A Musical Menagerie

Jimmy Horn spins tales of King James & the Special Men.

- John Swenson

“Come and get me!”—Jimmy Cagney in White Heat “I’m gonna bury everybody...”—Jimmy Horn in “Special Men Boogie”

Jimmy Horn is the kind of character you only find in New Orleans. America used to turn them out everywhere, but the country has been culturally homogenized to the point where everyone is wearing some kind of uniform all the time, even if it’s the uniform of the nonconformist. But somehow New Orleans still allows the cantankerous individual to cut his or her own swath through society.

Horn is a bright guy with an aggressive style and an uncanny sense for self-promotion, even in his most confrontational moments. He relishes conflict and has trolled the universe with some of the most provocative online strings I’ve ever encountered. His battle with the Krewe of Chewbaccus over the nature of second lining reads like an epistolary novel. Some find him difficult but everybody I know has gone to see his band King James and the Special Men at least once. The band is a musical menagerie, a hallucinatory glimpse into the world of ’50s/’60s New Orleans R&B that completely avoids the kind of period homage that so much neo-retro New Orleans music suffers from. His horn section, which is singular in the originality of its arrangements, contains some of the top players in the city. These guys also play in some of the more neo-retro bands as well, but in those contexts they tend to stick closer to the stock arrangements that period music thrives on.