A large crowd was on hand, around Poydras and Saratoga streets, the cradle of dope, to watch the Baby Dolls do their stuff amid a “glory” that is somewhat shameful to an aristocratic eye but is good entertainment. Fancy-colored music boxes were playing while women and men danced gleefully.…
…Baby Irene merely said, “Lord today! Here is the man who is going to make our picture. I’d be sailing if it don’t be for Captain Jackson. What he’s got to do with it? The captain says if we come out masking he’s going put our black asses in the hoose. Lord today. Ain’t this something?” Another Baby Doll rushed from the corner to say, “Our fun is all fucked up.”
There were only three masked Baby Dolls present: their rusty legs peeped from under short, satin skirts which were tight around their posteriors. Masking was very light among some of the Baby Dolls for the first time in twenty years. One of the more peppery Baby Dolls said she didn’t give a damn what the Archbishop said she was going to mask, and she did so. This dishpan-faced Baby Doll must have been charged with a “weed” cigarette (she was certainly “togged” down in a short red skirt with a cowboy-like hat) because she left the scene literally walking on air, stating, “I’m going to the Tick Tock and I’m high as a kite.” Somebody chided, “You ain’t never get in no Tick Tock, that’s high class nigger winch.” The “chick” laughed, but changed her mind about going to the Tick Tock.
—Robert McKinney, March 19, 1940
THE MANY FACES OF THE BABY DOLLS
New Orleans author Harnett Kane captured one group of Baby Dolls that followed the District’s script. The other quotes that follow from Mercedes Stevenson, Allison Montana, and Miriam Batiste Reed reveal aspects of the masking tradition that have been overlooked and ignored. These non– District-related maskers recalled their neighbors having fun with the Baby Doll tradition and how it surfaced in mainstream Black communities as a way to make a statement about the importance of having fun and showing oneself off in a world that would otherwise belittle them.
How to enjoy it [Mardi Gras] best? Most New Orleanians would suggest that you be up early, about eight or so to see Zulu at the New Basin Canal and follow him for a time.… For early afternoon masking, the Orleanian will recommend the Canal Street business section.… You might try North Claiborne Ave. for the remarkable “Indians”—Negros in ornate and lavish disguise; or the “Baby Dolls”—dark girls of more than good will.
—Harnett Kane, Queen New Orleans: City by the River (New York:
William T. Morrow & Co., 1949)
When I was coming up, there were three ladies in our neighborhood who were best friends: Geneva Tapps, Martha Tapps, and Mozella masked as Baby Dolls. I use to watch them. They would be so much fun. They would be in those short dresses. They had bloomers underneath and they would pull their dresses up. We would follow them to the white bar room. The owner would open up the doors to them because it was Carnival. They would dance on the counter.
—Mercedes Stevenson, March 26, 2011, referring to late 1930s
and early 1940s Twelfth Ward, uptown
The first year we dressed my friends Caroline, Eloise, and I dressed in pants I sewed. Caroline’s color was pink, Eloise’s color was green, and mine was gold. We decided we weren’t going to do this next year. We decided to dress as Baby Dolls. Carol said “what are we going to do with our shoes?” We got a clear [material like a table cloth] and fixed them up. We made the bonnets from like a long time ago. We wore short dresses with a pinafore that had a bow in the back. We wore socks like the babies. Everybody would say, “Oh here come the baby dolls.”
—Mercedes Stevenson, March 26, 2011, referring to early 1970s
I’ve been making masks for more than forty years. I know how to make all the outfits. I can make the skeleton outfit, the baby doll outfit (with black shirts, pink blouses with puffed sleeves, black mask, a black whip, black boots). The men with the Baby Dolls would take two pairs of shoes and make one out of them so they’d be twice as long. I masked with the Baby Dolls about twice, and then I masked with the skeleton about three times before I masked Indians.
During my early years they had the Rosebud Social and Pleasure Club—women who use to mask. Even all the gay people use to mask. They dressed in women’s clothes, expensive lace and stockings. Men use to mask as women, and there were even women who would mask as men. The masks were made out of screen wire. The Million Dollar Babies were women who had money, ten, twenty, and fifty dollar bills in their stockings.
