Why do we like Mardi Gras music? The answer may seem obvious: We need songs to party to, tunes for good times. That’s true, but there’s a deeper reason why an inane ditty like "Second Line" will bring a smile to a local’s face: It reminds him or her of carefree days of youth.

  It’s been said that childhood experiences resonate the most deeply through one’s life. For many, hearing "Mardi Gras Mambo" for the thousandth time will trigger happy memories of being hoisted by Mommy and Daddy atop a ladder to get a glimpse of Rex, or prompt recollections of sinking baby choppers into that tenth piece of king cake in l963. You can’t do that now without a twinge of guilt, but music can remind of you of those wonderful days when you could blissfully eat whatever you wanted, at least on Mardi Gras day.

  Growing up in St. Louis, I didn’t hear any Carnival music until my adulthood. I don’t have pleasant childhood emotional attachments, and that’s a pity. On the other hand, perhaps I can be a little more detached in discussing Mardi Gras music that I’ve heard (and played) every year now for almost 20 seasons.

  Never having been a debutante, "If Ever I Cease to Love" holds no appeal for me. "Second Line" (not Paul Barbarin’s "Second Line" but Joe Avery’s "Second Line," which sounds like a slowed-down "Rock Around the Clock") I never need to hear or play again. "Mardi Gras Mambo" I used to like – I still admire the late Morris Bachemin’s sax solo – but I think I’ve heard that one enough by now as well. "Mardi Gras in New Orleans" is good and fine, but Professor Longhair certainly cut more interesting things. That leaves – may I have the envelope please … Al Johnson’s "Carnival Time" as my fave.

  One of the best things about "Carnival Time" is that hardly anyone covers it! This time of year you can hardly go out without hearing a lame cover of the other tunes just mentioned, but you very rarely hear "Carnival Time," and this keeps the original a little fresher. If you can’t hear good music, the next best thing is avoiding bad music.

  It’s "Carnival Time"’s very unusual form that keeps it safe from the assaults of most drunken cover bands this time of year. Many Mardi Gras tunes and a lot of pop music that you don’t think of as "blues," like early rock, is in 12-bar blues form. If you only absorb one dollop of music theory in your life, let it be this breakdown of the classic 12-bar blues:

The "One," or tonic chord (F, in "Carnival Time") for four bars;

Two bars of the "Four" (subdominant) chord, B-flat in this instance;

Two more bars of the One chord;

Two bars of the "Five" (dominant) or C;

Two bars of the One to round it off.

It sounds mildly complicated, but you’ve heard this form 10,000 times, believe me; you’re just not used to thinking of music in terms of form. After a two-bar intro, Johnson sings the opening four bars: "The Green Room is smoking and the Plaza’s burning down/ Throw my baby out the window and let those joints burn down." Then things get strange. Instead of going straight to the four chord, Johnson interjects an extra half-measure on "All because it’s" (actually an extra two-beats on the syllables "cuh-uhs it’s"). Inserting half-measures was not an uncommon thing in early Delta blues, where solo guitarist/pianist singers didn’t have to worry about sidemen or dancers following. But in later blues-based forms, it’s pretty rare, Professor Longhair excepted.

  The strangeness continues. Not only does Johnson add a half-measure, he chops off the last measure of what would be a 12 1/2-measure chorus, and brings back the intro for two bars. So you can call the first chorus 13 1/2 bars, or 11 1/2 bars with a two-bar interlude, whichever you like. The second stanza is 11 1/2 bars, without the two-bar intro/interlude. Then, beginning on "Right now it’s," there’s an eight 1/2-bar chorus, really a 12 1/2-bar chorus but with the first four bars omitted. An eight-bar sax solo follows this. The two-bar intro/interlude returns, then a 12 1/2-bar final vocal chorus, and an instrumental fade-out of about five bars.

  So instead of a string of potentially forgettable 12-bar choruses, we get a series of odd-numbered, unpredictable units. Processing form is a subconscious endeavor. You don’t say to yourself, "My, what a pleasantly asymmetrical form this song has," but it does register on some level. For years, I knew something was pleasingly awry with this tune, but didn’t realize how odd it was until I charted it out.

  What other charms hath "Carnival Time" other than singular form? Well, what about the way Johnson sings the words of the title: "Car-ni-val Tie-ah-ah-ah-AH-IIIIMMME." It’s not quite notey enough to be called melismatic, like Aaron Neville’s gospel flutterings, but it’s certainly memorable. There are several rhythmic irregularities with the lyric, instances with too many syllables crammed together ("throw the baby," "about to smother," "we can get together"), but Johnson belts them out smoothly, along with those odd half-measures, like there was no other way it could have been.

  I’m not prepared to offer a thorough exegesis about the lyric. I will note that the Green Room and the Plaza were clubs of yore. The dadaesque throw-my-baby-out-the-window nuttiness certainly suits the season. Any implication that "joints burn[ing] down" may refer to marijuana is a gross slander against all upstanding Crescent City musicians. But it’s the song’s form that makes it memorable.

  And according to James Rivers, whose blues-drenched sax solo brings a heightened edge to the middle of the tune, this form made the song hard to record. "We must have done 30 takes!" he says, adding that the other sidemen were more or less producer Eddie Bo’s band at the time: Placide Adams on bass, Joe Morris on guitar, Bo on piano, Walter Lastie on drums, Robert Parker on second saxophone.

  For many years, Johnson was denied royalties on this greatest of Carnival anthems. To rectify this, purchase his newly reissued "Carnival Time," paired with a new original, "Mardi Gras Strut," on a CD single for (gulp!) $9.95. Think of it as deferred payment for the background music for all that king cake-eating and (just possibly) joint-burning.