It has been a rough year for New Orleans music, first with the death of Dr. John this past June, and now with the passing of Art Neville, founder of the Meters and Neville Brothers, at the age of 81.
“It was peaceful,” Kent Sorrell, Neville’s longtime manager told the The Times-Picayune. “He passed away at home with his adoring wife Lorraine by his side.”
Born and raised in New Orleans, Neville, along with James Booker, Fats Domino and Professor Longhair, helped to create a sound that was unmistakably of the place it came from. After spending a few years in various groups, as well as a stint in the Navy, he started a group called Art Neville & the Neville Sounds in the mid-1960s. Towards the end of the decade, the group changed their name to the Meters, and helped to change the face of American music as we know it. If there’s a Mount Rushmore of funk with the likes of James Brown, Sly Stone, George Clinton and Prince, Neville and the Meters deserve a spot on the monument as well.
In 1976, after the Meters split apart, Neville started a new group with his brothers Aaron, Cyril and Charles, along with their uncle, Mardi Gras Indian Big Chief George “Jolly” Landry, singing. The Neville Brothers would go on to play from the late-’70s all the way into the ’90s, working with a diverse range of musicians from Brian Eno to Wyclef Jean.
According to Nola.com, “Neville died Monday after years of declining health, according to sources close to his family.”
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