It boggles the mind when you realise that the Brothers Neville haven been in the music business for more than 40 years. Although Aaron, Art, Charles and Cyril Neville didn’t start performing under the name The Neville Brothers until the end of the seventies, their individual ànd collective careers commenced in 1953. In that year Art started playing the piano in his high school band The Hawkettes. A year later the band recorded the single Mardi Gras Mambo, a song that has become the unofficial anthem of the Mardi Gras, of New Orleans’ carnival. In the meantime Aaron and Charles had already joined the band. The brothers had started working with producer Allen Toussaint and as a solo-artist Aaron scored hits like Over You and Tell It Like It Is. The founding in 1967 of the band Art Neville and the Sounds is generally seen as the first attempt to gather all brothers under one family name and after a few changes of personnel The Sounds could boast a rhythm section that later on would enjoy world fame under the name The Meters. 1977 is the official birth year of a group that first would be called The Neville Brothers Family Band, but soon was re-baptized The Neville Brothers. The Daniel Lanois produced album Yellow Moon (1989) yielding hits like With God On Our Side and Sister Rosa. In 2004, half a century after Mardi Gras Mambo and after five years of silence, The Neville Brothers released the autobiographical album Walkin’ In The Shadows Of Life.
