt Hotel. By his teens, he was performing regularly on the Gulf Coast circuit with acts like Brenda Lee and Frankie Ford. By the 70s, he was fronting popular rock and soul combos like Paper Steamboat and Jackson Brewing Company. In 1975, the New York Times found him rocking the clubs in Metairie’s Fat City entertainment district, which at the time had almost eclipsed the French Quarter for local music fans.
Mid-decade, he headed west for a stint in Tahoe and Vegas, returning to New Orleans in the 80s for a decade-long house gig in the piano bar at Pat O’Brien’s club in the French Quarter as well as gigs with his own, eponymous, group, followed by a long stint with Benny Grunch and the Bunch and a run with the “Joint’s Jumpin’” revue band (the photo above is from the JJ performance at the 2012 Jazz Fest).
Johnny was the epitome of blue-eyed soul, a vocalist with power, control and musical understanding unmatched among his peers. Rather than piling on the hyperbole, let me offer one small example.
In 1990, Ron Cuccia (“My Darlin’ New Orleans”) called me to say he was pitching songs for a new Joe Cocker album and thought my tune “Power” had a shot. The track was already cut, but the lyrics needed a little work and we’d certainly need a different vocalist (my voice may have some merits but giant-ass-rock-and-soul-power isn’t one of ‘em).
We spent a few hours banging on the lyrics and editing a decent instrumental from Danny Jones’ mix, then called in Johnny. He knew the song already, so I just put the lyrics on a music stand a put a mic in front of him.
One. Take.
(Here’s a direct link to the cut in case the embed doesn’t show for you.)
Always dedicated to providing the best performance, he asked if we needed to punch in anything, drop a second take for luck. No, John, I think we got it.
We got it because Johnny had it. And he never lost it.