—Allison “Tootie” Montana, quoted in Michael Proctor Smith,
A Joyful Noise: A Celebration of New Orleans Music
(Dallas: Taylor Publications, 1990)
The Baby Dolls were started by the Batiste family. We were on the 1300th block of St. Phillip Street. Our house was called the big house. My mother, Alma Batiste, had her club named the Golden Slipper. I remember them masking as Baby Dolls. They would go to each other’s houses to make their costumes.
The Baby Doll costumes were made of satin, green red blue, pink, and white. I can recall a lot of the women masked as Baby Dolls with my mother’s club Golden Slipper; I can only give you nicknames because I was small. The Batiste family from St. Phillip, my mother and them, they were out there masking the Baby Dolls, the Skeletons, the Indians, and the Dirty Dozen were organized from the Batiste family.
My mother and them would come out early as the Dirty Dozen as early in the morning as 4:30–5:00 am. The Dirty Dozen was nicknaming how the older people would come out. The men mostly liked to dress in women’s clothes. They would put a pillow in the front and a pillow in the back. They had on bonnets.
Later in the day, they would mask as Baby Dolls and go to different houses to stop and have a little recess. They paraded around St. Bernard, Claiborne, Orleans and St. Claude, St. Phillip St. and Dumaine.
—Miriam Batiste Reed, April 22, 2010, referring to the late 1930s to early 1940s
If you wanted to be a Baby Doll with the original Baby Dolls, you have to dress like the Baby Dolls, in the years that I had it, you know. We would parade in the street and stop at different houses. And everybody would be out there: “Oh, the Baby Dolls is coming, the Baby Dolls is coming.”
Well, I love to sing, too. And I’m an old Creole, OK, so when we sing what we don’t know the words to something, we go “La la la la la la.” So the house that we would stop by, they would have cold drinks for you, and red beans and rice, you know. And you could have something to eat, and then we’d just go along, you know.
—Interview with Miriam Batiste Reed, by Noah Bonaparte Pais,
Gambit: Blog of New Orleans, 2009
REVIVING THEIR PARENTS’ TRADITIONS
The masking traditions of bygone days were so important to later generations that they began to revive the revelry making of their ancestors. Families like the Batistes and the Phillipses were well known for creating fun and merriment for themselves, their neighbors, and their community. To honor their ancestors and to celebrate in classic style, many descendants picked up the family customs after they had been dormant for some time.
We met at 7 am at Felicia Shezbie’s house on Orleans Avenue. A huge breakfast with eggs, pork chops, gumbo, biscuits, gravy, greens, rice and desserts was the morning meal.
Following breakfast Precisely Batiste led a prayer for our safety and to have a beautiful day. Then we hit the streets.
We paraded from 8 am Fat Tuesday until 2 am the following morning. There was a loosely organized route with rest periods. We strutted through huge crowds on Claiborne with ease and grace. They played old ribald songs, jazz tunes, and Creole songs. Everyone loved the Baby Dolls, and thousands of revelers cleared a path for the Baby Dolls and the Dirty Dozen.
In the middle of a gigantic crowd, a space would magically open and there would be a three-legged card table barely standing with a fifth of Jack Daniels for the Baby Dolls and Dozen. It was more surreal than a Fellini film. The next stop might be gumbo and sandwiches.
A le
sser-known but striking group of Baby Dolls from further downtown were known as Satan (spelled Satin) and Sinners. Film footage shows Satan with his red union drawers and with white cotton boxers worn outside. Along with his long red tail and his red horns he carried a decorated umbrella. A man carried a sign saying “Satin and Sinners,” and the Baby Dolls followed three abreast strutting in red satin baby doll outfits.
Others have claimed that the Baby Dolls were just prostitutes who masked on Mardi Gras. But that seriously oversimplifies it. They were hard working people caught up in the life they were dealt but made the most of. They stuck together and created an ironic twist unlike any other.
