"Jay Mazza is the ultimate authority on the New Orleans music scene. If he doesn't know it, it's not worth knowing."
Reggie Scanlan, bassist for the Radiators and formerly for Fess

"You can always trust Jay Mazza's musical judgement. He's always on the scene to find out the real deal."
Kirk Joseph, founding member of the Dirty Dozen Brass Band, Backyard Groove

"He's been on the scene for as long as I can remember."
Corey Henry, Rebirth Brass Band, Galactic

June Yamagishi

On the first day of the Jazz Fest in 1995, I went to see the drummer Kerry Brown's band. He had Jon Cleary on keys and a new face on the scene on guitar, the searing Japanese bluesman, June Yamagishi.

Yamagishi had a successful career playing blues and R&B in Japan, but he longed to live in New Orleans. He moved to the city for good in 1995 and quickly became an in-demand sideman. He played with Mike Ward, one of his best friends in the city, and eventually took over the lead guitar role from June Victory in the Wild Magnolias band.

Victory was the man behind the Bayou Renegades, the backup band for the Wild Magnolias. But his work ethic and lifestyle made him unreliable. He ran afoul of the powers that be at the Jazz Fest when he refused to stop playing despite the fact that time was up and the Indians had long left the stage. When Yamagishi joined the Wild Magnolias, they became a force to be reckoned with that rivaled their earlier heyday in the 1970s.

Yamagishi is also active with Papa Grows Funk, a second-generation funk band that formed when Jon Gros, who took Keith Vinet's place in George Porter, Jr. and the Running Pardners, decided to form his own band, and with the Trio- a group of revolving players that is anchored around Johnny Vidacovich and George Porter, Jr. They call the style improvisational funk and Yamagishi’s stunning range helped provide the group with its first acclaim and established him as an equal to legends like Porter and Vidacovich.