Round downtown New Orleans, drummer Kerry “Fatman” Hunter was principally kin to everybody.
“He was household. Not by blood. However household,” stated Glen Finister Andrews, who noticed Hunter as a mentor. Partly in music, since Andrews additionally performs the snare drum. “However principally, I realized about life,” Andrews stated. “Life, greater than the drum. Ideas from right here to there.”
Hunter was born and raised in downtown New Orleans, within the 7th Ward. And that is the place the ache of his sudden dying has resonated since he was hit by a automotive on North Claiborne Avenue early on Mardi Gras morning.
As is the custom when a musician dies, fellow musicians have gathered practically each night time to play for him. On Sunday, the Treme Sidewalk Steppers, the social and help and pleasure membership that he helped to start out, devoted the parade to him and wore memorial ribbons along with his {photograph} on them.
Musicians and buddies rolled all day for him by Charbonnet Funeral House on Friday, slated to be the day for mourners to view him at Charbonnet earlier than his massive funeral Saturday at Mahalia Jackson Theater for the Performing Arts. All afternoon, impromptu horns blew and drums beat, in close by Tuba Fat Sq. on North Robertson Road, across the block, up and down North Claiborne, and out and in of the primary room at Charbonnet.
Wherever the musicians went, they have been led by a younger group of second-liners, who waved a framed {photograph} of him excessive within the air as they danced for his or her Uncle Fatman.
“He was a father determine to me, to everybody,” stated bass drummer Bernell Edwards.
“To everybody, young and old,” emphasised Edwards’ auntie, Margo Turner. Although Turner is a era older than Fatman, she, too, revered him like an elder – due to the best way he carried himself, she stated. Or, as Lionel Nelson, put it: “He was younger, solely 53. However he made himself really feel like he was previous.”
Hunter’s old-man methods have been on show in how he performed his drum – and the way he approached folks. “His favourite saying was ‘It don’t go like that,” stated Chris Terro, who performs bass drum and cowbell for the Large 6 Brass Band.
A Beloved A part of Downtown New Orleans
Regardless of incomes a Grammy Award and touring the world taking part in music, Hunter liked his piece of the world, the 6th and seventh Wards of New Orleans. When he was residence, folks knew it. He noticed reveals. He ran errands along with his spouse Romanda and different members of the family. He was out in his neighborhood.
“I noticed Fatman each day,” lifelong good friend August Collins stated. Usually, they bumped into one another at Kermit’s Treme Mom-In-Regulation Lounge or close to the neighborhood gathering spots beneath the bridge, the raised portion of North Claiborne Avenue.
On Lundi Gras night time, a number of hours earlier than his dying, Hunter was with Collins on the Mom-in-Regulation. As he left, he dapped off his good friend. He was on his approach residence, after a cease by way of Da Leap Off Lounge a number of blocks away, to catch among the Large 6 Brass Band. “See you tomorrow,” he stated.
As at all times, Hunter did what he stated he’d do. He parked on the impartial floor on North Claiborne close to Pauger Road and ducked into Da Leap Off to look at the Large 6. Although he usually ordered from Shack Brown, who was outdoors Da Leap Off promoting meals, he had demurred that morning. “Shack, I’m about to go residence,” he stated, placing his palms within the pockets of his Carnival-colored jacket towards the nippiness. He turned to point out Brown the coat’s yellow again, with the phrases “Preservation Corridor” stitched on the again of it.
Brown stated good night time, then bought again to promoting meals. Shortly afterward, he and others outdoors heard a noise that gave the impression of a tire had blown. They noticed a darkish sedan that was on the best way up the ramp decelerate and placed on its flashers. Nobody related that with Hunter. “We regarded and stated, ‘Oh man, I hope that man makes it residence okay,’” he stated. “In my thoughts, I believed Fatman was already residence.”
‘We All Come Out of Hunter’s Area’
Hunter bought his begin at Hunter’s Area, underneath the watchful eye of Jerome “Large Duck” Smith, the much-loved Freedom Rider and Civil Rights activist. Because the story is advised, in the future, Smith put drums into the palms of two younger males, Hunter and the child who would turn out to be his lifelong collaborator, bass drummer Cayetano “Tanio” Hingle, with whom he would kind the New Start Brass Band.
Steven Hodges remembered the day, which he thinks was round 1978. Hodges was taking part in soccer at Hunter’s Area. Fatman’s older brother, Oliver “Squirkey Man” Hunter, was his quarterback. However Hunter’s Area didn’t simply ship its group to video games. “In every single place our soccer group went, we introduced the band with us,” Hodges stated. Kerry Hunter turned a type of youngsters within the band.