These people, born into a repressed condition, turned it around and made a brilliant creation of live art. The joy they spread changed the path of culture worldwide. The Baby Dolls were a welcome and unique part of an African-American renaissance centered in New Orleans.
—Jerry Brock, “The Million Dollar Baby Dolls,” New Orleans Beat Street 2, no. 2
When my sister Felicia died, I had someone to get a mannequin. I dressed that mannequin in a Baby Doll dress and bonnet and socks. My sister was laid out at Charbonnet’s funeral home and that mannequin was standing at the head of her casket. They had jazz funerals for my sisters as well as my brothers.
—Interview with Miriam Batiste Reed, April 22, 2010
Merline Kimble has been an active member of the Gold Diggers since 1985. The original Gold Diggers’ Baby Dolls have a history that dates back to the 1900s, she says, adding that her grandmother Louise Recasner Phillips was an original member of the Gold Diggers’ Baby Dolls.
According to stories passed down to Kimble, the Gold Diggers would come out as early as two in the morning, and hundreds of people would be waiting outside her grandmother’s house on Dumaine Street. On Mardi Gras day the Gold Diggers Baby Dolls can still be found on Dumaine Street, in the heart of the Tremé.
“Being a Baby Doll gives you the opportunity to do all the crazy things that you would not normally do,” Kimble says. “I am a very conservative lady, but when you put the baby doll costume on you become another person. People scream ‘baby doll, baby doll, baby doll’ and all sorts of things happen. It is a lot of fun.”
—Theresa Crushshon, “Oh Baby: New Orleans Baby Doll Tradition
Thrives,” New Orleans Tribune, 2010
ERNIE K-DOE BABY DOLLS: ON BECOMING A NEW ORLEANS ICON
Newcomers to New Orleans begin their understanding of the Baby Dolls with Antoinette K-Doe’s push to revive the tradition. Steeped in the culture of entertainment via the neighborhood lounge, Antoinette catapulted herself to fame, as had the original Baby Dolls, through the use of bravado, making a scene, and stealing the show. Not content to be known as the wife of Ernie K-Doe, Antoinette was determined to make a name for herself. The death of her husband, a well-known local rhythm-and-blues singer, left her bereft and with a club to promote without the legendary figure at her side. In honoring his memory, she looked for ways to continue having his name and the name of their lounge in the public eye. The Baby Dolls served that need and, because of it, the Baby Doll masking tradition enjoyed a resurgence.
Antoinette noticed that Allison “Tootie” Montana’s portrait was not painted on the pilings under the Claiborne Avenue bridge like the other Mardi Gras Indians. Ernie K-Doe’s portrait was under the bridge. She said Ernie should not have been under the bridge because he was a rhythm-and-blues singer and not a Mardi Gras Indian. She got permission from Tootie’s wife to paint his image on the outside of the Mother-in-Law Lounge, which she owned. Antoinette remembered that the Baby Dolls marched with the Indians and wanted to be part of that tradition. We said that we were going to be the Ernie K-Doe Baby Dolls, Antoinette, Tee-Eva, and me. We didn’t know what to do so we called Ms. Miriam Batiste Reed.
—Interview with Geannie Thomas, an Ernie K-Doe Baby Doll, April 25, 2010
[Miriam Batiste Reed] brought all her dresses, her bonnets. She remembered how to cut out a newspaper pattern for the bonnets. She taught us how to do the dresses. I caught on real quickly because I’m a seamstress. When that year was over, she showed me how to make the Baby Doll dresses out of crepe paper. I keep saying I’m going to do one out of crepe paper and put it in a glass cabinet and put in somewhere in here. Don’t ask me where.
The walk, the dance—it’s more like a strut. Miss Miriam grew up in a musical family, the Batistes. She said when the Baby Dolls would go out they would make their little tambourines. She gave me the pattern, and I had some guys make some tambourines. So we all had our little tambourines. When we get out there, wherever Northside Skull and Bones Gang Chief Bruce “Sunpie” Barnes takes us is where that old music happens for the Baby Dolls. And we all be together having fun. When Zulu gets on this end, we get with Zulu, we just get out there. Just have fun.
