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W e d n e s d ay, A p r i l 2, 2025
Sonny Landreth missed one chance but took another Slide guitarist Sonny Landreth learned decades ago to never take a gig for granted. Landreth once suffered through an off night, only to spot Bob Dylan in the audience. Dylan was looking for a guitarist. Landreth didn’t get the job. Herman Music friends Fuselier from England asked Landreth to record a home demo tape for their new label. He took a resonator guitar in an empty room and recorded a half-dozen songs. The tape landed in Eric Clapton’s personal collection. “It wasn’t meant to be heard by anyone,” said Landreth, a longtime Breaux Bridge resident who now lives in Lafayette. “The next thing I know, they gave it to Eric. They all knew each other. “All they kept telling me is he’s got a copy of that tape. He kept it on the bus and played it from time to time. “When I’d run into them, they’d say, ‘Man, he’s still got that tape. He’s still playing it.’ ” If I would have known that, I would have tried a little harder.” That tape sparked Landreth’s longtime friendship with Clapton, the rock guitar idol who turns 80 years old March 30. Landreth will celebrate the occasion at an invitation-only birthday party March 29 at the Battersea Arts Center in London. With 18 Grammys and 100 million records sold, Clapton reigns as one of the most influential guitarists in rock history. Songs like “Layla,” “Lay Down Sally,” “Wonderful Tonight” and “Tears in Heaven,” written following the death of his 4-yearold son Conor, have stirred generations across the globe. As Landreth testifies, Clapton’s music exposed White kids in the suburbs to Muddy Waters, B.B. King and other blues godfathers who poured the foundation for rock ‘n’ roll. Clapton has also had high praise for Landreth, calling him “the most underestimated musician
ä See LANDRETH, page 2G
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HIS FIRST HOME, LAST AND MANY IN BETWEEN
Where did Tennessee Williams live in New Orleans? BY ANNETTE SISCO Staff writer
STAFF PHOTO BY HILARY SCHEINUK
John Newman greets a pair of ducks Tuesday near University Lake in Baton Rouge.
A HIGHER CALLING Meet ‘The Duckman,’ a BR man who spends his days caring for ducks at LSU lakes BY HUNTER ODOM
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Contributing writer
Their beauty is obvious. You just have to look for them.”
The word is out: The Duckman has arrived. When the feeding frenzy begins, even human passersby can’t help but be intrigued about the commotion. Newman draws a quick crowd, and he is quick to point out the different breeds he is feeding. He can even tell the names of each. “That is Seymour,” he said. “You can tell by his beak.”
ealizing that John Newman is as much at home at the LSU lakes as the ducks he feeds there three times a day comes easy. The “Duckman,” as he is more commonly called around these parts, has spent the last several years devoted to serving JOHN NEWMAN, Baton Rouge’s very own aka “The Duckman” A safe harbor resident waterfowl. Driving around to sevOriginally from Baton eral feeding grounds, Newman’s route Rouge, Newman, 64, has moved all over starts at Campus Lake, where a group the country throughout his career. But of Muscovy ducks immediately recog- it was his wife who chose to return to nize his car as he pulls up. They start Baton Rouge when they retired. Shortly waddling toward him, tails wagging and after returning, his wife was diagnosed mouths wide open, making a gentle hiss- with terminal cancer, and he acted as ing noise as they approach, resembling her primary caregiver for years. In June 2022, when his wife decided more a pet dog than a wild animal. Newman can hardly get out of the car before to come back to their home in hospice he is greeted by two of his favorites: care, he began to find solace and peace by walking from his home on Stanford Seymour and Goldie. As he sets up his cardboard box to get Avenue to University Lake to feed the out his usual treats — spinach, weevils ducks on East Lakeshore Drive. and bread — pelicans, geese and other ä See ‘DUCKMAN’, page 2G visitors fly in, anxiously awaiting.
PROVIDED PHOTO
“It is a three-story building. There are a pair of alcoves, facing Toulouse Street. These alcove cubicles are separated by plywood. ... A curved staircase ascends from the rear of a dark narrow passageway from the street entrance to the kitchen area. From there it ascends to the third floor, or gabled attic with its mansard roof...” — from “Vieux Carré,” by Tennessee Williams Margit Longbrake stands at the foot of the wooden staircase, which curves upward into darkness. Described by the playwright Tennessee Williams as the spiritual inspiration for the setting of his play, “Vieux Carré,” 722 Toulouse St. is part of The Historic New Orleans Collection, where Longbrake works as a senior editor and expert in the collection’s Williams holdings. Scholars say 722 Toulouse inspired not just “Vieux Carré,” but the themes of many of Williams’ works, among the most famous of which are “The Glass Menagerie,” “A Streetcar Named Desire” and “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.” His works, and his connections to New Orleans, are celebrated annually during the Tennessee Williams & New Orleans Literary Festival, March 26-30 this year.
FILE PHOTO
Playwright Tennessee Williams, 31, works on his typewriter.
In December 1938, a young Tennessee Williams climbed these timeworn steps to an attic apartment, where he spent a short but fertile couple of months. It was his first time living in New Orleans, an experience that opened up a new world. “It was a place where he could actually explore and become all of the aspects of himself that were conflicted and repressed in his traditional
ä See CURIOUS, page 2G
Slide guitarist Sonny Landreth
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