Smith, now 84 years previous, recalled how the band of that period was led by jazz icon Danny Barker. Drumsticks have been plentiful: he would get bins of them and generally devices despatched to him from a retailer in New York owned by a Civil Rights motion supporter. Smith, together with Fred Johnson and others from Tamborine & Fan, handed out sticks and drums at Joseph A. Craig College in Treme and Marie C. Couvent Elementary College, the place Hunter attended.
As he turned a teen, Hunter taught Tamborine & Fan day-camp courses the place trumpeter Dewon “Itchy” Scott realized music and was schooled on professionalism. “We needed to have black pants, a black belt, black footwear, a band hat and our shirts tucked into our pants,” Scott stated. “He stood on that.”
In these days, Smith’s son Taju performed drums. So did Squirkey Man, who later turned higher identified within the second-line world as a dancer, who might leap excessive into the air and do the splits. Drumming expressed the spirit of the group on the time, Smith stated. “All people round right here might just about play, as a result of it was in right here so sturdy.” Generally, he stated, they’d take rubbish cans, play on them, and convey them again to their house owners within the morning.
James Andrews was on trumpet and his youthful brother Terry “Buster” Andrews was on drums in that Hunter’s Area band. “I’ve identified Fatman my total life,” he stated, on Friday night time, as he led a band by way of the streets of Treme. “However all of us come out of Hunter’s Area.”
Hunter usually paid homage to his begin on Hunter’s Area, in methods massive and small, particularly taking time with youngsters. Just a few years in the past, as his niece Remy Evans, now 14, began to play the snare, he would choose her up and convey her to the sphere each week. “He’d give me classes there,” she stated. “That’s the place I realized to roll off for the primary time. We’d sit there and play.”
‘The Heartbeat of the Band’
Because the proprietor of Kermit’s Treme Mom-in-Regulation Lounge, trumpeter Kermit Ruffins noticed Hunter leap in and instantly cease fights with a number of phrases – “Hey, cease that.” He was decided to see folks respect one another, stated Ruffins, who knew Hunter each as a good friend and as a daily. Hunter stopped by way of practically each day and watched Saints video games there on Sundays. He laughed and joked. When somebody they liked handed away or endured heartache, the lounge mourned collectively.
Many of the bar’s regulars grew up collectively. So, they knew that Hunter had misplaced his mother and father younger and was raised by his aunt Coretta. In some methods, music was Hunter’s option to traverse grief, they stated. When snare drummer Reginald Millon misplaced a brother to gun violence and his grandmother to COVID, Hunter sought him out and inspired him to remain targeted. “He advised me, ‘Simply hold your head up. Maintain doing what you’re doing,’” Millon remembers.
Whereas Hunter’s household was first, subsequent got here the drum, Ruffins stated. “He was a bad-ass musician.”
As an example that time, drummer Mike Rickmon pulled up a 2002 video of the New Start Brass Band taking part in “Get Your Thoughts Proper” throughout that 12 months’s Sudan Social Support and Pleasure Membership parade. “New Start was our band and right here’s why,” Rickmon stated, pulling his cellphone shut, to higher hear the distinct rhythm part. “It’s that total again row – Kerwin (James) on tuba, Fatman on snare, Tanio on bass drum. They introduced a distinct sound to New Orleans second traces,” he stated.
Although Hunter’s early experience was conventional and brass-band music, his vary was broad. “He was a flexible musician,” stated lifelong good friend and longtime Rebirth Brass Band snare drummer Derrick Tabb, naming off simply among the bands Hunter performed with – New Start, Pres Corridor, Soiled Dozen, Olympia, Junior Olympia, Treme, Roots of Music, Rebirth, and the Nightcrawlers, with whom he received a Grammy.
Nonetheless, it doesn’t matter what band Hunter performed with, there was a relentless ingredient, Tabb stated. “That was Fatman’s distinct straight beat: Buk, buk, buk a dat.”
At age 34, Terro, of the Large 6, is 20 years Hunter’s junior. However Hunter took the time to show Terro the subtleties of music, particularly musical dynamics – how you can play louder or softer, to make the band sound higher. “Fats would say, ‘You gotta deliver it down, drummers. You may’t be on high of that solo.’”
Upon listening to Hunter’s drumsticks hit the snare, Terro, like Rickmon, heard innovation.
“Fatman created a groove,” Terro stated. “When Fatman units a tempo, the entire band would keep there. No sooner, no slower. The band didn’t transfer with out Fats. He set the tempo and he stored the tempo. He was the heartbeat of the band.”
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