Delirious New Orleans

by Stephen Verderber

  The hip-hop “Slack” mural on the façade of King’s Fashion, on Jackson near South Claiborne, Uptown, conceived and painted in a blaze of fury in 2004, became little more than a backdrop for the widely publicized looting and destruction wrought in many neighborhoods after Katrina (Fig. 3.17). The smoking muzzle of the automatic assault rifle held in this hooded street warrior’s hand cast an ominous pall over the scene. What was once a nondescript masonry block wall was transformed into a violent narrative of street life. The hiphop cognoscenti embedded murals such as this and the one at the Jackson Avenue grocery with similarly charged, coded meanings that were generally not intended for widespread consumption, i.e., not meant for whites, or NWA (no whites allowed). Regardless of the message and its intended audience, the buildings themselves were often transformed into sophisticated works of urban folk architecture fully in keeping with Glassie’s definition.

  3.16: Mural on the side of Jackson Grocery, 2005 (preKatrina).

  3.17: “Slack” mural on King’s Fashion, Jackson Avenue, 2005 (post-Katrina).

  Black Mardi Gras and Placemaking

  Carnival permeates the air and is a main reason why so many persons across all walks of life and all races choose to live in New Orleans. The pageantry of Carnival season is captured in murals in the black neighborhoods. A mural at the now-abandoned (and since demolished) C. J. Peete/Magnolia housing project depicts the events of high Carnival, and particularly those occurring on Fat Tuesday. Second liners, marching brass bands, food, and the Mardi Gras Indian processions through the streets of the neighborhood are collaged. It is located at Washington and Magnolia, inscribed in the lower-left corner “ReF.P.—Dec. The Legend Lives, 2800.” From left to right, the mural depicts a second liner twirling a beaded umbrella, a Zulu parade marcher, a leader of the local street marching group, street revelers, and, at far right, a member of the Wild Magnolia Mardi Gras Indian tribe. Next to this figure, in the days after Katrina, someone spray-painted a plea: “Please Come Back” (Fig. 3.18).

  The mural painted on the side façade of Jazz Daiquiri’s, at South Claiborne and Louisiana Avenue, also aptly conveys the frenetic energy and syncopated rhythms of a street marching band. The figures, a percussionist with a big bass drum, a trumpet player, a sax player, a trombonist, and a tuba player, are shown parading in a loose formation. The five figures, all rendered as African Americans, are cleverly rendered as silhouettes against a white-walled backdrop, capturing the essence of street music processions (Fig. 3.19). Overall, this scene differs little from events ranging from Carnival second-line parades to jazz funerals. The jazz funeral itself is an internationally renowned New Orleans art form. This art form is depicted in one of the displays at the UCM Museum near New Orleans. In this miniaturized scene, a deceased musician’s casket is marched through the streets of the neighborhood to the nearby cemetery, accompanied by a brass marching band, friends and family, various second liners, and onlookers (Fig. 3.20). The jazz funeral is among the most sacrosanct, hallowed cultural traditions in a place where so many memorable moments in the rhythm of everyday life occur—in the street.

  3.18: Mural of second liners, abandoned C. J. Peete/Magnolia Project, Uptown, 2005 (post-Katrina). Demolished, 2008.

  Before Katrina, the built environment was being reborn yet again as a canvas for urban folk expression. An outdoor museum being created was to highlight proud moments in the long African American history of the city. The Claiborne Avenue underpass that runs the length of the Tremé and Seventh Ward neighborhoods was in the process of being transformed into a vibrant expression of vernacular folk art and architecture. The Seventh Ward is considered the quintessential Creole neighborhood in New Orleans. Many educated and accomplished people of color were born and raised there before the Civil War and throughout the time when the segregationist Jim Crow laws were in full force.

  3.19: Mural of a second-line brass marching band, Uptown, 2005 (post-Katrina).

  The Greater New Orleans Community Data Center (GNOCDC) notes that the Seventh Ward is opposite Esplanade Avenue from the Tremé. At one time it was the most prosperous African American business district in the entire country. The business district stretched along Claiborne Avenue from the Tremé into the Seventh Ward. In the 1960s, the area along Claiborne was deemed dispensable by the city, so it was destroyed to make way for the I-10 bypass behind the Vieux Carré. Four rows of beautiful mature live oak trees, over a mile long, were cleared from the neutral ground. Soon thereafter, the interstate heavy-handedly bisected the commercial strip. This act severely retarded future commerce and recreational activity in the area, and property values soon plummeted. Overnight, a once-prosperous area became undesirable. Homeowners moved away, and since homes were neither saleable nor rentable, abandonment ensued. Next, crime flourished. The irony of destroying a thriving neighborhood in order to facilitate faster access to the suburbs was not lost on the area’s remaining black residents.

