by Mick Burns
As my companion, Anthony “Tuba Fats” Lacen, observes, “Everybody got a little hustle.” We sit on the steps at the back of Joe’s Cozy Corner, a block away, while musicians, club members, and potential second liners mill around the Tremé Center—it looks a bit aimless, but everything will probably get started soon.
Up comes a lady with a little hustle—she’s selling small pumpkin pies from a basket. She spots us as likely customers, and it goes like this:
LADY: Hey baby, how about one of these pies? Made them myself, just this morning.
TUBA: Naw, can’t eat them pies, ain’t got the teeth.
LADY: Well, how about your friend? [indicating me]
TUBA: Naw, he’s worse than me.
LADY: Well, how about buying one anyway, for a tip?
TUBA: Naw.
LADY: Well, fuck y’all!
We retire into Joe’s Cozy Corner (headquarters of the Jolly Bunch Ladies, says a sign on the wall) for a cold Bud and a sociable reception from the mainly elderly customers, inspired by courteous and friendly curiosity. Then out of the semidarkness of the bar, into the glare of the street, and back to the St. Philip corner: maybe there’s something happening by now.
There is. At the end of the walkway into the Tremé center, right by the entrance, Benny Jones and the Tremé Brass Band are playing the spiritual “I’ll Fly Away.” Benny’s playing bass drum today and has a big band with him. There’s Roger Lewis on alto sax, Elliott “Stackman” Callier on tenor. Mervyn “Kid Merv” Campbell and William Smith on trumpets, Charles Joseph and Eddie “Bo” Parish on trombones, and—surprise!—Kirk Joseph and Julius “Jap” McKee and Jeffrey Hills: three sousaphones in one band!
Already on the street, dancing in formation, is the children’s division of the Sudan, maybe twenty of them, the boys wearing the same outfits as their fathers—and holding unlit cigars. According to Helen Regis, “The cigar-chewing six-year-old boy in the Sudan’s youth division is not just learning to participate in community tradition: he signifies the club’s (and no doubt his own parent’s) hopes for the financial success of their youth.”31 As one club member noted in the TV documentary Jazz Parades: Feet Don’t Fail Me Now, the social and pleasure clubs help keep kids out of serious trouble: “Some of these kids want so bad to be a part of that life. The parents will spend their last dime just so’s a son or daughter can be involved in this. Some of the kids may get into a little trouble—they get into one of these clubs, they know that if they get into too much stuff, they can’t belong. So that kind of keeps them straight.”32
One by one, out of the center, down the walkway by the side of the police barrier, comes the membership of the Sudan Social and Pleasure Club. The crowd, by now a couple of hundred strong, gives each of them a big individual reception. And each of them responds with their best moves—this is their day; they’ve been saving and planning for it for months, and as they would say, “If you ain’t gonna shake it, why did you bring it?”
Meanwhile, “Uncle” Lionel Batiste, super-dignified in black homburg and coat, unimpressed by the shenanigans and impatient to be away, starts leading the parade—on his own. The police escort get themselves together, the Tremé band falls into place at the head of the procession, followed by a division—about thirty or so—of the Sudan, a few hundred second liners form up, and the whole thing starts moving along Villere towards Ursuline.
The Sudan members look great—pale blue suits made out of some kind of satin material, white shirts, dark blue derby hats, white gloves. In the left hand, an unlit “big shot” cigar, and in the right hand, well, there may be a word for it, but I’ve no idea what it is. Imagine a walking stick, painted white, with most of the stick part enclosed in a sort of decorative box, made out of polystyrene, painted light and dark blue, and with glitter lettering—“Sudan” and “1984-2002.” A sort of “walking box.”
From time to time, the head of the procession stops to let the rest catch up. The walking boxes are rested on the ground, and the Sudan dance in the roadway—one of them is hit by cramp in both legs and falls to the ground laughing.
The Tremé is playing wonderfully, and the unconventional three-part bass horn section sounds great. The drummers have been joined by a tambourine player and a guy hitting a bottle with a drumstick. Although Benny’s always very insistent that he sticks to the traditional music, it’s a fairly loose interpretation of the traditional repertoire—after all, these second liners are from all age groups. By now, there are maybe a couple of thousand following the parade, and the energy and adrenaline are picking up.
The band plays “Hi Heel Sneakers,” “When My Dreamboat Comes Home,” “Blackbird Special,” “Iko Iko,” “Second Line,” “Food Stamp Blues,” and “Gimme My Money Back”—it has all the wildness and excitement I remember from the Olympia in the late eighties.