—Antoinette K-Doe, quoted by Noah Bonaparte Pais, “R.I.P. Antoinette
K-Doe,” Gambit: Blog of New Orleans, 2009
The Baby Dolls had disappeared, and I brought the Baby Dolls back. I named them the Ernie K-Doe Baby Dolls. The reason I did that was to show the new Baby Dolls are career ladies. We all working ladies. The history of Baby Dolls, from years ago when I was a little girl, I thought they were baby dolls that I could play with. My grandmother told me, “No, it’s ladies.” It developed into getting history on the Baby Dolls, because I was always fascinated by our culture. And I understood that the Baby Dolls was whores. I knew they had the Red Light District, the Baby Dolls here. So when I brought the Baby Dolls back, I didn’t want them to have the reputation they had before. I said, “You know what? Let’s clean up the act.” So we made it career ladies.
The next year, they had some Baby Dolls wanted to join us, 2005. I told them, “Listen. Y’all can join us, it’s fine. But there will not be a disgrace on these Baby Dolls.” Because we grandmothers, we parents, whatever. We have our life to live after Mardi Gras. So they didn’t like the rules that I had fixed for my Baby Dolls: to wear clothes but wear them decent, not with everything showing. Ms. Miriam Batiste told me, “Antoinette, they had another set of Baby Dolls, over here in the black Mardi Gras area, called the Gold Diggers.”
—Antoinette K-Doe, quoted by Pais, “R.I.P. Antoinette K-Doe”
We have to set ourselves apart from those other Baby Dolls. The Ernie K-Doe Baby Dolls were the last big group. There were thirty-five to forty of us that marched with Tootie that Mardi Gras. Not long after that, he dropped dead fighting for the Indians gathering under the bridge.
—Interview with Geannie Thomas, April 25, 2010
The Ernie K-Doe Baby Dolls were pallbearers for the funeral of Lloyd Washington. He was one of the last living members of the Ink Spots vocal group. His wife, Hazel, had no way to bury him or no money for a hearse. We used my red Dodge Dakota truck and decorated it with greenery. Antoinette had kept his ashes in her lounge, the Mother-in-Law, for months until a burial place could be found for him. We had a casket we used as a stage prop in theatrical performances we did. So Miriam Batiste Reed, Tee-Eva, Antoinette, and Lollipop and I marched all the way to the cemetery. We marched from St. Augustine Catholic Church to St. Louis Cemetery Number One on Basin Street. I carried Hazel in my truck. People said they had not seen women pallbearers, especially for such a legend as Lloyd Washington. We wore black dresses with white birds on our shoulders.
—Interview with Geannie Thomas, April 25, 2010
It is an honor to be a Baby Doll. When I was coming up, I always loved dolls but we were very poor. My mother had three girls. At Christmas we got candy, but never a doll. I was ten years old when my grandfather must have helped my mother buy a doll for me. I will never forget the velvet skirt. I loved that doll. And now to be able to be a Baby Doll and for other people to look and say, “Wow you look good, you are a Baby Doll,” is a thrill. When we marched the first year, people said, “The Baby Dolls! We remember.” So many people said they remembered. When we came down Canal Street the crowd was so happy to
see the Baby Dolls were back. They said they remembered their grandparents being Baby Dolls. Little kids would say, “Oh momma that is a BD.” “Mama, who is that Baby Doll?” Any time I put the dress on I am as excited as the first day. I am still happy to be a Baby Doll. It represents the doll I was never able to have, and it represents being with Antoinette and things she got me into.
—Interview with Geannie Thomas, April 25, 2010
The frilly clothes, bows, the baby doll shoes the Baby Dolls wear are like being a little lady. It is real cute and it takes you back. When I was a little girl in Hansville in St. Charles Parish, the adults use to dress us up in fancy and frilly dresses to go to church. I was always dressed liked a doll. Our church had an association that organized a band and a parade. I loved the band. If I heard something beat, I would go. I was always a leader and would hold the banner for the name of the church. I was always in the front of the parade. I am still the leader of the pack.
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