BY STEVEN ROSEN (photos by Joe Rosen)

"You guys need to push for the women of our day so we're not forgotten," LaLa Brooks - pictured above, and the power-voiced lead singer of early-1960s girl-group Crystals - exhorted those attending a Saturday-afternoon panel discussion at Ponderosa Stomp's daytime music history conference. 

The New Orleans-based Stomp, now in its ninth year of presenting concerts and third offering a daytime conference, is devoted to giving often-forgotten, older "unsung heroes" of rock ‘n' roll and related music the best possible showcase to perform their best material. While it has a strong emphasis on Louisiana rock and R&B, its focus has grown far beyond that.

The night before Brooks' panel appearance, as several hundred surprised and happy people watched at the House of Blues - site of the two-night, revue-style concert portion of the Stomp - the 63-year-old Brooks delivered an amazingly vital and exciting set. Accompanied by a wall-of-sound of a band dressed nattily in black - seven musicians, including one who played castanets, and three female back-up singers - Brooks charged through her old Crystals hits and established that she (and not her producer, Phil Spector) owned their legacy. 

She offered super-fine versions of "There's No Other," "Uptown," "Then He Kissed Me," "Little Boy" and "Da Doo Ron Ron." (At the conference, Brooks explained that another Crystal - Barbara Alston - sang lead on the recordings of the first two, but that she soon began singing them on stage.) Really, it would it have been all right had she also done "He's a Rebel" and "He's Sure the Boy I Love" - the two "Crystals" hits that Spector produced using L.A. studio group the Blossoms rather than the real Crystals. Her voice was that strong and satisfying.

And not just her voice. Wearing a tight outfit and knee-high boots, the lean and muscular Brooks - with a huge Afro - commanded the stage with her athletic movin' and groovin', sprinkling the set with fiery asides like, "I'm not no damn diva. I am real."

Ponderosa Stomp is about keeping it real. But it also had an important secondary theme this year - that a lot of those "unsung heroes" are women who still are musically active and deserve our attention. As if to remind attendees, Ronnie Spector - another Phil Spector-produced star whose career has been revived in recent years - did a surprise two-song set on Saturday night, complete with a large band (including violinists) and back-up singers. That was ringingly majestic, but even better was her earlier appearance at the conference, showing off her trim figure and speaking in a voice positively giddy with pride. She closed that appearance by singing, in perfect pitch, an (almost) a cappella version of "I Can Hear Music" - her music director sat nearby and softly played acoustic guitar. 

Among the other "unsung" women who made appearances at the Stomp were Barbara Lynn, the left-handed guitarist and blues/R&B singer whose  "You'll Lose a Good Thing" was an evocative hit in 1962; the mysterious Wendy Rene, once a Stax recording artist; and the soul singer Gloria Jones (pictured below) The latter, who spoke at the conference but did not perform in concert, told her fascinating story of moving from a religious, supportive family in Cincinnati to being Marc Bolan's lover/musical collaborator (and mother of his son Rolan) during T. Rex's Glam Rock heyday. (She did not mention the auto accident that killed Bolan and severely injured her.)

Along the way, she recorded the original "Tainted Love," performed in a weird musical adaptation of Othello called Catch My Soul with Dr. John and Jerry Lee Lewis, became a Motown songwriter who co-penned Gladys Knight & the Pips' "If I Were Your Woman," and much more. Her interviewer, Los Angeles Times critic Ann Powers, played a snippet of a 1973 album that Jones recorded for Motown, Share My Love, featuring intricately adventurous arrangements from the label's Paul Riser. It sounded like a lost gem - an "unsung" masterpiece.

Jones also had a funny comment about how she and Bolan dealt with any possible racial tensions arising from their affair.  He was an ostentatious dresser who favored long hair, mascara and feather boas in public. She recalled consoling her nervous father. "I said, ‘Dad, you don't have to worry. When we walk through an airport, people think it's two girls.'"

One woman upstaged almost everyone else - women and men - at this year's Stomp: Sugar Pie DeSanto (above). A Chess Records' recording acts in the 1960s, she never reached Etta James-level stardom but had a few R&B hits - "Soulful Dress," "Slip-In Mules." Those were 45 or so years ago, so who knew what to expect when DeSanto walked on stage Saturday night?

Now 74, and so tiny she looked frail, DeSanto at first seemed to be wandering on stage. Her flowing and spangled low-cut dress, with a plunging neckline and partially open back, seemed ready to fall right off her. For awhile, she had on a gold hat, from which a long gray-white ponytail protruded. And she quickly kicked off her shoes in order to do her free-spirited act barefoot. The audience was tense - even the house band, led by the seasoned Lil Buck Sinegal, was nervous. Did she know where she was? What she was doing? 

DeSanto only slowly revealed her mastery of her act. She sang her blues and soul tunes with commanding, expressive theatricality. And she kept the crowd guessing. At times, she snapped orders like a dominatrix - "I told you, I rule this band," she said, giving the musicians instructions on how to play.  Other times, she smiled to let everyone know she was having fun.