Hard on their heels, just behind the first division of the Sudan, comes the New Birth Brass Band, which includes leader Tanio Hingle on bass drum, his usual sidekick Kerry “Fatman” Hunter on snare and some other percussion including cowbell and tambourine, Kenneth Terry on trumpet, Kerwin James on sousaphone, and the incredible Frederick Shepherd (Fred Shep) on tenor saxophone, parade cap on backwards as usual, blowing his ass off, as usual. I don’t know which band is better—they both sound fabulous to me.
Bringing up the rear is the Lil’ Rascals, but I never dropped back far enough to hear them. The vibe from the crowd is sheer joy, the energy is as tangible as the electrical charge before a thunderstorm, and the mood is forward—to try and drop back down the line would be to defy the impetus.
One woman tries to go against the flow, and is rewarded by a chant from the crowd, “Mooove, bitch, git out the way! Mooove, bitch, git out the way! Mooove, bitch….” So she does.
The barbecue vendors have kept pace with the parade, and so, incredibly, have the cold beer salesmen. Over on the neutral ground (what those outside New Orleans would call the “median”), a couple of operators are splitting cigars and adding herb to make “blunts.” Soon, the sweet smell of skunk weed, protected by the sheer density of the crowd, winds up the euphoria another couple of notches.
By now the parade has been joined by around ten men on beautiful chestnut horses, riding western saddles—the Seventh Ward Cowboys.
The bands and the crowd, the music and the dancing, feed off each other—I don’t know where else you could experience this sense of movement and purpose and elation.
There’s about half an hour to go before the city permit runs out and the police disperse the crowd, when we pass Dooky Chase’s restaurant. Hunger and fatigue strike like lightning, and the prospect of a seafood platter, a cold beer, a comfortable chair, and air conditioning is irresistible. So we go for it.
“It is only by plunging into the crowd that one can begin to apprehend the complex experiential reality of ‘the line,’” writes Helen Regis.33 In other words, you really had to be there.
Select Discography
RECOMMENDED LISTENING
The following recordings provide a good overview of the brass band movement’s evolution over the last thirty years or so.
Leroy Jones and His Hurricane Marching Brass Band of New Orleans.
Lo An. No catalog number. Recorded March 1975.
Dirty Dozen Brass Band. Live: Mardi Gras in Montreux.
Rounder. ROUN2052. Recorded July 1985.
Tuba Fats’ Chosen Few Brass Band. Street Music.
Jazz Crusade. JCDD-3080. Recorded November 1985.
Rebirth Brass Band. Rebirth Kickin’ It Live! The Glass House.
Special Delivery. SPDCD 1040. Recorded April 1990.
Tremé Brass Band. I Got a Big Fat Woman.
Sound of New Orleans. SONO 1029. Recorded July 1990.
Soul Rebels. Let Your Mind Be Free.
Mardi Gras. MG 1020. Recorded May 1994.
New Birth Brass Band. D-Boy.
NYNO Music. 9604-Z. Recorded November 1996.
Paulin Brothers Jazz
Band. The Tradition Continues.
Self-produced. Released 1996.
Notes
1. Quoted in Mick Burns, The Great Olympia Band (New Orleans: Jazzology, 2001), 212.
2. Louis Armstrong, Louis Armstrong, In His Own Words, ed. Thomas Brothers (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 27.
3. Quoted in Burns, Great Olympia Band, 213.
4. Tape-recorded interview, Tremé Oral History Project, Amistad Research Center, Tulane University.
5. Ibid.
6. Quoted in Helen A. Regis, “Second Lines, Minstrelsy, and the Contested Landscapes of New Orleans Afro-Creole Festivals,” Cultural Anthropology 14, no. 4 (1999): 476.
7. Regis, “Second Lines,” 474.
8. Tape-recorded interview, Tremé Oral History Project.
9. Quoted in Regis, “Second Lines,” 483.
10. Regis, “Second Lines,” 496.
11. Quoted in Association for Cultural Equity, Jazz Parades: Feet Don’t Fail Me Now, videocassette, produced, directed, and written by Alan Lomax, American Patchwork—Song and Stories of America series, no. 101 (PBS, 1990; Vestapol Video, 1998).
12. Louisiana Writers’ Project, Gumbo Ya-Ya, compiled by Lyle Saxon (1945; reprint, New Orleans: Pelican, 1987), 395.
13. Quoted in Jason Berry, Jonathan Foose, and Tad Jones, Up from the Cradle of Jazz: New Orleans Music since World War II (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1986), 12.
