Larry Carlton Makes Case for New Jazz and Blues Market

Larry Carlton

The Saturday night show in the renovated New Orleans Jazz Market fills a niche in New Orleans.

The only time guitarist Larry Carlton looked a little bored came when he played the song everybody came for. The show at the new Jazz and Blues Market was billed as “Greatest Hits and Steely Dan,” and he introduced the set-closing “Kid Charlemagne” by telling the story of being invited by Steely Dan to play a show and realized he had a decision to make. Should he play the famous solo the way he did in the studio in 1976 or the way he would play it now?

Everyone thought he should go with the 1976 version, so he did and that’s what he did on Saturday night. It was the moment many in the audience came to see, but he remained straight-faced throughout, remembering and focusing rather than feeling the moment. To create something new, he shared a second pass through it with his trombone player, but that seemed like a moment missed. It worked, but it also left me wondering how he’d approach the solo today when he played it as a duet.

Carlton’s sound forms one of the building blocks of the yacht rock sound, and for the most part his set revealed one of the sound’s component parts, though he did visit that body of work for an instrumental version of The Doobie Brothers’ “Minute by Minute.” Critic Chris Molanphy made a convincing argument on his “Hit Parade” podcast that the cast of musicians who played on Steely Dan albums are the players that connect the body of music thought of as yacht rock.

On Saturday night, you could hear that influential guy in the familiar tone and aggressive, picked leads, and you could hear the guitarist Carlton has become gliding to notes, slurring them, finding unexpected, compelling ways to fit lyrical lines into rhythmic spaces. He played with dynamics by gently coaxing passages out of his guitar, and locked into parts that were so rhythmically assured that you could groove to his playing alone.

It was a show that made the case for the new Jazz and Blues Market, which is as much a part of the story of the show as Carlton. The venue is the renovated New Orleans Jazz Market, now with tables and drink service on the floor and improved acoustics. Moments like his version of The Crusaders’ “Soul Caravan” and his cover of Walter “Wolfman” Washington’s “I Want to Know” (with sax player Paul Cerra singing) made me wish the show was at Tipitina’s where people could move, but he would almost certainly had to lean on the funkier side of his catalogue since some of the more delicate moments would have tested a standing crowd.

If we were going to see Carlton somewhere else, the most likely option would be at Jazz Fest’s Jazz Tent but a lot would have been lost. Drummer Marcus Finnie’s aggressive presence would have almost certainly obscured the bass and some of Carlton’s quieter moments. The new venue made it easy to keep track of subtle distinctions in sound and allowed Carlton to choose the set that he wanted to play, confident that the audience would hear it as intended.

When Carlton introduced “Soul Caravan,” a song he recorded in 1971, he asked if there was anyone under 40 in the room. It set up a self-deprecating joke—“I was a young pup then. I had a wife. I had hair.”—and put a fine point on something no one in the room could miss. Many in the crowd were old enough to remember hearing “Kid Charlemagne” the first time around and would have known if he would have missed a note or made a change. It’s easy in a culture that fetishizes youth to see that as old boys unwilling to hang it up, but the premise of the venue is that the empty nester demographic has money, and Jazz Fest has shown that they’ll spend it on music.

The Eagles’ residency at the Sphere in Las Vegas has been extended through February 2026 playing more than 50 dates. A band that has only released one album of new material since 1979 has tickets that go for between $500 and $1000 each, and while that’s in part due to the excitement sparked by the venue, it’s also because people will pay it.  A more intimate venue that allows people to sit comfortably to see acts that make sense to them—ones with good singing and good playing—like the Jazz and Blues Market is a good bet. And, right now at least, the price is far more manageable than the Sphere. Many of the shows have table tickets on the floor going for $50 or less.

The vibe clearly worked for Carlton, who gave the audience two thumbs’ up after almost every song.