Names and faces
■ Keith Richards is so old-school that when he does his interviews, he does them using a landline. The Rolling Stones icon isn’t a fan of technology. Years ago he admitted to not owning an iPod and today he’s likely one of the few people who hasn’t downloaded Zoom during the pandemic. And he still doesn’t own a cellphone. “I’m not at all hooked in any high-tech internets,” he says. “I’m talking to you from on a landline. Why would I want a [cell] phone? You crazy?” The 76-year-old rocker has been home for a full year now — a first for Richards, he reveals. He, Mick Jagger, Ronnie Wood and Charlie Watts wrapped part of their No Filter Tour in August 2019, and they had plans to hit the road again in May 2020, but things changed after the coronavirus outbreak. While some performers in their seventies fear the pandemic is preventing them from hitting the road, Richards isn’t too concerned, saying “I can’t say I feel like a year has been stolen. I’ll just make up for it later.” On Friday, Richards is releasing a limited edition box set of his 1988 concert at the Hollywood Palladium recorded during his first solo tour. In the show, done in support of “Talk Is Cheap,” his first solo album also released in 1988, he’s backed by The X-Pensive Winos, a group of players who included drummer Steve Jordan, guitarist Waddy Wachtel, bassist Charley Drayton, keyboard player Ivan Neville and singer Sarah Dash. Richards admits being the bandleader allowed him to fully understand what it was like to wear Jagger’s shoes: “I learned so much about what Mick’s job is — about being the frontman. That opened my eyes to it.”
■ Grammy Award-winning New Orleans trumpet player Irvin Mayfield and his musical partner, pianist Ronald Markham, each pleaded guilty Tuesday to a conspiracy to commit fraud charge stemming from their time with a charitable foundation that raised money for libraries. Prosecutors said the two men steered more than $1.3 million from the New Orleans Public Library Foundation to themselves, largely by funneling it through the New Orleans Jazz Orchestra, which Mayfield founded. Money also went through another nonprofit, the Youth Rescue Initiative, on which Mayfield served as a board member, according to the indictment. Each faces up to five years in prison when they are sentenced on Feb. 9 by U.S. District Judge Jay Zainey, who accepted their guilty pleas to a charge of conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud. Mayfield, a founding member of the Afro-Caribbean jazz ensemble Los Hombres Calientes, won a Grammy in 2010 along with the New Orleans Jazz Orchestra for the album “Book One.” He resigned as artistic director of the orchestra in 2016. Neither Mayfield nor Markham spoke to reporters.