14. Quoted in Burns, Great Olympia Band, 28.
15. Tony Scherman, Backbeat: Earl Palmer’s Story (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1999), 154.
16. Tape-recorded interview, Tremé Oral History Project.
17. Quoted in Burns, Great Olympia Band. 169.
18. Ibid., 105.
19. Ibid., 211.
20. Tape-recorded interview, Tremé Oral History Project.
21. Ibid.
22. Ibid.
23. Quoted in Burns, Great Olympia Band, 194.
24. Louisiana Writers’ Project, Gumbo Ya-Ya, 11.
25. Tape-recorded interview, Tremé Oral History Project.
26. Quoted in William Russell, Oh, Mister Jelly! A Jelly Roll Morton Scrapbook (Copenhagen: Jazz Media ApS, 1999), 106.
27. Henry Glass, interview by Richard B. Allen, Hogan Jazz Archive, Tulane University.
28. Quoted in Scherman, Backbeat, 17.
29. Mac Rebennack (Dr. John) with John Rummel, Under a Hoodoo Moon: The Life of Dr. John the Night Tripper (New York: St. Martin’s, 1994), 17-18.
30. Quoted in Burns, Great Olympia Band, 123.
31. Regis, “Second Lines,” 488.
32. Quoted in Association for Cultural Equity, Jazz Parades.
33. Helen A. Regis, “Blackness and the Politics of Memory in the New Orleans Second Line,” American Ethnologist 28, no. 4 (2001): 755.
Index
Adams, Daryl, 16, 24, 35, 62, 79
Adams, Gerald, 155
Adams, Justin, 155
Adams, Nasser, 23
Adams, Placide, 34, 37, 83, 84, 155
Agee, Stafford, 124, 136, 139
Alcorn, Alvin, 33, 43, 78
Alcorn, Sam, 33
Alexander, Adolphe “Tats,” 48
Alexander, Monty, 28
Allen, Henry “Red,” Jr., 128, 155
Allen, Henry, Sr., 149, 154
Allen, Lee, 77, 79
Allen, Shamar, 116
Almerico, Tony, 164
Anckle, Himas Floyd “Flo,” ii, 34, 37, 68, 96, 103, 143-44, 170, 181
Anderson, Gerry, 16, 59
Anderson, Keith “Wolf,” 38-39, 86, 59, 109, 110, 117-19, 124, 165-66
Andrews, Buster, 102
Andrews, Darnell, 102
Andrews, Glen, 116, 136, 140-41, 160
Andrews, James “Little Twelve,” Jr., 16, 39, 86, 97, 103, 121, 131, 160-63
Andrews, James “Twelve,” Sr., 97
Andrews, Lois, 97, 103
Andrews, Revert “Peanut,” 16, 39, 85, 102, 124, 136, 139, 140, 160-61, 165
Andrews, Troy “Trombone Shorty,” 87, 160
Armstrong, Louis, 1, 5, 20, 22-23, 28, 95, 127, 128, 130, 142, 157, 159, 175, 179
Armstrong, Lucille, 20
Austin, Kenneth “Eyes,” 36, 113
Badell, Frankie, 153
Banks, Isaac, 23
Barabino, Larry, 161
Barbarin, Charles, Jr., 16, 24, 44, 57, 62
Barbarin, Charles, Sr., 19, 24, 44, 57
Barbarin, Lucien, 16, 24, 26, 27, 28, 45, 57, 62, 98
Barbarin, Paul, 19
Barbera, Val, 164
Barker, Danny, 15-19, 22-24, 35, 37, 43-35, 51, 54-59, 61, 69-70, 74, 81, 95-97, 101-2, 123, 127, 130, 135, 151, 156, 160, 164, 179
Barker, Louise “Blue Lou,” 23, 54-55
Barron, Earl, 159
Bartholomew, Dave, 79, 90
Basie, Count, 82
Batiste, Aitken, 91
Batiste, Alvin, 25
Batiste, Arthur, 86
Batiste, Felicia, 86, 94
Batiste, Henry, 86
Batiste, Lionel, Jr., 100, 135
Batiste, Lionel Paul “Uncle Lionel,” Sr., 3, 37, 39, 75, 79, 82, 85, 87-93, 130-31, 137, 165, 178, 179, 185
Batiste, Mary, 86
Batiste, Milton, 3, 11, 35, 42, 51, 65, 108, 110, 119, 123, 128, 130, 135-40, 143-44, 146, 160-61, 178
Batiste, Norman, 86
Batiste, Othello, 149-50, 153
Batiste, Precisely, 86
Batiste, Quentin, 27-28
Bechet, Sidney, 1, 95, 165