  Although not as prosperous as at one time, this neighborhood remained identified with significant “social aid and pleasure” meeting halls devoted to specific groups of black professionals, mechanics, or skilled laborers, or to benevolent societies or clubs. These halls are still used for business and social functions. The GNOCDC notes that the Autocrat Club on St. Bernard Street was one of the liveliest, having offered fish fries on Fridays and dances every Saturday night before Katrina. Several historic halls, such as Perseverance Hall on Villere Street and Frances Amis Hall, served as community churches. Many second-line parades devote a portion of their parading to the harsh cement surroundings of the Claiborne underpass in memory of this once-important commercial area. Every year on Super Sunday, the Mardi Gras Indians parade through the Tremé and down Claiborne, converging down at Hunter’s Field in the Seventh Ward.19

  Of the changes along the Tremé end of the avenue since the nineteenth century, none was more devastating than the cutting down of the live oak trees on the neutral ground in the mid-1960s, because it extracted something out of the spirit of the neighborhood. People had for generations embraced each other there in the daily rituals of life, and old ladies came out to the neutral ground to socialize. The neutral ground had also been square one for the rituals of Black Mardi Gras each year.20 In 2003, local black artists on a mission to depict the people, places, and events that defined the area’s soul set out to paint the large circular cement pilings of the elevated freeway underpass. New Orleans artist and community organizer Richard Thomas stated: “We are hoping that the project is creating awareness and keeping hope alive that something will happen… . when the trees were taken away, there were studies done that the city paid for … but those things never happened. This project is bringing attention to the neglect and the disenfranchisement of people… . Artists have a responsibility to be the shaman, the healers, the bearers of consciousness.”21

  A Gambit Weekly cover story in 2004 described the mural project: an open-air art museum with nearly forty full-scale murals covering columns from the Orleans Avenue intersection down to Hunter’s Field. The column-gallery is shaded by the elevated interstate. This project, called “Restore the Oaks,” was commissioned by the African American Museum, located in the nearby Tremé neighborhood.22

  The murals collectively provide a glimpse into the world of Tremé, depicting everyday life without falling into the trap of nostalgia. Most local casual observers will easily recognize civil rights pioneer the Reverend Avery Alexander as well as a number of local musicians, including Jelly Roll Morton, one of the pioneers of jazz; Ernie K-Doe, who had a number one hit in the 1960s with his “Mother-in-Law”; and the legendary and highly influential rhythm-and-blues musician and singer Fats Domino (this last mural was painted by Fats’s cousin Atlantis Domino). Facing downtown from Orleans Avenue, the first block of columns focus on Carnival experiences held on that spot, since in the years before desegregation, black celebrants were generally banned from the Canal Street and St. Charles Avenue parade routes.

  Toots
Montana was the subject of one of the first murals. He is depicted in full dress with large, brightly colored feathers. Other murals portray a number of well-known African American Mardi Gras figures: the Zulu krewe, the Skeleton Gang, a group known as the Million Dollar Baby Dolls, and other notable groups and individuals. Local chefs Leah Chase and the late Austin Leslie are shown in impressive murals in the block between St. Ann and Dumaine streets. Damon Reed painted Mahalia Jackson’s mural. Local painter-teacher Prince painted a graphic rendition of a momentous event in the saga of the Freedom Riders. Near St. Philip Street, Johnny Payton painted a typical Sixth Ward house. In this mural, a horn player stands in the doorway of a house in homage to a time when there were musicians in nearly every household in the neighborhood. Music was the lifeblood of the community, and these musicians played at jazz funerals and many other neighborhood events. This tradition is memorialized in the neon sign of the Jazz Funeral nightclub on Bourbon Street (see inside cover): beneath the neon letters, a brass band is shown marching in the street at a funeral. Joy Ebel’s mural of brass-band players depicts a number of musicians from the past decades. For over two centuries, Tremé’s second-line parades proudly took to the streets to celebrate various social events in everyday urban life.

