Entertainment

Art Neville was a recognized genius, but not a well-compensated one

NEW TRI-STATE DEFENDER — It’s an all-too-common story: A fabulous black musician redefines a genre of music. He’s adored and emulated by other musicians, including famous white acts. But the financial rewards, for complicated reasons, don’t match up.

Published

7 years ago

August 1, 2019

Oakland Post

By The Undefeated

A founder of both the Meters and the Neville Brothers, he brought the funk to New Orleans

It’s an all-too-common story: A fabulous black musician redefines a genre of music. He’s adored and emulated by other musicians, including famous white acts. But the financial rewards, for complicated reasons, don’t match up.

This week, we lost a real one: Singer and keyboardist Arthur Neville of New Orleans died Monday at 81. A principal founder of both the Meters and the Neville Brothers, his sound and singular coolness were central to the worlds of jazz, funk and soul music.

“Everyone in the industry digs us. … [But] I wanna go to the bank.”

Neville’s genius is forever attached to the city he loved. He was born on Dec. 17, 1937, and grew up in the Calliope Projects that would later raise another musical giant from the Crescent City in Master P. His career technically began as a 17-year-old in 1954, when he was a member of a school band called the Hawketts that recorded a cover of “Mardi Gras Mambo.” To this day, Neville’s fingerprints are all over Mardi Gras, and it’s impossible to fully embrace Fat Tuesday without his sound.

From there, Neville would help elevate New Orleans funk to an entirely new level. In an eight-year stretch between 1969 and 1977, Neville and the Meters (formerly known as Art Neville & the Neville Sounds) dropped eight albums. Their best known songs were “Cissy Strut,” “Fire on the Bayou” and “Hey Pocky A-Way.” Their 1974 album Rejuvenation was listed at No. 138 on Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Albums of All Time list. The Meters toured with the Rolling Stones and won the adoration and respect of Paul McCartney — the band recorded a live album, Uptown Rulers, in 1975 from a performance at a release party for the former Beatle’s Venus and Mars album.

But the Meters grew frustrated with their lack of mainstream success. And like so many acts before and after them, that frustration (and drug usage) led the group to disband. It didn’t take long, though, for Neville to begin the next chapter of his career. Along with his three brothers, Aaron, Charles and Cyril, and their uncle George “Jolly” Landry, they formed the Neville Brothers in 1977. And like the Meters before them, they were beloved both in New Orleans and across the industry, although the financial reciprocation wasn’t always present.

“Everyone in the industry digs us. Every other band, bands I love, bands I look up to, they looking at us the same way,” he told Rolling Stone in 1987. “Huey Lewis — those cats was onstage watching us every night. The Stones was watching us. [But] I wanna go to the bank. For once in my life, I’d like to be able to do something for my family.”

Between 1987 and 1990, the Neville Brothers released three albums that would ultimately cement their status as authentic sound leaders of their city and of their time. Uptown (1987) featured the likes of Jerry Garcia, Carlos Santana and others. Yellow Moon (1989) earned the group its first Grammy, best pop instrumental performance for “Healing Chant.” And the aptly titled Brother’s Keeper became a cultural touchstone for a city that has no shortage of them.

Neither Art nor the Meters or the Neville Brothers found runaway success, but the sound he created for his city won over the world. He’d tour and reunite with the Meters and Neville Brothers throughout his life. Neville even captured another Grammy in 1996 for his contributions to “SRV Shuffle,” found on A Tribute to Stevie Ray Vaughan.

For as long as he could, Neville placed mind over matter and continued to perform despite mounting health issues. There were complications from back surgery and the effects of a stroke. Neville, though, would come to embody what Bob Marley and The Wailers once dubbed the medicine of music: One good thing about music, when it hits you feel no pain. The stage was Neville’s sanctuary, where he felt safest and where fans felt most at peace.

“You can bring me there in the ambulance, roll me onto the stage, give me a microphone and mirror where I can see the people,” Neville said in 2013. “Man, look. I’ve been doing this all my life. I enjoy it. Even the bad part of it, the parts I didn’t like … I found out that’s the way things go sometimes. You’ve got to go along with them.”

The music industry didn’t always give him the flowers he deserved. It never does to most. Last year, the Meters received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in Los Angeles, although Neville wasn’t well enough to attend.

Still, he created art that has no expiration date. Neville earned his chops performing at establishments that may never be famous outside of NOLA, like Nite Cap in Uptown or Ivanhoe on Bourbon Street. But that’s the beauty about planting roots even if the world only gets to see what blossoms.

Justin Tinsley is a culture and sports writer for The Undefeated. He firmly believes “Cash Money Records takin’ ova for da ’99 and da 2000” is the single-most impactful statement of his generation.

This article originally appeared in the New Tri-State Defender

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Arts and Culture

IN MEMORIAM: Oakland Dance Legend Reginald Ray-Savage, 67

Savage lived his life as tribute to the teachers who had shared their wisdom on art and life with him. With a palpably genuine enthusiasm and desire to bring out the best in people, and pass the torch to the next generation, he poured into his students, as his teachers and mentors had into him. His infectious energy, love of life, and generosity of spirit inspired countless souls, both inside and outside the dance studio.

Published

1 week ago

June 24, 2026

Oakland Post

Reginald Ray-Savage brought the old-school teaching techniques he learned in the Katherine Dunham Dance Company to the youth at the Oakland School for the Arts in 2003. Courtesy photo.

Special to The Post

Reginald Ray-Savage – dancer, choreographer, and beloved teacher, mentor, and inspiration to many – passed away on May 17. The Oakland School for the Arts dance instructor was 67.