Bering, Charlie, 27
Billington, Scott, 74
Bijou, Sam, 78
Black, Durel, 20
Black, James, 95
Blakey, Art, 70
Bland, Bobby Blue, 33, 78
Bocage, Edwin “Eddie Bo,” 79
Bonano, Sharkey, 90
Booker, James, 95
Boudreaux, John, 82, 92
Bourne, Sinclair, 151
Boutté, Lillian, 28
Breaux, Leroy “Boogie,” 135-36, 143, 164, 167
Brock, Jerry, 94, 103
Brock, Walter, 95, 98
Brown, Clarence, 79
Brown, Pud, 27-28
Brown, Sidney “Little Jim,” 87
Brown, William “Coby,” 51
Burke, Chris, 164
Burns, Dwayne, 38, 178
Burns, Mick, 3-4
Bush, George Herbert Walker, 112
Cagnolatti, Derek, 23, 44, 57
Cagnolatti, Ernie, 136, 140
Cahn, Jules, 51, 61, 97, 107
Callier, Elliott “Stackman,” 35-36, 141, 184
Calloway, Cab, 15
Campbell, Erskine, 136, 140
Campbell, Mervyn “Kid Merv,” 3, 10, 184
Carbo, Chuck, 23
Carmbs, Morris, 23
Carson, Al “Big Al,” 23-24, 58-60, 170
Celestin, Oscar, 2, 33
Charles, Buddy, 34, 37
Charles, Erving, 26
Charles, Frank, 9
Charles, Ray, 25, 67, 159
Charles, Rocky, 157
Chase, Dooky, 67
Chase, Leah, 8
Chatters, Maynard, 27
Clifton, Chris, 4
Cola, George “Kid Sheik,” 32, 46, 161, 164
Coleman, Ornette, 78
Coltrane, John, 70, 74
Connick, Harry, Jr., 28
Cook, Olivia Chariot, 26, 49
Cosse, Abraham, 136, 139-40
Costello, Elvis, 81
Cottrell, Louis, 22, 35, 43, 46, 83
Crawford, Paul, 51
Cruyt, Jacques, 28
Darby, Andrew, 15-16, 19, 23, 101
Davis, Gregory “Blodie,” 16, 24, 26, 36-37, 62, 69-76, 80, 82, 86, 99-100, 119, 144, 178, 181
Davis, Jerome, ii, 144
Davis, Miles, 70, 130
Davis, Quint, 76, 107, 181
Dejan, Harold, 16, 32, 35, 46, 50-51, 85, 91, 102-3, 119, 127-28, 130,
135-36, 146, 160, 167
Derbigny, Earl, 78
Desvigne, Sidney, 89
Dixon, Norman, 10, 181-82
Doe, Ernie K., 41
Dolliole, Milford, 135
Domino, Fats, 36, 66, 76, 79, 95, 97, 121
Dowe, Nat “Big Nat,” 6, 33, 37
Dupree, Jack “Champion Jack,” 99
Dutrey, Sam, 15
Eaglin, Fird “Snooks,” 98
Eddison, Harry “Sweets,” 28
Eisen, Irving, 51
Fauria, Edwin “Beansie,” 90
Fernandez, John, 66
Finola, George, 43
Ford, Clarence, 6
Ford, Thaddeus, 153
Foucher, Edmund, 35
Fountain, Pete, 49
Frank, Ed, 27-28, 75
Frazier, Barbara, 102
Frazier, Josiah “Cié,” 108
Frazier, Keith, 102, 108, 112-16, 118, 131
Frazier, Philip, 102, 108-111, 112, 118-19, 136
Freeman, David, 168
Freeman, Henry, 25, 62
French, Bob, 147
French, George, 147
Fuller, Curtis, 73
Gabriel, Charlie, 28
Gallaud, David, 139
Gardner, June, 26
Gaspard, Donald, 50
George, Michael, 83
Gibson, Banu, 27
Gilbert, John “Prince,” 166
Gillespie, Dizzy, 70, 81, 161
Glass, Henry “Booker T.,” 93
Glass, Nowell “Pa Pa,” 51, 136
Gomez, Lajoie “Butch,” 85-86, 164-67
Green, Andrew “Big Daddy,” 70, 80, 86, 101
Griffin, Johnny, 82
Grillier, David, 27, 34, 37
Guesnon, George, 93
Guichard, Emma, 88
Guilder, Rusty, 27
Hampton, Edwin, 49
Hancock, Herbie, 73, 137
Hardesty, Herbert, 79
Harris, David, 108
Harris, Kevin, 16, 26, 70, 82, 86
Harris, Lloyd, 49
Harris, Robert, 39, 175-76, 178, 186
Harrison, Donald “Chauncey,” 153
Henry, Clarence “Frogman,” 83
Henry, Corey, 86, 120-21
Hill, Beatrice, 93
Hill, Jesse, 160
Hillary, Sister Mary, 21-22
Hills, Jeffrey, 136, 184
Hingle, Cayetano “Tanio,” 124, 127, 131, 135-40, 166, 181, 185