  The Claiborne mural project transformed a forlorn urban space into an outdoor enclosure, or room, its spatial qualities by definition quasi-architectural, since it provides sheltered protection from the elements. A harsh, inhospitable space was enlivened and significantly enhanced. In its totality, the setting became dramatic, even while temporarily used as a storage area for hundreds of uninsured flooded-out Katrina cars. In this regard, the pride expressed in the mural Freedom by Dwane Conrad (2002) stands in striking contrast to the flooded cars that surrounded it after Katrina (mural not pictured). The mural Front Porch Gossips by Labertha Dorensbourg McCormick (2003) depicts two ladies talking across the three-foot side lot separating their shotgun houses (Fig. 3.21).

  3.20: Jazz funeral diorama at the UCM Museum, 2006.

  3.21: Mural, Front Porch Gossips, Claiborne Underpass, Tremé, 2005 (post-Katrina).

  3.22: Mural of Mardi Gras Indians, Claiborne Underpass, Tremé, 2005 (post-Katrina).

  Nearby, other colorfully rendered murals depict Mardi Gras Indians celebrating on what had been grassy neutral ground (Fig. 3.22). In each, the glory of celebration is clearly evident. Carnival provides a chance for generally friendly social competition and turf assertion, and is open to everyone who seeks to be a part of it. Furthermore, it is seen as asserting a New Orleans ethos that sets the city and its people apart from the rest of the United States. The persistence of what has been termed black street Carnival—as distinct from black elite Carnival—dates from 1823 and the “great Congo-dance.” Here, the retention of African forms among African New Orleanians also continues to be clearly evident, as is their seizure of what otherwise would have become an exclusively white annual holiday. The late-nineteenth-century rise of the Mardi Gras Indians illustrated the power of the African–New Orleanian sensibility to purposefully and successfully integrate African elements into a unique African American social-folk art form.23

  New Orleans was never exclusively French, and its cultural traditions were therefore not the product of French culture alone. The most important reason for this was the large African population of the original city. Africans came to colonial Louisiana as early as 1719. By 1746, African and African-Creole citizens outnumbered white New Orleanians roughly two to one. These Africans, imported as slaves, were largely Bambaras from the interior of West Africa. Africans and African-Caribbeans adapted well to the European festivity of Carnival, and eventually would shape these influences into the rituals of an indigenous subculture all their own. Hence, the birth of jazz.24 In Sinful Tunes and Spirituals, Dena J. Epstein argues that this culture survived more nearly intact in New Orleans than anywhere else in mainland North America; only in Place Congo in New Orleans was the African tradition able to continue openly without fear of reprisal.25 For this reason, the city remained in spirit the most African of all cities in the United States.26

  In later years, the black population took advantage of Carnival to surreptitiously violate certain aspects of the stringent Jim Crow legal code and culture whenever possible. The Mardi Gras Indians, meanwhile, stuck largely to their own black neighborhoods. However, as far back as 1900, “respectable” white citizens worried that black people were boldly venturing into white areas of the city, particularly the central business district, to take part in white civic festivities. If Carnival helped break down forced segregation somewhat, it did little to end racism itself.27 And by the late twentieth century, white citizens would use Mardi Gras, including its black folk traditions, as symbols of the city’s racial harmony, despite any such claim’s variance from the truth.

  Urban folk architecture, New Orleans music, and the folk traditions of Mardi Gras powerfully converge at the Mother-in-Law Lounge on North Claiborne Avenue (at Columbus). This is the shrine to the late Ernie K-Doe, a flamboyant local musical legend who passed away in 2002. The lounge was purchased in 1995 and rechristened the Mother-in-Law Lounge, the name taken from his 1961 national number one hit of the same title. This two-level building houses a bar and a kitchen on the first level and an apartment on the second. In composition, it was not dissimilar from a camelback shotgun house. The exterior is covered with many murals painted by the artist David LeBatard (Fig. 3.23), who also muraled the exterior of Tee-Eva’s (see Part 2). The bright colors of the murals evoke the costumes of the Mardi Gras Indians who parade across the street in the former Claiborne neutral ground each year and on a few other special occasions. The building was transformed, in effect, into a folk-architecture shrine to the late musician and his flamboyant legacy.

