Wow! Here's an idea whose time has more than come: Jazz on the Tube, "the internet's jazz video juke box." Click here to watch Bud Powell, the greatest jazzman to ever tickle the ivories. You will not believe Bud's hands. Thanks to the New Orleans New Ladder for this one!...
I don't think it's quite fair to condemn the whole program because of a few holes. There's only so much a Corps of Engineers can do...
A tired poet spends the night in the car park at ThoorBallylee, the gaunt Clare tower where Yeats made his home from 1916-1928. "Then just the noise of a windy western night, the body of the car being buffetted by the gusts, and, briefly, the sneeze of a fox. I also heard a loud crack, as if a branch had broken in the wind ('a pear tree broken')..."
I lay no claim to understanding the tortured politics and history of the Middle East. But I find this sort of obvious propaganda to be racist, offensive, and insulting to anyone's intelligence. It's a mystery to me why the Washington Post continues to give a forum to this guy...
A couple of new Citizen K. features: The quote at the top is the first line of a notable book, essay, poem, play, or screenplay. You are welcome to submit your guess as a comment. (Foxessa, no fair guessing this one!) At some random time, I'll put the answer on a sidebar and change the quote. Also, I've changed the NOLA links to reflect a month-by-month calendar of the festivals, parties, and happenings in the Crescent City. It promises to be a long list...
"You can make it [prostitution] illegal, but you can't make it unpopular."
-Tom Behrman, Mayor of New Orleans, 1917.
In 1897, the city fathers of New Orleans legalized prostitution in a small quadrant of the city bordering the northwest edge of the French Quarter. As the relevant legislation was written by alderman Sidney Story, the area became known as Storyville. Establishments ranged from squalid "cribs" to regal Victorian-style bordellos. A Louisiana politician named Tom Anderson, known as the "Mayor of Storyville," presided over the district from a cafe named after himself. The photographer E. J. Bellocq immortalized Storyville with his moving and humane portraits of the prostitutes who lived and worked there. (Louis Malle told Bellocq's story in his 1978 film Pretty Baby, with Keith Carradine, Susan Sarandon, and Brooke Shields.) Prostitution stayed legal in Storyville until 1917, when the federal government insisted that it be outlawed to protect the morals and delicate sensibilities of the thousands of servicemen flocking to the Crescent City after the United States entered World War I. Today, the bordellos are long gone, replaced by a collection of housing projects and part of Louis Armstrong Park. But during that twenty years, Storyville not only became a part of New Orleans lore, it functioned as a hothouse for the development of jazz.
A great source of Storville history, personalities, and lore is the 1978 book Storyville, New Orleans: Being an Authentic, Illustrated Account of the Notorious Red-Light District, by Al Rose. It's still in print and available from amazon.com. You can even look inside.
The forgotten 1947 film New Orleans includes an imagining of Storyville's last night, in which Billie Holiday and Louis Armstrong perform "Farewell To Storyville" and lead an exodus of jazz musicians, rounders, and prostitutes from the famed red-light district:
And on a completely unrelated matter, this one goes out to Sarah P.:
Foxessa takes advantage of a New York Times article about post-Katrina documentaries to discuss the phenomena of "Katrina fatigue." I'm reminded of having to read Kierkegaard in a philosophy class. Old Soren is tough sledding to say the least, and the class was restive. The professor asked how many of us thought that Kierkegaard was unimportant and would just as soon move on to something else. Almost everyone in the class raised his or her hand. The professor sat back, crossed his arms, and told that Kierkegaard was important and that he was going to talk about Kierkegaard until we agreed.
Well, damn it, Katrina is important. You can bet that every one of our fellow Americans who lived through it are more fatigued than the rest of us are, but they can't escape it. It may seem odd that a blogger in the Pacific Northwest who has never lived in New Orleans keeps ragging on it. Hell, sometimes it seems odd to me. But what happened in New Orleans has meaning to us all, as does what continues to happen and not happen.
Katrina represents a complete and abject failure of the decades-long federal policy of paying for a defense establishment at the expense of our own crumbling infrastructure.
Katrina represents a complete and abject failure of the philosophy of letting the states handle everything so that wealthy conservatives can give themselves a tax rebate.
Katrina represents the complete and abject failure of the Army Corps of Engineers, entrusted with damn and levee maintenance all over the country.
Katrina represents a complete and abject failure of the notion that this country is above the problems of class.
Katrina represents a complete and abject failure of the claim that we have moved beyond the problems of race.
Above all, Katrina represents a complete and abject failure of the operative definition of freedom in this country, which has devolved to the concept that freedom means acquiring as much as you can and doing whatever you want to with it while avoiding any responsibility for the common welfare.
