Past, Present and Future

Little Red 1980s & 1990s
Little Red 2000 & Later
Little 1960s & 1970s

Little Red 1980s & 1990s

Little Red brought Zydeco and New Orleans R&B to Washington, DC!

Yes, it was Little Red who brought Zydeco and New Orleans R&B to Washington, DC back in the 1970s!  He moved from New Orleans to Washington, DC in 1977 and is still a resident of the District of Columbia. 

Here’s the tale from the very beginning: Little Red (Tom Corradino) was born in New York State. His parents owned a restaurant that was a favorite stopping place for many on-the-road entertainers. He was fascinated by the music he heard in the restaurant and at home and family gatherings.  He loved the full, sonorous, driving sound of all the instruments, and especially the accordions, as they roared out the swing tunes, polkas, and ballads of the early postwar era. He asked his parents for an accordion, and started playing at the age of six. Little Red soon picked up other instruments. He moved to the guitar, then the bass, then the piano. He played in fledgling Rock & Roll bands in the 1950s, mastering the early Rock & Roll repertoire and the art of entertaining a crowd of dancing people. Before long the young Little Red became a fan of Zydeco, honky tonk piano, and the early Rhythm & Blues of the JFK era.

Little Red played music through college. He earned a degree in TV/Radio Production from the Newhouse School at Syracuse University. In 1968 he was a founding member of Bad Medicine, a band that played music ranging from Zydeco to blues and rhythm & blues to James Brown and created the funk hit “Trespasser.” Given their musical style and outlook, Bad Medicine was the region’s opening act of choice for national acts such as Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, Lightnin' Hopkins, Bob Seger and Mitch Ryder. 

A history of Bad Medicine:

Look at “Top 10 Funk Records,” Bad Medicine’s Trespasser is number two!

Magazine coverage of Bad Medicine in the music journal Wax Poetics: http://waxpoetics.com/issues/issue_6/

Recently the Bad Medicine hit instrumental “Trespasser” was sampled by the pop band Limp Bizkit and turned into a song on their album “The Unquestionable Truth, Pt. 1.”  Original 45 rpm copies of Trespasser sell for well over $200 in the collector market, and the song has been reissued several times.  It’s on an English CD, :”Funk Spectrum III,” produced by BBE, and on the CD “Funky 16 Corners,” by Stonesthrow.  Stonesthrow has also repressed Trespasser as a 45.

 In 1976 Little Red moved to New Orleans where he spent nearly every night looking over the shoulders of the greats and learning how they made their music work: Professor Longhair, Clifton Chenier, Rockin’ Dopsie, James Booker, the Meters, Doctor John, and countless others.  This time living in the Crescent City really set the mold for Little Red’s future musical adventures. 

Little Red moved again in 1977, this time to Washington, DC.  He arrived at the perfect moment, just in time to be a part of the classic era of the Washington Rock scene anchored by fabulous clubs like the 9:30 Club, the Twist & Shout, the Psychedelly, the Wax Museum and DC Space.

In 1983 Little Red joined Rockabilly pioneer Tex Rubinowitz’s hot band, a seminal group that helped spawn the Rockabilly Revival. http://koti.mbnet.fi/wdd/texrubinowitz.htm

 In this same time period--the early 1980s--Little Red also played keyboards with the Les Pachas Band of Haiti, a band that had moved to DC from Haiti to escape the political turmoil then engulfing the island. Les Pachas had hits in the Haitian music scene and played up and down the East Coast. From Les Pachas he absorbed the intricate rhythms of Haitian Compas music.  He also made appearances with DC roots-rockers Johnny Bombay and the Reactions.  Sometimes he played under the billing of The Tremors. 

In the midst of all this musical activity, Little Red also played Zydeco and New Orleans R&B gigs under his own name.  He mixed interpretations of classic Gulf Coast music with original material that took those roots and expanded it in a new and audience-pleasing direction.  The crowd response to Little Red’s early eighties outings was so strong that in 1982 he formed his own band, organized to play his own music.  This new group was Little Red & the Renegades. Little Red & the Renegades appealed to a wide ranging audience that included Louisiana music fans, blues fans, roots rock people and the Swing and Cajun dance crowd.

For eleven solid years during the high-water period of the Washington music scene Little Red & the Renegades led a charmed life. The group kept an intense schedule, playing constantly at venues ranging from the Kennedy Center and the Smithsonian to tiny (but very hip) honky tonks all around the East Coast and down into Texas. The band introduced Zydeco and Cajun dance music to the Washington area.  Dance instructors Beverly Fleisher, Mark Greenleaf, Mike Hart, Sharon Sharillo, Beth Grupp and others taught countless swing dancers and folk dancers the fun moves of Louisiana’s one-steps and two-steps.  In 1992 the group released the critically-acclaimed, WAMA Award-winning CD, “Squeeze-Box Rock and Roll.”  To hear a cut, click here.  After one final monster-sized gig for Al and Tipper Gore at the Vice President’s Residence in 1993, Little Red & the Renegades took a year-long break from performing. Little Red then resumed his career, cutting back his schedule somewhat to festivals, private parties, and an occasional club outing.

Today, Little Red performs in a variety of settings ranging from solo, to a small group to an expanded big band.  He has been a featured performer with well-known regional bands such as Squeeze Bayou http://users.rcn.com/fredfeinstein/squeeze/ , The Grandsons http://grandsons.com/index.shtml , and Zydeco Train with Jimmy Cole.  He continues to write new and highly original material and to adopt songs from Zydeco, pop, blues, and jazz into his own unique style.  He hasn’t slowed down a bit and the stage can barely hold him once he gets rocking. 

Many musicians have performed with Little Red & the Renegades over the years.  Here’s the current group: 

Little Red – vocals, accordion, piano, guitar
Dave Petersen – bass, vocals
Harry Rado – guitar, bass, vocals
Jon Danforth – drums
Alan MacEwen – trumpet
Chris Watling – saxophone
Carol Arthur – steel pans, clarinet

 
Gentry 1983
Al & Tipper Gore swing dance

Takoma Park Folk Festival 1988

Little Red now

Bad Medicine

1973

More Pictures of Little Red and the Renegades

Bayou 1989

Grog & Tankard mid-1980s

Texas 1993

1970

 Pictures of Little Red and the Renegades performance at 2208 Mardi Gras night dance at Glen Echo