  The mural on the east façade, by Fuslier, depicts K-Doe’s life story, from his birth at Charity Hospital (lower-left corner) to his marriage and his relationship with his family, including his infamous mother-in-law (center, and center-left). “I’m Cocky But I’m Cool,” one of his signature lines, is emblazoned at upper left. The eave proclaims, “A brave man is the one who walks in when the rest of the world walks out” (Fig. 3.24). The other side, nearest the main entrance, was painted with a mural by LeBatard, signed as LEBO, and was of Miss Pussycat and Quintron. Quintron is famed as the inventor of the Drum Buddy. Miss Pussycat is the owner and proprietor of Pussycat Caverns on Burgundy Street (Fig. 3.25). Quintron is shown holding his instrument while Pussycat second-lines.

  A bronze plaque placed on the building soon after K-Doe’s death reads as follows:

  THE ERNIE K-DOE

  MOTHER-IN-LAW LOUNGE

  Sponsored by:

  Marc H. Morial, Mayor

  The Music and Entertainment Commission of

  New Orleans

  Jackie Harris, Executive Director

  Badi Murphy, Chair

  3.23: Mother-in-Law Lounge, North Claiborne, 2005 (post-Katrina).

  3.24: The mural K-Doe’s Story, Mother-in-Law Lounge, 2005 (post-Katrina).

  3.25: Mural depicting Miss Pussycat and Quintron, Mother-in-Law Lounge, 2005 (post-Katrina).

  Besides “Mother-in-Law,” K-Doe’s other hits included “A Certain Girl,” “T’aint It the Truth,” and “Hello, My Lover.” From the 1990s until his death in 2002, K-Doe jump-started his career with indispensable help from his wife, Antoinette. This lounge was the hub of his comeback and a gathering place for fellow musicians.

  Ernie K-Doe was one of New Orleans’s most flamboyant characters. He called himself “Emperor of the World,” wore royal garb, and sought to be addressed as “emperor” wherever he went. K-Doe loved to meet and greet the public, and visitors to the Mother-in-Law Lounge were always welcomed with warmth, hospitality, and Antoinette’s delicious home-cooked food. Although Ernie K-Doe has left this realm, his fans keep his spirit alive.

  On Mardi Gras 2004, traditional Mardi Gras festivities returned to the Claiborne neutral ground. The Moth
er-inLaw Lounge was the epicenter for the event. Many of the iconic celebrants of the last forty years were there, including the Mardi Gras Indians (Chief Al Morris and Big Chief Alfred Doucet among them), the Baby Dolls, and Toots Montana. Well-known musicians, including the Baptiste family, performed as they marched through the Claiborne underpasscum-museum. Al Johnson performed “Carnival Time,” his 1960 hit and Mardi Gras anthem. The event was planned to reestablish the Claiborne neutral ground–underpass as the epicenter of the black folk-culture Mardi Gras. Montana recalled that “before they built that overpass on Claiborne, you would have all the maskers down here. Families would come and have picnics on sunny days on the neutral ground.” Antoinette K-Doe recalled coming with her family as a child: “We would see the Baby Dolls, the Indians, the Moss Man. It was just great.”28

  The name Antoine Dominique “Fats” Domino is synonymous around the world with New Orleans popular music and folk culture. He achieved much in his life through his recorded music in the genre of classic rhythm and blues (R&B) and early rock and roll as a singer, songwriter, and pianist. He sold more records during the 1950s and early 1960s than any other African American musician. His piano style was grounded in the blues, boogie-woogie, and stride piano. He created a signature style, and with his warm, sincere personality, he endeared himself to audiences worldwide. He was so deeply rooted in New Orleans that he never left to live in Los Angeles or other more “glamorous” places. His first hit, “The Fat Man,” sold over two million copies and peaked at number two on Billboard’s R&B charts. To date, Domino has sold more than 110 million records.29

  As styles and tastes changed in subsequent years and his popularity waned, Domino continued to record and tour, though less often than when he was at the height of his fame. In the 1980s, he decided he would no longer travel, since he was earning a comfortable income from royalties. In 2003, he was honored in the aforementioned column mural painted by his cousin, beneath the overpass on Claiborne Avenue. This mural depicts Fats while at the peak of his powers in the world of popular music. Everything about it is classic—the color palette reminiscent of a two-tone 1957 Chevy, Fats’s broad smile, his piano keyboard, and musical notes rendered with a spiritual reverence, symbolizing a joyous atmosphere filled with his upbeat, rollicking R&B melodies (Fig. 3.26).