BIOGRAPHY

Jesse DeNatale
Soul Parade

SAN FRANCISCO, CA: Jesse DeNatale grew up in S.F. in the ‘50s, a time the city was exploding with creative energy and writers, poets, entertainers and philosophers were challenging the materialism and conformity of American society. The soundtrack to this nascent social movement was poetry and jazz: Miles Davis, Thelonius Monk, Billie Holiday, Gregory Corso, Lawrence Ferlingetti and Allen Ginsberg. Comedians like Mort Sahl, Dick Gregory and Lenny Bruce ditched one-liners for a new kind of comedy – confrontational, personal, political - while future institutions such as City Lights Book Store, KSFO radio, and the Hungry I flourished. 

Although he could not help but absorb the intellectual zeitgeist of the city, DeNatale’s formative years were earthier: His mother was a singer and her brothers were all prize fighters. His father tended bar at famed jazz club The Blackhawk; the corner store in his neighborhood was called New Radio Market.  Later, the family moved north out of the city into the tiny suburb of Terra Linda. The revolutionary architecture of Joseph Eichler lined the streets. Cherry blossom trees and rolling hills became the New West. 

The sound on the radio was rock and roll. Stations like KFRC and KYA were playing Fats Domino, Carl Perkins, Gene Vincent, Johnny Cash, Elvis, Brook Benton, Bobby Darin, The Fleetwoods, Little Anthony and more.  At home, the DeNatale’s record collection included Billie Holiday, Sinatra, Louie Prima, Ray Charles, Dinah Washington and Dean Martin and other big-name artists of the era. But there were Perez Prado, Tito Puente jazz and old salsa records too.

At some point the dial switched to FM.  Songs were changing in the’60s and ’70s.  Stations like KMPX and KSAN had late night disc jockeys that spoke more and used the medium to discuss, educate, and celebrate artists they thought deserved a voice.   Their relationship with the listener was more intimate and personal. Says DeNatale: “Alone in my room with a little Sony radio I heard John Lee Hooker, Muddy Waters Mississippi John Hurt, folk music like Woody Guthrie and Ramblin Jack Elliott, Bob Dylan, Dave Van Ronk. And then artists like Joni Mitchell and Van Morrison. Groups like The Quicksilver Messenger Service, Iron Butterfly, The Grateful Dead, jug bands and you name it.”

The story behind Soul Parade
Cue forward to North Beach, San Francisco 2004:  “I hear the sound of the Green Street Mortuary Band. My eyes are closed and I’m lying on the grass. Wild parrots are in the afternoon sky. The band circles the park in a funeral march. At that moment when the band began to play it would seem to me that all our time on earth only existed as a dream, like some short stopover or a pause en route, with everyone having their own time limit. And that really we were just being passing through as a kind of “soul parade.” And this ongoing march would move easily through the past, present and future. Maybe it was my being in San Francisco again or maybe it was because of that ‘feel it in your bones’ music that the horns were playing … or maybe ‘cause I was lying there like a dead person.

“But I started to put a lot of pieces together. A sense was being made of my experiences and the city’s stories and an old and new feeling came together. I felt like I was part of the big picture again. I knew what I wanted to write.

“I wanted to write a record that already had it’s destiny; one that carried dreams and hopes from long ago and one that spoke to a new tomorrow. I didn’t want to re-invent the wheel, I just wanted to fix the one broken and laying by the side of the road. It was almost like I wanted to repeat something grand that had been said once long ago - a ‘look you in the eye’ kind of proclamation: ‘Life is good. Wake up!’ I could see that some songs would be about the future (Shine your Light, Dreamer’s Holiday, Keep on Walkin, Lucinda), some about the present (Children of the Sun, Soul Parade, Nightingale) and some about the past (Carry Me, The Bell, Montgomery St.). And some would even take place within every tense or would have no tense at all (The Follies of Don Calandro, Baby Joe).

“For me, optimism always prevails; it’s my constant. It’s what I absorbed, what was my first young smell of the air; it’s what’s up around the corner. It’s what gets me into the future.”