Victory Mixture - Origins of Victory Mixture

Origins of Victory Mixture

In 1988, Willy DeVille relocated from New York to New Orleans. He told Leap in the Dark: "I was tired of being 'Willy DeVille,' walking out of my building and having to be the guy who was up on stage all the time, even when I wasn't performing. I wanted to get away from that. So I got down there (to New Orleans) and it was if this famous guy had come to town, and I didn't want that. So I decided to do an album with a bunch of the musicians from down there, the music of New Orleans."

DeVille told Sheila Rene about the beginnings of Victory Mixture:

A friend of mine (Carlo Ditta) who owns Orleans Records here in New Orleans approached me with the idea of working with him on a Delta record, a blues record where you just play acoustic and do what you want to do. There's so much good material here in New Orleans from the early 50s and 60s, and he still had a box of 45s. We went through them, and there were all these hit records that weren't hit records; maybe regional hits by artists from New Orleans. I picked out the stuff that worked with my voice.

I got all the original guys to come back in, like Earl King, Dr. John and Eddie Bo. Allen Toussaint played side piano. I brought in the rhythm section of The Meters on a couple of cuts. We call it the "little" record. It's funny, because I was just trying to get them money, the writers of the songs, 'cause they all got ripped off in the 50s and 60s. They were all fascinated, and Dr. John convinced them that they wouldn't get ripped off by this northern white boy. That's when I crossed over to being a local here in New Orleans.

We were all pleased with it. It's recorded the way it was originally done back then. It's live with no overdubs anywhere, no digital, no editing. We played the song several times and just picked the best take...the one that was the most natural.

Producer Carlo Ditta described the birth of the album this way:

Back in New Orleans I got the word that Willy DeVille was living in town and asking after me. I showed up with my latest CDs, including my Guitar Slim, Jr. Grammy nomination, and convinced him that I needed to produce a reverse-crossover roots record on him. I played him a bunch of my old New Orleans R&B 45s, including sides by Ernie K-Doe, Earl King, Irma Thomas, Huey Smith and the Pitter Pats, Oliver Morgan, and Champion Jack Dupree, and with the help of Allen Toussaint, Dr. John, Leo Nocentelli, George Porter, Kerry Brown and a host of other local talent, we crafted an album at Sea Saint Studios titled Victory Mixture. I licensed it to my old friend, Phillippe LeBras, and he put it out in France on his new label, Sky Ranch. It sold over 100,000 units in Europe very quickly—our first gold disc.