Katrina also represents an institutional disdain for the history of our country. New Orleans is fantastically important in that regard. a point that one rarely sees mentioned in any article about Katrina. New Orleans is one of the oldest cities in America, filled with architectural treasures. The music you listen to and the recipes you consume likely have roots in New Orleans. It's a part of us whether we know it or not.
Katrina could represent a triumph of local, state, and federal coordination and action.
Katrina could represent a triumph of leadership.
Katrina could represent a triumph of community, the community of Americans unwilling to permit the loss of a great city.
It's a long way from representing any of those things and it likely never will. It definitely won't happen if we cave into Katrina fatigue and still our voices...
"Now, music was different in New Orleans because they taught you to play your instrument just like a good songster. You had to get out what was inside you."
-Hyppolite Charles, in an interview 1957
Premium T. spent yesterday afternoon going through boxes in her other house. She brought home a gem, a 1963 revision of a book originally published in 1958 called Jazz New Orleans (1885-1963): A Index to the Negro Musicians of New Orleans (Samuel B. Charters). For me, obscure reference books are among life's pleasures and this one is a real treasure. Divided by era, each part contains an introduction, brief biographies of the important musicians of that time, a summary of the brass bands and orchestral groups, and addenda. The eras are 1885-1889, 1899-1919, 1919-1931, and 1931 onward. Here's the complete table of contents:
1885-1899
Introduction
The Downtown Musicians
The Uptown Musicians
The Brass Band and Orchestral Groups
Addenda
1899-1919
Introduction
Biographies of the Musicians
The Brass Band and Orchestral Groups
Addenda
1919-1931
Introduction
Biographies of the Musicians
The Brass Band and Orchestral Groups
Addenda
1931
Introduction
Biographies of the Musicians
The Brass Band and Orchestral Groups
Addenda
Discographical Appendix
Introduction: First Period
Discography: First Period
Some Recent Revival Revordings
An Appendix: Some New Source Material On The Beginnings of Jazz in New Orleans
Index To Names Of Musicians
Index To Names Of Bands
Index Halls, Cabarets, Theatres, etc. In New Orleans
Index Of Tune Titles
Index To Addenda Sections
Jazz New Orleans also includes a small but wonderful photo section, primarily of bands and venues, as well as an 1895 map of "The Delta Country."
Who was Hyppolite Charles? He was a cornet player from St. Martinville, Louisiana, born April 18, 1891 (Patriots' Day in New England, April 18 being the anniversary of Paul Revere's Ride). Charters has this to say about Hyppolite's formative years:
"Charles' father was a school teacher, and he encouraged Hyppolite to study music. When he learned that Hyppolite was playing in saloons in the neighborhood he punished him and sent him to New Orleans to study with competent teachers. Hyppolite came to New Orleans in 1908, when he was 17, and began studying with Eugene Moret, the brother of George Moret, leader of the Excelsior Brass Band. Eugene was passing for white, and played with most of the white bands in the city. Within a year Hyppolite was good enough to work for [Manuel] Perez at a little dance hall at Dauphine and Elysian Fields where Perez was working three nights a week."
Now, can you imagine being 17 and -- as part of your punishment -- being sent to 1908 New Orleans on a subsidized trip to learn the cornet? I'm trying, and all I can say is that Old Man Charles had some exceptionally advanced notions of parenting. Anyway, the second paragraph includes an anecdote that illustrates just how much Hyppolite had matured as a musician:
"[By 1911,] Hyppolite had begun playing parades with the Excelsior Jazz Band, but he was playing a parade in the Quarter and stumbled over a rock at the corner of Esplanade and Decatur, cutting his lip. After this, he wouldn't play a parade with a band that read music. He played with the tuxedo brass band so he could watch where he was going."
The final paragraph of the entry concludes with an account of Charles' life after jazz:
"In August, 1925, after a Sunday afternoon tea dance, Hyppolite collapsed with a ruptured spleen. He was in bed over a year, and was not allowed to play again. He sold life insurance in New Orleans until 1940, when he turned his accounts over to Peter Bocage and returned to St. Martinville to take over a grocery store that his father had been running. He has done well in business and is living quietly outside of St. Martinville."
In three paragraphs of unexceptional prose sharpened by an eagle eye for the precisely right detail, Charters conveys a deep love and respect for the milieu and the people. He's able to land the wondering reader alongside Hyppolite Charles in the most important and fertile period of American music, a time of passing for white, of early jazz parades, and of a boy musician methodically building his skills and gaining the respect of his peers to the point that he could turn down work. By the end of the entry, I could imagine Charles quietly tending his store, a respected member of a small community entertaining his customers with tales of Uptown and Downtown at a time when they were jazz' Babylon...
Posts
