JAY LUSTIG
Sally Baby’s Silver Dollars (from left, Steve De Troy, Zach Valentine, Salvatore “Sally Baby” Geloso, Nathan Wolman and Oliver Tuttle) perform at NJPAC in Newark.
One of the songs that the New Orleans-based band Sally Baby’s Silver Dollars performed at The New Jersey Performing Arts Center in Newark on July 30 — in their set at the free, outdoor Horizon Sounds of the City series — was “How Can You Baby-Sit a Man,” originally released as a single in 1966 by Ned Towns. It was not a hit at that time, and has remained obscure since then.
After singing the song, Salvatore “Sally Baby” Geloso described Towns as “an unknown New Orleans artist” and added, “There’s a lot of them. I feel like some of the greatest musicians I ever met … a lot of people outside of the city don’t know who they are, but we’re very blessed in New Orleans because everybody’s the king and the queen in their own right. We have a lot of big personalities to go around.”
Geloso grew up in New York, but moved to New Orleans nearly 20 years ago, started performing in the streets and in the clubs, and put together his Silver Dollars band in 2023. Since then, they have earned a following in New Orleans, and they are starting to get some national attention as well; their 2024 entry in NPR’s Tiny Desk Contest (watch below) came in second and has received more than 120,000 views.
The NJPAC appearance, at which they opened for Cimafunk, was sponsored by the New Jersey-based Gia Maione Prima Foundation and represented their first Garden State show; the foundation will also present them in a New Orleans Blues Brunch at The Vogel at The Count Basie Center for the Arts in Red Bank, Aug. 1.
JAY LUSTIG
From left, Salvatore “Sally Baby” Geloso, Nathan Wolman and Oliver Tuttle at NJPAC.
In Newark, they performed as a five-piece group, without their usual saxophonist (“he went to Mexico and then forgot his green card,” Geloso explained) or a drummer, creating a warm, intimate sound, with lots of space for extended instrumental solos. Singer-guitar Geloso was joined by keyboardist Steve De Troy, bassist Zach Valentine, trumpeter-percussionist Nathan Wolman and trombonist Oliver Tuttle.
They opened their hour-long set with a pair of relaxed, soulful songs (the original “Scarlet Reef Hermit Crab,” in addition to “How Can You Baby-Sit a Man”) before turning to more of a bright, bouncy, old-timey, jazz-influenced sound for “Tax Man” and “Big Bad Bully.”
“Big Bad Bully,” which featured call-and-response vocals by Geloso and the horn players, was written by Paul Barbarin, a drummer who was a mainstay of the New Orleans music scene for decades before dying in 1969. And Geloso just said that “Tax Man” was written by a friend of his. “I never knew when I was playing that song on the street, I’d be carrying it around all these years, but it’s a wonderful thing,” he said. “Making music with people over time … y’all start playing each other’s songs. Especially down in New Orleans, the bands that play on the street, that write original music, will share each other’s tunes.”
Geloso next sang his own “I’ve Got No More Tears Left to Cry,” a stately ballad that sounds like it could have been written in the ’50s or the ’60s. “It was one that I wanted to remain … if I was to leave this world, whenever I do … that maybe on a old jukebox somewhere, you would hear this tune playing in a Ninth Ward bar like BJ’s or Vaughan’s, that it would be spinning there for other people to find later on,” he said, adding that it is based “on a lot of iconic New Orleans tunes.”
The band closed with two more originals, the Latin-flavored “Down in New Orleans” and another elegant ballad, “Souvenirs.” Before “Down in New Orleans,” Geloso mentioned that he was really looking forward to hearing Cimafunk, a native of Cuba who blends Latin music with funk and hip-hop. (Cimafunk is also based in New Orleans, and Geloso said he became a fan after seeing him perform there.)
Geloso said “Down in New Orleans” was inspired by the links that New Orleans music shares with the sounds of the Caribbean. “You might as well consider New Orleans one of the most northern Caribbean cities, if you kind of tie it into the whole,” he said. “The more and more I study New Orleans music, the more connections I’ve found.”
JAY LUSTIG
Cimafunk at NJPAC.
I reviewed Cimafunk (né Erik Alejandro Iglesias Rodríguez) and his backing group La Tribu (“the tribe” in English) at The South Orange Performing Arts Center in September (read review HERE). They were supposed to perform at Horizons Sounds of the City last year, too, but that show was cancelled because of bad weather.
Like the South Orange show, this one had the crowd up and dancing from beginning to end, with a series of aggressively funky original songs, capped by a cover of Parliament’s party anthem “Give Up the Funk (Tear the Roof Off the Sucker).”
The show also featured a Dodge Poetry-sponsored poetry reading by Daniel Letona, a Honduran immigrant. The three poems he recited combined glimpses of scenes from his own life with philosophical reflections on them.
Sally Baby’s Silver Dollars will perform at a New Orleans Blues Brunch at The Vogel at The Count Basie Center for the Arts in Red Bank, Aug. 1 at 11 a.m.; visit ticketmaster.com.
For more about the bands, visit sallybabyssilverdollars.com or cimafunk.com.
Next up in NJPAC’s Horizons Sounds of the City series is R&B singer Vivian Green, poet Kai Diata Giovanni, and an “America 250” performance by students in NJPAC’s art education program, Aug. 6 at 5 p.m.; visit njpac.org.
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