She brought a scared, reluctant audience member on stage by pulling his arm so hard it seemed she'd snap it off. She then leaped onto him during a song, her small body showing its strength and flexibility. In fact, she was so supple she appeared to do a backwards somersault at one point. It was a performance to be remembered, and as word gets around we might find her playing increasingly high-profile gigs. Or maybe appear in a  Super Bowl ad with Abe Vigoda.

Ponderosa Stomp had plenty of male acts - too many to mention everyone. And some of them, to say the least, were "unsung." Where else could someone like rockabilly singer Huelyn Duvall (above, with Eve Menses Buck) get a worshipful, loving reception after being introduced as "the guy who shouted ‘Tequila' in the Champs' 1958 ‘Tequila?'" Harmonica player Lazy Lester, whose Excello Records release "Ponderosa Stomp" gave the event its name, also did a set and could be seen around the fest wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with a picture of his famous 45-rpm single.

Tommy Brown, a heavyset and dapper 79-year-old Atlanta-based singer out of the Big Joe Turner rockin' jump-blues tradition, electrified the crowd Friday night with exuberantly performed songs like his still-timely "Double Faced Deacon." Also a comedian, he caught folks unawares by confiding he had just lost his wife. As people quieted down out of respect and sadness, he added, "Her husband just got out of jail."

The 73-year-old Young (Obediah) Jessie, whose 1954 R&B hit "Mary Lou" has been heavily covered, may now technically be an Old Jessie, but his voice was spry and strong on Saturday as he sang that song, "I Smell a Rat" and "Hit, Git and Split" with guitarist Deke Dickerson and his Eccofonics offering support. They also helped Jessie on the infectious "Young Blood," which he had recorded during a short involvement with the Coasters.

After DeSanto, the festival's second-biggest surprise was a Dallas singing group called the Relatives (above), who performed on Friday with their own heavily percussive backing band. This group, which was formed in 1970 and released a few singles, takes the Temptations' "psychedelic soul" as a starting point but pushes it much further into gospel territory. The songs are sweaty, danceable workouts - and the House of Blues damn near shook from the people shaking to the beat. But the songs also served as emotional, politically charged pleas for change - "Speak to Me," a Vietnam-era cry that asks "What's wrong with America,'' seems bitterly relevant today. After the set, for the next two days, people were trying to buy an LP of reissued Relatives material that a label called Heavy Light was selling, but they were in short supply.

Ponderosa Stomp takes a generous approach to honoring rock's various American roots and tributaries. Not just blues, rockabilly and C&W, but also garage, surf, and early instrumental-rock. To that end, it presented Thee Midniters and  the Trashmen on Friday, and headliner Duane Eddy on Saturday. All of these were good as far as it went, but lacked the sense of revelation and transcendence of genre that the best performances had. (Thee Midniters, the garage-rock band from East L.A., didn't lead singer Little Willie G.)

 Eddy, the twangy "boss guitar" innovator whose use of vibrato and bass strings on hit instrumentals like "Rebel Rouser," "Movin' and Groovin,'" and "Peter Gunn" earned him top billing, drew audience respect as an "elder statesmen" of rock. And his playing of his beautiful Gretsch guitar with its Bigsby vibrato whammy bar was self-assured. But his set came off more like a master class - with short introductions between each song - than a stomp, and ultimately was too subdued to end a big night.

For those who stayed in New Orleans Sunday night, there was a looser party-like show at a bar called One Eyed Jacks. It opened with a departure - a set by a young British act, Jim Jones Revue, that combined keyboard-heavy rockabilly, punk, R&B, guitar-thrashing hard rock and Nick Cave-style vocal melodrama into something new and exciting.  But it also would have been something much better appreciated by an audience not so knowing about the band's roots.

Then came the A-Bones, a neo-garage band featuring Norton Records' Billy Miller on  vocals and Miriam Linna on drums. The latter looked deliriously happy, yelping and howling to the tunes as she saw fit. The A-Bones (named after a Trashmen single) were the perfect post-Stomp chaser, sticking around to help Flamin' Groovies singer Roy Loney and guitarist Cyril Jordan do a set.

Stomp, primarily organized by music-loving New Orleans physician Ira "Dr. Ike" Padnos, has become a non-profit foundation with a close relationship to Cleveland's Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.  The latter's president, Terry Stewart, came to New Orleans during Stomp to dedicate a plaque outside Cosimo Matassa's old recording studio (now a laundromat), where musicians like Fats Domino, Dave Bartholomew and Little Richard recorded key early-rock songs.

Meanwhile, Ponderosa Stomp Foundation is developing new year-round programs, especially in Louisiana, to further promote rock's "unsung heroes." It has gone on the road, presenting shows in New York and Memphis, and at home has collaborated with the Louisiana State Museum - site of the conference - on an excellent exhibit called "Unsung Heroes: The Secret History of Louisiana Rock ‘n' Roll."

Really, it's getting to the point that being an "unsung hero" of rock ‘n' roll is much cooler, much hipper, than being a star.