Born Reginald Ray, Jr. in St. Louis, Missouri, on Sept. 5, 1958, he formally adopted the name ‘Savage,’ to honor the great Archie Savage, his mentor at Katherine Dunham’s Performing Arts Training Center where his dance training journey began in East St. Louis, Illinois.

He soon started dancing professionally with Katherine Dunham Dance Company, making dance a way of life. His grit, tenacity, and notorious work ethic brought him scholarships to train at multiple prestigious dance institutions, including The Ailey School (NYC) and Ruth Page School of Dance (Chicago), under the direction of acclaimed ballet instructor Larry Long and Dolores Lipinski-Long.

He danced with several companies including Joel Hall Dance Company, Ruth Page Ballet Chicago, Lyric Opera, Chicago City Ballet, American Festival Ballet, and touring productions of “Music Man” and “A Chorus Line”.

In 1989, Savage moved to Oakland where he started teaching seven days a week, amassing a devoted following that was attracted to his no-nonsense, impassioned, and effective old-school teaching style.

In 1992, at the insistence of his committed core of students, he founded Savage Jazz Dance Company (SJDC). Over a span of 30 years, Savage produced more than 100 original works, and tour SJDC nationally and internationally, performing at Casa del Jazz in Rome to a packed house and rave reviews—the first dance company to receive such an invitation.

Savage built SJDC into one of the Bay Area’s most respected dance companies, creating a signature style known for its combination of disciplined training, blended with rich artistic musical expression, and raw energy.

In 2003, Savage joined the Oakland School for the Arts as chair of the School of Dance. Over the next two decades, he created, built, and maintained a strong dance program, recognized, and respected by other dance institutions for forging well-trained and resilient dancers and human beings.

The depth of Savage’s tough love and care, and the skill of his teaching and mentoring are reflected in the careers of his students who have gone on to dance with the San Francisco Ballet, Martha Graham Dance Company, Mark Morris Dance Group, Janet Jackson, Ariana Grande, and companies across the globe.

Mark Kitaoka, a photographer hired by Savage in 2016, posted a living eulogy on the dance instructor.

“When I see the self-pride he builds in his students I am constantly impressed that people like Savage still exist in our ‘meme’ society,” Kitaoka wrote. “The kids he mentors are fiercely loyal to one another and I’m certain his methods teach each of those kids to put aside social status, race and gender and is replaced by solid loyalty for other souls.

“What Savage contributes to our world cannot be completely summed up in a few meager paragraphs but can be seen in the countless lives of those he has touched. Because of him, our world, and the world of the future is both a richer and better place.

Reginald Ray-Savage will forever be missed, remembered, and lovingly quoted. He is survived by his beloved wife, Alison Hurley, his sister, Sonia, and his brothers, Pierre, and Andre. May his inextinguishable spirit and impact live on in all the lives he touched.

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Oakland Post: Week of June 17 – 23, 2026

The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of June 17 – 23, 2026

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2 weeks ago

June 20, 2026

Oakland Post

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Books

Book Review: Something We Said: Richard Pryor, A Notorious Word, and Me

Though sticks and stones and words are weapons, as in the new memoir, “Something We Said” by Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor, they can also hold people together.

Published

2 weeks ago

June 17, 2026

bpusa-syndication

By Terri Schlichenmeyer

Author: Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor, Copyright: c.2026, Publisher: Simon & Schuster, SRP: $29.00, Page Count: 304 pages

Sticks and stones may break my bones.

You know the rest of that childhood rhyme, and you know it’s not true: words have meaning, and they can cut like a knife. And yet, though sticks and stones and words are weapons, as in the new memoir, “Something We Said” by Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor, they can also hold people together.

The college lecture was supposed to have been about the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act.

It was supposed to be a lively discussion, but unintentionally it quickly veered off course. When a White student quoted a movie line featuring the “n-word,” the room went quiet, and Professor Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor panicked.

She’d grown up hearing that word, and seeing it, and she’d experienced the painful feelings attached to it. She knew who wrote that movie line. It was her father, Richard Pryor.

In her first few years, Pryor spent most of her time in a White world, hearing her mother’s tales of her larger-than-life father, and trying to grasp meaning in her father’s albums, peppered as they were with a word that was off-limits to her.

When she was six, she met her father for the first time. She began to visit him regularly.

It was fun at her Dad’s house; though he was sometimes moody, he taught her to fish and play dominoes. She became close with her siblings, fearful of her great-grandmother, and confused about a word that her father’s uncles threw around like a beach ball. It was a forbidden word at her mother’s house, but her father used it. Differently. Often.

The word hurt. She knew first-hand that it did.

“The word became a degrading slur that shackled all Black people together into a single, inescapable tribe,” she says.

So why was it okay for certain people to say it?

Knowing that, in the years since Richard Pryor’s accident and his death from multiple sclerosis, he’s become somewhat of a legend. It is a very satisfying thing, isn’t it? So is reading about him, especially from the viewpoint of one of his seven children. But his is not the only story you get inside “Something We Said.”

Wrapped around the life of Richard Pryor is the life of a word that straddles a line between danger and provocation, a word that author Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor refuses to say or even print. As she tells readers about her father and her loving-but-difficult relationship with him, she warily circles that word, as if it might bite. You may cringe, but she weighs it carefully, helping readers see it as a chameleon before always bringing us back to her father, his work, and his life before and after her and that word.

It’s a push-pull balance that holds readers fast, and keeps them there. It’s perfect for fans of this genre, or Richard Pryor, or of language – and it’s going to make you think. If you want a good memoir this week, one that may send you to your old album collection, “Something We Said” is rock-solid.